Bill Haley & His Comets were an American rock and roll band formed in 1947 and continuing until Haley's death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group recorded nine top-20 singles, one of which was number one and three that were top ten. The single "Rock Around the Clock" was the best-selling rock single in the history of the genre and maintained that position for several years.
Band leader Bill Haley had previously been a Western swing performer; after recording a rockabilly version of Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm's "Rocket 88", one of the first rock and roll recordings, Haley changed his band's musical direction to rock music. They went on to record hit versions of "Crazy Man, Crazy", "Shake, Rattle & Roll", the aforementioned "Rock Around the Clock", "Dim, Dim the Lights", "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie", "Razzle-Dazzle", "See You Later, Alligator", "The Saints Rock 'N' Roll" and "Rip It Up". In 1956, the group appeared in two early rock and roll movies with disc jockey Alan Freed: Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock.
Though the group was considered to be at the forefront of rock and roll during the genre's formative years, the arrival of more risqué acts such as Elvis Presley and Little Richard by 1956 led the more clean-cut Haley and his Comets to decline in popularity. Haley would remain popular in Europe and go on to have a comeback as a nostalgia act in the 1970s, along with many of his contemporaries. Following Haley's death, no fewer than seven different groups have existed under the Comets name, all claiming (with varying degrees of authority) to be the continuation of Haley's group. As of the end of 2014, four such groups were still performing in the United States and internationally.
Early history
In around the mid-1940s, Bill Haley performed with the Down Homers and formed a group called the Four Aces of Western Swing. The group that later became the Comets initially formed as "Bill Haley and the Saddlemen" –1952, and performed mostly country and western songs, though occasionally with a bluesy feel. The group was also the first to record a cover version (in July 1951) of "Rocket 88", originally a jump blues song by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were actually Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. He did so for the Philadelphia-based Holiday Records label, in what is now recognized as a rockabilly style. It sold well and was followed in 1952 by a cover of a 1940s rhythm and blues song called "Rock the Joint" for Holiday's sister company, Essex Records.
During those years however, Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America. Many Saddlemen recordings were not released until the 1970s and 1980s, and highlights included romantic ballads such as "Rose of My Heart" and western swing tunes such as "Yodel Your Blues Away". The original members of this group were Haley, pianist and accordion player Johnny Grande and steel guitarist Billy Williamson. Al Thompson was the group's first bass player, followed by Al Rex and Marshall Lytle. During the group's early years, it recorded under several other names, including Johnny Clifton and His String Band and Reno Browne and Her Buckaroos (although Browne, a female matinee idol of the time, did not actually appear on the record).
"Rocket 88", "Rock the Joint", and their immediate follow-ups were released under the increasingly incongruous Saddlemen name. It soon became apparent that a new name for the group was needed to fit the new musical style. A friend of Haley's, making note of the common mispronunciation of the name Halley's Comet to rhyme with Bailey, suggested that Haley call his band the Comets. This event is cited in the Haley biographies Sound and Glory by John Haley and John von Hoelle; Bill Haley by John Swenson; and in Still Rockin' Around the Clock, a memoir by Comets bass player Marshall Lytle.
The new name for the group was adopted in the fall of 1952, before the 1953 release of "Crazy Man, Crazy" which had some elements of rock and roll and rockabilly music. Members of the group at that time were Haley, Johnny Grande, Billy Williamson and Marshall Lytle. Grande usually played piano on records but switched to accordion for live shows as it was more portable than a piano and easier to deal with during musical numbers that involved a lot of dancing around. Soon after renaming the band Haley hired his first drummer, Earl Famous. Displeased with the lineup, Haley sought out Dick Boccelli (also known as Dick Richards), who turned down the job but recommended a young drummer Charlie Higler. Soon after, Haley asked Richards again, who then accepted the role. During this time (and as late as the fall of 1955), Haley did not have a permanent lead guitar player, choosing to use session musicians on records and either playing lead guitar himself or having Williamson play steel solos.
Even before the release of more successful records, the group had achieved greatness in some respects: "No one had blended country and R&B on a single before the Comets' "Rock the Joint". No one had scored an American Top 20 hit with anything that could really qualify as rock'n'roll before their single "Crazy Man Crazy" in 1953".
National success and "Rock Around the Clock"
In 1953, Haley scored his first national success with his original song, "Crazy Man, Crazy", a phrase Haley said he heard from his teenage audience, again released on Essex. Haley later claimed the recording sold a million copies, but this is considered an exaggeration. Some sources indicate that the recording—a blend of R&B, western and pop music—is a contender for the title of "first rock'n'roll record" while others state that it was merely "the first rock and roll song to be a hit on the pop charts". It was also said to be the first rock'n'roll recording to be played on national television in the United States (in an episode of Omnibus in 1953).
On their last release from Essex, new band member Joey Ambrose is heard on the B-side, "Straight Jacket".
