Uploaded on Nov 24, 2009
Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Bill HaleyWilliam John Clifton "Bill" Haley (
/ˈheɪliː/; July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets (inspired by Halley's Comet) and million selling hits such as, "Rock Around the Clock", "See You Later Alligator", and "Shake Rattle and Roll". He has sold over 100 million records worldwide.[1]| Bill Haley | |
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 Bill Haley on television in 1955. |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | William John Clifton Haley |
| Also known as | Jack Haley, Johnny Clifton |
| Born | July 6, 1925 Highland Park, Michigan, United States |
| Died | February 9, 1981 (aged 55) Harlingen, Texas, United States |
| Genres | Rock and roll, country, rockabilly |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, musician, bandleader |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, slap bass |
| Years active | 1946–1980 |
| Labels | Cowboy, Atlantic, Keystone, Center, Holiday, Essex, Decca, Warner Bros. Records, Orfeón, Dimsa, Newtown, Guest Star, Logo, APT, Gone, United Artists, Roulette, Sonet, Buddah, Antic, Arzee |
| Associated acts | Bill Haley & His Comets, The Down Homers |
Biography
Early life and career
Bill Haley was born in Highland Park, Michigan as William John Clifton Haley. Because of the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area, his father moved the family to Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, near Chester, when Bill was seven years old. Haley's father William Albert Haley was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin, his mother Maude Green originally from Ulverston in England was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training.[2]Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one.[3]
The anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album "Rock Around The Clock" describe Haley's early life and career thus: "Bill got his first professional job at the age of 13, playing and entertaining at an auction for the fee of $1 a night. Very soon after this he formed a group of equally enthusiastic youngsters and managed to get quite a few local bookings for his band."
The sleeve notes continue: "When Bill Haley was fifteen [c.1940] he left home with his guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame and fortune. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were hard and poverty stricken, but crammed full of useful experience.
Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at an open-air park show, sang and yodelled with any band that would have him and worked with a traveling medicine show.
Eventually he got a job with a popular group known as the "Down Homers" while they were in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decide at some time or another, to be his own boss again - and he has been that ever since.’
[Note: these notes fail to account for his early band, known as the Four Aces of Western Swing. During the 1940s Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America as "Silver Yodeling Bill Haley".][4]
The sleeve notes conclude: "For six years Bill Haley was a musical director of Radio Station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania, and led his own band all through this period. It was then known as Bill Haley's Saddlemen, indicating their definite leaning toward the tough Western style. They continued playing in clubs as well as over the radio around Philadelphia, and in 1951 made their first recordings."
Bill Haley & His Comets
Main article: Bill Haley & His Comets
Soon after, the band's name was revised to Bill Haley & His Comets.
In 1953, a song called "Rock Around the Clock" was written for Haley.[5] He was unable to record it until April 12, 1954. Initially, it was relatively unsuccessful, staying at the charts for only one week, but 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 'n' roll song to enter British singles charts in December 1954 and became a Gold Record.
He retained elements of the original, but threw some country music aspects in to the song (specifically, Western Swing) and cleaned up the lyrics. Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as "Rock and Roll" to a wider, mostly white audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre.
When "Rock Around the Clock" appeared behind the opening credits of the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle starring Glenn Ford, it soared to the top of the American Billboard chart for eight weeks. The single is commonly used as a convenient line of demarcation between the "rock era" and the music industry that preceded it; Billboard separated its statistical tabulations into 1890-1954 and 1955–present.
After the record rose to number one, Haley was quickly given the title "Father of Rock and Roll," by the media, and by teenagers that had come to embrace the new style of music.
"Rock Around the Clock" was the first record ever to sell over one million copies in both Britain and Germany and, in 1957, Haley became the first major American rock singer to tour Europe. Haley continued to score hits throughout the 1950s such as "See You Later, Alligator" and he starred in the first rock and roll musical movies Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, both in 1956.
Haley was soon eclipsed in the United States by the younger, sexier Elvis, but continued to enjoy great popularity in Latin America, Europe, and Australia through the 1960s.
Source: Wikipedia
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