They were the musical pioneers that created a genre. They developed a revolutionary new music form that set the world on its ear. It was the fusion of rhythm & blues, and country and western. The music is Rock & Roll and the band was Bill Haley & The Comets.
Haley and The Comets broke with tradition and added R&B rhythms and instrumentation, including slap-bass, drums, and saxophone – to country & western music for the first time – it marked a breakthrough in contemporary music.
The band is best known for its many hits between 1954 through 1958, but in 1955, a Bill Haley & The Comets song was featured in the movie “Blackboard Jungle”. The song was “Rock Around The Clock” and soon it became the national anthem for a whole generation. This song was the first to go to #1 on the Billboard charts and created a mania surrounding Bill Haley & The Comets everywhere they went. However, some of the band’s most important contributions to music took place in the preceding years – when as arrangers and performers they were at the forefront of the development of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Amidst a time of great musical exploration, the Rock n’ Roll music created by Bill Haley & His Comets pre-date the success of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and The Beatles.
Sam Phillips – owner/producer of the legendary Sun Records label – certainly fused these two music styles when he first recorded Elvis Presley in Memphis on July 6, 1954. Phillips was seeking to create a hybrid of Presley’s appeal to white country-music-leaning fans crossed with an appeal to kids who reveled in listening to black rhythm & blues. Presley’s cover recording of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right Mama” clearly fused those musical styles. However, the first recorded fusions of white hillbilly music and black rhythm & blues pre-date the Presley recording session BY SOME THREE YEARS. The fusion of country music and rhythm & blues was a key component in the evolution of Rock ‘n’ Roll – there is a huge case to be made for the pioneering work of The Comets.
The band was on their way, but the term “Rock ‘n’ Roll” had not yet been applied to their new music. For lack of better descriptions, it was sometimes referred to as “cowboy-jive” “country-blues” or “rockabilly” – and the music was described as being a hybrid of Western swing, Dixieland, and Blues.
Throughout 1951 and 1952 the highlight of the band’s live performances was a song with a heavy rhythmic arrangement called “Rock The Joint.” The band finally recorded the song in the spring of 1952. The originality and intensity of their arrangement were quite radical and Billboard Magazine noted it as a “jumpy opus… an odd mixture of country-western and rhythm and blues…” (Billboard – April 26th, 1952.) The recording became a hit in the summer of 1952 – eventually selling over 80,000 units.
Inspired by the new sound he was creating with his colleagues, Haley then wrote a classic prototype rock ‘n’ roll song called “Rock-A-Beatin’ Boogie” that became a staple of their live set. Though Haley and The Comets did not record their own version of the song till 1955 – Haley arranged for the song to be recorded by two bands with whom he was friendly. In summer 1952 it was covered by the Esquire Boys (a band that featured Haley session guitarist Danny Cedrone) and in 1953 by a noted black R&B group named The Treniers. These two releases added to the brewing rock ‘n’ roll movement.
In early 1953 Haley and The Comets recorded two successive singles featuring drums for the very first time. “Real Rock Drive” coupled with “Stop Beatin’ Around The Mulberry Bush” was the first release to carry the Comets name. This single was followed by “Crazy Man Crazy” coupled with “Whatcha Gonna Do.” The break-out hit was “Crazy Man Crazy” which was written by Bill Haley and his bass player Marshall Lytle (at the time uncredited on the disc.) It became the first rock ‘n’ roll song ever to make the Billboard charts – reaching #15 and eventually selling over 750,000 units.
The studio experiments with drums were considered a success and Dick Richards joined the band in 1953 as their first, full-time stage drummer. There was now just one more piece of the jigsaw puzzle needed to transform The Comets into the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll band.
In the 1953 recording sessions for “Farewell So Long Goodbye” and “Live It Up” – a follow-up single to “Crazy Man Crazy” – the band experimented with a session horn player for the first time – adding a baritone saxophone to the arrangements. The sound was interesting – but it was not quite what they were looking for.
The last piece of the puzzle dropped into place when 19-year-old Joey Ambrose was recruited to the band. Ambrose played the tenor saxophone. And the difference was crucial. Ambrose was a student of rhythm & blues and jazz. When Ambrose added his R&B-style sax to Richard’s drumming – and Lytle’s back-slap bass-playing – an instrumental texture was created that had never been heard before. The new band recorded a tune called “Straight Jacket.” It was November 1953 – still 8 months before Sam Phillips first recorded Elvis Presley.