In the spring of 1954, Haley and His Comets left Essex for New York-based Decca Records, where they were placed under the auspices of veteran producer Milt Gabler, who would produce all of the band's recordings for the label and who had been involved in creating many proto-rock and roll recordings by the likes of the Andrews Sisters and Louis Jordan dating back to the 1940s. One of Jordan's records, Saturday Night Fish Fry (1949), is considered to be a contender for the title of "first rock'n' roll record. Gabler later commented that "all the tricks I used with Louis Jordan, I used with Bill Haley".
The group's first session, on April 12, 1954, yielded "Rock Around the Clock", which would become Haley's biggest hit and one of the most important records in rock and roll history. Sales of "Rock Around the Clock" started slowly, since it was the B-side of the single, but it performed well enough, that a second Decca session was commissioned.
"Shake, Rattle and Roll" followed, a somewhat bowdlerized cover version of the Big Joe Turner recording released earlier in 1954. The single was one of Decca's best-selling records of 1954Billboard, January 15, 1955, p. 38. and the seventh-best-selling record in November 1954.Billboard, November 13, 1954, p. 64.
In 1954, Anita Gordon starred in Round Up of Rhythm, a film short in which she, and Disc Jockey Bill Delzell, played ' Straight Jacket ' and 'Shake Rattle and Roll', which the group are seen playing.
In March 1955, the group had four songs in Cash Box magazine's top 50 songs: "Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)"; "Birth of the Boogie"; "Mambo Rock"; and "Shake, Rattle and Roll".
Haley's "Shake, Rattle and Roll" never achieved the same level of historical importance as "Rock Around the Clock" but it predated it as the first international rock and roll hit. It did not attain the Number 1 position on the American charts, but it became Haley's first gold record. Elvis Presley recorded the song in 1956, combining Haley's arrangement with Turner's original lyrics, but his version was not a substantial hit. Late in 1954, Haley recorded another hit, "Dim, Dim The Lights", which was one of the first R&B songs recorded by a white group to cross over to the R&B charts. Johnnie Ray had reached Number 1 with "Cry" in 1952.
The belated success of "Rock Around the Clock" is attributed to its use in the soundtrack of the film Blackboard Jungle, which was released on March 19, 1955. The song was re-released to coincide with the film and shifted to the single's A-side. Haley's recording became an anthem for rebellious 1950s youth and reached Number 1 on the pop charts, remaining there for eight weeks, and went to Number 3 on the R&B chart. According to The Guardian, the group was "the first rock'n'roll band" and the song was particularly "important because it was the first rock'n'roll record heard by millions of people worldwide".
Ambrose's acrobatic saxophone playing, along with Lytle on the double bass – literally on it, riding it like a pony, and holding it over his head – were highlights of the band's live performances during this time. Their music and their act were part of a tradition in jazz and rhythm and blues, but it all came like a thunderclap to most of their audience. In late 1954, Haley and His Comets appeared in a short subject entitled Round Up of Rhythm, performing three songs. This was the earliest known theatrical rock and roll film release.
In 1955, Lytle, Richards and Ambrose quit the Comets in a salary dispute and formed their own group, the Jodimars. Haley hired several new musicians to take their place: Rudy Pompilli on sax, Al Rex (a former member of the Saddlemen) on double bass, and Ralph Jones on drums. In addition, lead guitarist Franny Beecher, who had been a session musician for Haley since Danny Cedrone's death in the spring of 1954, became a full-time Comet and Haley's first performing lead guitarist (Cedrone had played the guitar solo on the original recording of "Rock Around the Clock" and died shortly after the recording session for "Shake, Rattle and Roll" in the summer of 1954). This version of the band became more popular than the earlier manifestation and appeared in several motion pictures over the next few years.
Other hits recorded by the band included "See You Later, Alligator" in which Haley's frantic delivery contrasted with the Louisiana languor of the original by Bobby Charles, "Don't Knock the Rock", "Rock-a-Beatin' Boogie", "Rudy's Rock" (the first instrumental hit of the rock and roll era), and "Skinny Minnie".
Bill Haley and the Comets performed "Rock Around the Clock" in an a cappella and a lip-synched version on the NBC television program Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle on May 31, 1955. Berle predicted that the song would go to Number 1, calling the band "A group of entertainers who are going right to the top." Berle also sang and danced to the song, which was performed by the entire cast of the show. This was one of the earliest nationally televised performances by a rock and roll band and provided the new musical genre a much wider audience.
Bill Haley and the Comets were the first rock and roll performers to appear on the CBS television musical variety program The Ed Sullivan Show, or Toast of the Town on Sunday, August 7, 1955, in a broadcast from the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Connecticut. They performed a live version of "Rock Around the Clock" featuring Franny Beecher on lead guitar and Dick Richards on drums. The group made a second and final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday, April 28, 1957, performing "Rudy's Rock" and "Forty Cups of Coffee".