Who was he?
Born near Detroit, Bill Haley was a rock and roll anomaly. He didn’t come from the South, he was an adult, he had no sex appeal and he was already a professional musician. He sang ghetto songs and used black slang, but with a white voice.
With music loving parents, he grew up playing country music. Later on, he got the nerve to compose but preferred to do cover versions of black musicians’ songs. As a teenager, he leaves home to play.
Bill Haley and the Saddlemen – Rock This Joint (1952)
A version of an old boogie-woogie composed by Harry Crafton, Don Keane and Doc Bagby, it’s one of those black music tracks that Haley reinterpreted in a rockabilly key.
William Haley was born in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1925. His father, born in Kentucky, played the banjo and mandolin, while his mother, originally from England, had studied piano and classical music. At the age of 13, he played in local venues and left home at 15. After some hard years, during which he gained experience playing with all kinds of artists, he started the country band The Four Aces of Western Swing. Later, while working on the radio, they changed their name to Bill Haley and the Saddlemen.
What was his music like?
As they change their name to The Comets, they accentuate rhythms using the metallic tone of the guitars and the double bass as a percussion instrument. In 1954, his hit Rock around the clock appears, a revision of another old blues.
He becomes famous and appears in the film Blackboard Jungle (Seed of Evil). Several minor hits follow, but he is finally eclipsed by the figure of Elvis Presley, the incarnation of rock and roll.
Bill Haley and His Comets – Crazy Man, Crazy (1953)
Song credited to Haley herself, assisted by bassist Marshall Lytle. It is one of the first songs to which the white music market applied the term rock and roll.
The name The Saddlemen, related to country, no longer served to define the rock and roll of their new style. So, in 1952, taking advantage of the Haley surname, they changed their name to The Comets. A year later they reached the American charts with the song Crazy Man, Crazy. In 1954, they signed with Decca Records and were assigned to producer Milt Gabler, who had already worked with protorock and roll musicians like Louis Jordan. The tune was total and already in the first session Rock around the clock appeared.
How did his career finish?
Too far away from the young people he doesn’t understand the background of rock and roll, he just creates rhythms. He sets up his own label, Climax Records, but it only lasts a few months. He keeps recording with The Comets, but nothing seems to work anymore.
In spite of this, for some years his tours are well received in Europe and Mexico. At the end of the seventies, he felt ill and retired to Harlingen (Texas), where he died in 1981 at the age of 55.
Bill Haley and His Comets – Shake, Rattle and Roll (1954)
Version of a song composed by Charles Calhoun, pseudonym of Jesse Stone. It was a great success on the voice of bluesman Big Joe Turner, who Halley played in a rock and roll key.
Although Shake, rattle and roll could not repeat the resounding success of Rock around the clock, it became the first international success for rock and roll. For their live performances, the band developed an impressive stage set that, based on the tradition of jazz and rhythm and blues, shook the young audience. From 1955 onwards, the desertions and changes in line-up began, but some more hits would follow, such as See you later, alligator or Rock-a-beatin’ boogie.