The arrival of Ambrose and his bonding with Lytle yielded another element in the Comets that immediately became a staple of the band’s stage shows – and a fixture in the emerging vocabulary of rock ‘n’ roll stagecraft. Lytle and Ambrose developed a series of original visual stage antics involving their instruments that enhanced the theatricality of the Comets’ performance.
Lytle treated his double bass like a giant prop. Though it was much larger and heavier than an electric guitar – and thus much harder to manipulate – Lytle twirled the double bass over his head, rode it like a pony, played it while lying on top of it – all without missing a beat. These were many of the tricks with which Jimi Hendrix would spellbind audiences in the late 1960’s – using a much lighter, smaller electric guitar. But they were first created on the double bass in 1954. Lytle also developed a good-natured interplay with the saxophonist Ambrose – pre-dating the guitarist-saxophonist stage antics of Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons by some 20 years.
When Lytle and Ambrose eventually left the Comets – their playful stagecraft had become such an integral part of the Comets’ stage show that Haley instructed their various replacements over the years to mimic their stage antics move-for-move.
Throughout the summer of 1953, the highlight of the band’s live performances had been a new song written especially for the band. It was creating an even greater audience reaction than its predecessor as a crowd-pleaser – “Rock The Joint.” The new song was called “Rock Around The Clock.” Music industry politics prevented the band from recording the new song till they were free of their existing record contract.
One of the many myths surrounding the origins of rock ‘n’ roll is that Haley & The Comets had been inspired by a fabled “original” version of “Rock Around The Clock.” performed by a black R&B act with the intriguing name Sonny Dae & the Knights – that they then copied. The irrefutable facts reveal a quite different story. In the interim months before Haley was free to record the song – one of the composers and Bill Haley’s own manager arranged for a genteel version to be recorded for a regional record label by a local Philadelphia novelty act – Sonny Dae & the Knights – who billed themselves as “instrumental, vocal and fun makers.” The singer was actually one Pascal Vennitti and he and his troupe were Italian-American and very WHITE!
The composer considered this simply to be a fun, stopgap version until Haley and The Comets were free to record the song that had been written for the band. However, the fact that a minor recording had been made a month prior to the Comets’ version subsequently led some historians to mistakenly refer to the Haley/Comet’s recording as a “cover” version. It was even erroneously assumed that “Sonny Dae & The Knights” must have been a seminal black R&B act that had inspired the Haley & The Comets version! Actually listening to the Sonny Dae version – which has absolutely none of the distinctive rock ‘n’ roll texture of the classic – makes it explicitly clear that all the creativity and invention came from the arrangement work undertaken on the song during the preceding year by Haley and The Comets. (The guitar solo on the Sonny Dae version actually includes a dash of the nursery rhyme “Rockabye Baby On The Tree Top”!)
On April 12th, 1954 Bill Haley and The Comets finally recorded the song that had been composed specifically for them…”Rock Around The Clock”. The song was recorded in just 20 minutes – the last 20 minutes remaining of a 3-hour session in New York City. Little did they know that they were recording the song that would change musical history forever.
“Rock Around The Clock” was initially relegated to the ‘B’ side of the group’s next single “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town.”) The record was only a minor success in the USA on its first release in May 1954. It was only when the song was heard on the soundtrack of the MGM film “Blackboard Jungle” in March 1955 that the song really took off with teenagers. The record was reissued in April 1955 – with “Rock Around The Clock” as the ‘A’ side – and by July 1955 it had become the first rock ‘n’ roll record to reach #1 on the Billboard charts – a position it sustained for 8 consecutive weeks. It eventually sold over 200 million units worldwide and is still the highest-selling commercial pop single of all time.
It is a fascinating sidebar to note that “Rock Around The Clock” was a Top 20 hit in the UK six long months before it even charted in the US – reaching #17 in January 1955. John Lennon cited it as his first recollection of rock ‘n’ roll and his first record purchase. It is thus highly probable that many British teenagers heard the song long before their American counterparts!
On June 7th, 1954 (still one month before the first Sam Phillips-Elvis Presley session) Bill Haley and The Comets made another seminal recording – a distinctly punchy rock ‘n’ roll version of Big Joe Turner’s R&B song “Shake, Rattle And Roll.” The differences in the arrangement and production were considerable and the record hit the Top Ten and became Haley and The Comets’ first million-seller. In just eight weeks it sold over two and a half million copies.
