Monday 6 July 2020

Bill Haley born 6 July 1925


William John Clifton Haley (July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was a pioneering American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and has sold over 60 million records worldwide.

Haley was born in Highland Park, Michigan, and raised in Booth's Corner, Pennsylvania. Many sources state that Haley was born in 1927, apparently due to Haley taking two years off his age for publicity purposes in the 1950s.

He was blinded in his left eye as a child due to a failed operation. According to biographer John Swenson, Haley later adopted his distinctive spit-curl hairstyle to distract attention from his blind eye. The hair style caught on as a 50s-style signature, although Haley and others had worn the hairstyle much earlier.

In 1946, Haley joined his first professional group, a Pennsylvania-based western swing band called the Down 
Homers. As Haley became experienced on the professional music scene, he created several groups. These included the Four Aces of Western Swing and the Range Drifters. With the Four Aces, he made some country hit singles in the late 1940s, for Cowboy Records. During this time he worked as a touring musician and, beginning in 1947, as musical director at radio station WPWA in Philadelphia. Many of Haley's early recordings from this period would not be released until after his death.

After disbanding the Four Aces and briefly trying a solo career
using the names Jack Haley and Johnny Clifton, Haley formed a new group called the Saddlemen around 1950, recording for several labels. In 1951, Haley was signed to Dave Miller's Philadelphia-based Holiday Records and began to move toward the rockabilly genre, recording "Rocket 88," and in, 1952, "Rock the Joint" for Miller's larger Essex label. These recordings both sold in the 75,000-100,000 range in the Pennsylvania-New England region.

In 1951, Haley crossed paths with The Treniers while playing in Wildwood, New Jersey. Haley arranged for their song, "Rock a Beatin' Boogie," to be recorded by two bands: the Esquire Boys in 1952 and The Treniers themselves in 1953.  During the Labor Day weekend in 1952, the Saddlemen were renamed "Bill Haley with Haley's Comets," inspired by a popular mispronunciation of Halley's Comet. In 1953, Haley's recording of "Crazy Man, Crazy" hit the American charts, considered by many to be the first true "rock and roll" song to do so. Soon after, the band's name was revised to Bill Haley & His Comets.


                              

"Rock Around the Clock" was written for Haley in 1953, but he was unable to record it until April 12, 1954. Initially, it was relatively unsuccessful, remaining on the charts for only one week. However, Haley soon scored a major worldwide hit with a cover version of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll," which went 
on to sell a million copies and became the first ever rock song to enter British singles charts in December 1954 and became a Gold Record.

Then, when "Rock Around the Clock" appeared behind the opening credits of the 1955 hit film, Blackboard Jungle, starring Glenn Ford, the song soared to the top of the American Billboard charts for eight weeks. It launched a musical revolution that opened the doors for the likes of Elvis Presley and others. "Rock Around the Clock" was the first record ever to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany. 

Thus, in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Haley continued to score hits throughout the 1950s and starred in the first rock and roll musical movies, Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, both in 1956. His star was soon surpassed in the United States by the younger, sexier Elvis Presley, but Haley continued to be a major star in Latin America, Mexico, and Europe throughout the 1960s.

A self-admitted alcoholic, Haley fought a battle with liquor well 
into the 1970s. Nonetheless, he and his band continued to be a popular touring act, enjoying a career resurgence in the late 1960s with the rock and roll revival movement and signing of a lucrative record deal with the European Sonet Records label. After performing for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance in 1979, Haley made his final performances in South Africa in May and June of 1980.

Prior to the South African tour, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and a planned tour of Germany in the fall of 1980 was cancelled. He soon retired to his home in Harlingen, Texas where he died early on the morning February 9, 1981. Media reports immediately following his death indicated Haley displayed deranged and erratic behavior in his final weeks, although there is little information about Haley's final days. The exact cause of his death is controversial. Media reports, supported by Haley's death certificate, suggest he died of "natural causes most likely heart attack." Members of Haley's family, however, contest that he died from the brain tumour.


In 1987, Haley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

(Edited from The New World Encyclopedia)

3 comments:

boppinbob said...

For “Bill Haley – Bill Rocks” go here:

https://www.upload.ee/files/11973299/Bill_Haley_-_Bill_Rocks.rar.html

1. (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock
2. Shake, Rattle And Roll
3. Dim, Dim The Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)
4. Happy Baby
5. Mambo Rock
6. Rocket 88
7. Birth Of The Boogie
8. Razzle Dazzle
9. Two Hound Dogs
10. Rock The Joint
11. Burn That Candle
12. Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie
13. See You Later, Alligator
14. Real Rock Drive
15. The Saints Rock 'n' Roll
16. A.B.C. Boogie
17. R-O-C-K
18. Crazy Man Crazy
19. Hot Dog Buddy Buddy
20. Rockin' Through The Rye
21. Rip It Up
22. Fractured
23. Rudy's Rock (instrumental)
24. Choo Choo Ch' Boogie
25. Don't Knock The Rock
26. Live It Up
27. Forty Cups Of Coffee
28. Skinny Minnie
29. Lean Jean
30. Where Did You Go Last Night
31. Green Tree Boogie

The hoopla surrounding the purported fiftieth anniversary of rock 'n' roll in 2004 didn't quite ring true. Yes, Elvis made his first record in 1954, but Bill Haley, who died neglected and alone on the Mexican border twenty-five years ago on the 9th of February, went to his grave wondering why he'd been written out of the story. True, the Pennsylvania polka bars where Bill Haley stumbled across his music didn't have the eye candy appeal of Memphis after dark, and yes Bill Haley was almost middle-aged and had a goofy little kiss curl, but he was in the charts with rock 'n' roll as early as 1953, and he'd figured it out several years before that. So yes, Bill Haley was first, and some say that he's still the greatest. No one at Bear Family would argue with that!

Bear Family presents a complete cross-section of Bill Haley's rockin'est recordings. Some were made for Holiday and Essex Records in the early 1950s and some for Decca in the mid-to-late 1950s. Here's his version of Rocket '88' from 1951 which proves Bill Haley was already on the verge of figuring it out. Later Essex recordings like Rock The Joint and Crazy, Man, Crazy (the absolute guaranteed first rock 'n' roll hit from 1953!) proved that he was indisputably first. Then, of course, Bill Haley switched to Decca and his early Decca singles, Shake Rattle And Roll and Rock Around The Clock, were the shots heard around the world. Rock 'n' roll had arrived, ushered in by Bill Haley &, His Comets. This is what the revolution sounded like! (Bear Family notes)

Crab Devil said...

Thanks!

Bob Mac said...

Thanks for this one.