It is important to note that all these ground-breaking recording sessions took place in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954 – a significant time before the first recordings by Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and many of the other worthy pioneers who were to follow in the footsteps of Bill Haley & The Comets.
On September 21st, 1954, Bill Haley and The Comets recorded “Dim Dim The Lights” their follow-up to “Shake, Rattle And Roll” – and it was another turning point for the band. They were joined for the first time by the musician who would become the band’s first official guitarist – one of the architects of rock ‘n’ roll guitar – Franny Beecher. Beecher drew on a background that encompassed country & western music and several years playing with Benny Goodman and Buddy Greco. Fusing his musical influences with the textures created by the Comets led to Beecher evolving a distinctive new style of guitar playing that became an inspiration for countless rock ‘n’ roll guitarists who followed him. Beecher would play lead guitar for The Comets for 8 years.
For the crucial 12 months that followed – this was the lineup of The Comets that cemented the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll movement. With stage shows, recordings, radio programs, and live appearances on national TV shows such as The Milton Berle Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. On May 6th, 1955 they became the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll act to give a concert at Carnegie Hall.
After this period – Bill Haley and the Comets were joined in the charts by myriad new performers who followed in their footsteps and made their own contributions to rock ‘n’ roll. But in 1954 and 1955 the primary architects laying out the blueprints were The Comets.
Further seminal rock ‘n’ roll recording sessions took place in the first half of 1955. On January 5th, 1955, Bill Haley and The Comets recorded “Birth Of The Boogie” (co-written by Johnny Grande) and “Mambo Rock. On May 10th, 1955 they recorded “Razzle Dazzle” and “Two Hound Dogs.”
Three of the core members who had been instrumental in developing the Comets sound – Ambrose, Richards, and Lytle – left the Comets and created a new band The Jodimars. (Their band name was formed from the first few letters of their first names – JO-ey, DI-ck, MARS-hall.) The group would develop a cult following in the rockabilly world. One of their compositions “Clarabella” (named for Marshall Lytle’s sister) became a favorite of Paul McCartney who introduced it into the Beatles stage repertoire – where it became a live staple from 1960-1963. The Beatles eventually recorded it for BBC Radio – and then selected it for inclusion on their 1994 album “The Beatles Live At The BBC.” Another Jodimars recording “Well Now Dig This” inspired the name of the seminal British rock ‘n’ roll magazine “Now Dig This.”
After Marshall Lytle, Dick Richards, and Joey Ambrose left The Comets – the other three key members – Johnny Grande, Franny Beecher, and Billy Williamson decided to stay on and left the band a few years later. As of 1963, with the departure of Johnny, Franny, and Billy, The Comets were no more. Bill had a revolving cast of the musician’s in the years to follow but NONE are the “originals.”
Rock ‘N’ Roll Chronology
- When Bill Haley and the future Comets recorded “Rock The Joint” in spring 1952…
- Fats Domino – was a successful 24-year-old R&B singer. But he wouldn’t make a rock ‘n’ roll record till 1955 – “Ain’t That A Shame”
- Bo Diddley – was a 23-year-old. His first recording wouldn’t be till 1955 – “Bo Diddley”
- Chuck Berry – was a 21-year-old hairdresser in St. Louis. His first recording wouldn’t be till May 1955 – “Maybelline”
- Little Richard – was a 20-year-old in Macon, Georgia. His first recording wouldn’t be till 1955 – “Tutti-Frutti”
- Carl Perkins – was a 20-year-old in Jackson, Tennessee. His first recording wouldn’t be till 1955 – “Movie Magg.” “Blue Suede Shoes” became his first hit in 1956.
- Elvis Presley – was a 17-year-old truck driver in Memphis, Tennessee. His first recording wouldn’t be till July 1954 – “That’s All Right Mama.” His first hit was not till March 1956 – “Heartbreak Hotel.”
- Gene Vincent – was a 17-year-old in the US Navy. His first recording wouldn’t be till April 1956 – “Be-Bop-A-Lula”
- Jerry Lee Lewis – was a 16-year-old bible student in Waxahachie, Texas. His first recording wouldn’t be till November 1956 – “End of the Road.” His first hit was not till July 1957 – “Whole Lotta Shakin'”
- Buddy Holly – was a 15-year-old in Junior High in Lubbock, Texas. His first recording wouldn’t be till May 1957 – “That’ll Be The Day”
- Eddie Cochran – was a 13-year-old in Junior High in Bell Gardens, California. His first recording wouldn’t be till 1957 “Sittin’ in the Balcony”