Bill Haley

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Bill Haley, 1974

William John Clifton "Bill" Haley, Jr. (born July 6, 1925 in Highland Park , Michigan , † February 9, 1981 in Harlingen , Texas ) was an American singer and musician . He is considered a pioneer of rock 'n' roll with the Northern Band Style he created . His most famous song is Rock Around the Clock .

Life

Childhood and adolescence

Bill Haley grew up in a very musical family; the father played the banjo , the mother the piano . His father, who came from Kentucky , showed Haley the many facets of country music such as hillbilly , blue yodeling , western music and western swing at an early age . Early on, Bill dreamed of roaming the country as a singing cowboy. At the age of four he lost his left eyesight during an operation, which restricted him from performing later on.

Early career as a country musician

Tennessee Border, 1949

The young Haley pursued his musical goals tenaciously and ambitiously; at the age of 15 he left his parents and moved around as a guitarist with cousin Lee and His Band from 1944 and also appeared as a solo artist on Jack Howard's Cowboy Show . With the formation The Down Homers, Haley was heard for the first time on a record ( Vogue Picture Discs ) in 1946 .

He settled in Chester , Pennsylvania a year later , and performed with Brother Wayne on the WSNJ country western radio show in Bridgeton, New Jersey , and with The Range Drifters. As "Yodeling Bill Haley" he was voted one of the best yodellers in America in Indiana . In 1947 he founded the formation The Four Aces of Western Swing with James Allsman. During the day, Haley worked as a disc jockey and radio announcer at the WPWA radio station in Chester, and in the evenings he was out with his band in parks and saloons in Philadelphia. Haley also acted as WPWA's musical director and led the station's house band.

In 1948, Haley and his band played a few records for Cowboy Records. His group consisted of guitar , pedal steel guitar , fiddle , mandolin , accordion and double bass - all acoustic. They played Western Swing, which was already heavily permeated by pop elements and was far removed from the mountain music of the south . Nevertheless, the appearance of Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing was shaped by the cowboy image of the 1930s; there were Stetson worn, fancy cowboy costumes and cowboy boots.

Despite jazz and pop influences, Haley's first demo recordings consisted of covers of songs by Hank Williams , George Morgan and Red Foley . In December 1949, Haley renamed his band The Saddlemen. His country show on WPWA was followed by a rhythm and blues show that inspired Haley. He was particularly fond of Ruth Brown and Big Joe Turner , and Haley began to work with rhythm and blues. The foundations for his later sound were laid.

Rock and roll

Beginnings

Bill Haley & his Comets, 1954

With Johnny Grande and Billy Williamson as well as Al Rex they experimented as Bill Haley & His Saddlemen on a new style of music, a mixture of Dixieland , R&B and country music. He was ridiculed at first, but received positive feedback for his cover version of Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88 , which he released on Dave Miller's Holiday Records label in the spring of 1951.

Haley now also played R&B oriented material on appearances. While organizers were often angry, Haley and the saddlemen were mostly able to convince the audience. The B-side to Rocket 88 was conventional country number Tearstains on My Heart . The process of coupling an R&B piece with a country song was later used by Sam Phillips on his Sun Records label . While Phillips and Dave Miller, Haley's patrons at the time, were hoping to succeed in the African American and country markets, it also highlighted the problem one had to contend with: nobody knew how to get this new musical mixture at the time which was only to establish itself worldwide as " Rock 'n' Roll " four years later , was able to successfully market it.

In November 1951, Haley played together with singer Loretta Glendenning as Bill and Loretta with the Saddlemen on other R&B pieces, including Pretty Baby by the Griffin Brothers and I'm Crying by Memphis Slim . Still performing as Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, Haley refined his sound in the spring of 1952; he was moving further and further away from country. Essex Records, the successor to Holiday, released Haley's cover of Rock the Joint , a 1949 hit by Jimmy Preston with the lyrics by Harry Crafton . Rock the Joint already had Haley's unmistakable intrusive vocalization with the well-known intro “We're gonna tear down the mailbox, rip up the floor, smash out the windows, and knock down the door! We're gonna rock this joint tonight! ". In addition - with the exception of the saxophone - there was the typical sound of his later Northern band style with the first rock guitar solo by Danny Cedrone , which Haley had again recorded two years later by Cedrone for the world hit Rock Around the Clock . For some music experts, Rock the Joint is a classic example of rockabilly - sometimes even the first rockabilly song on record. Music historian Craig Morrison described Haley's version in the book Go Cat Go! but as follows: " [..] But to my ears 'Rock the Joint' is an energetic rendition of an R&B songs by a small western swing band. Certainly 'Rock the Joint' does point toward rockabilly. “The single sold well at 75,000 copies and encouraged Haley to keep making faster R&B covers.

In the fall of 1952, Haley wrote the Rock A-Beatin 'Boogie for Cedrone and his Esquire Boys with the famous line of text "Rock, rock, rock everybody, roll, roll, roll everybody!", Which was a short time later by Alan Freed as the signet of his Moon Dog Show was taken over. But neither Cedrone nor the African American group The Treniers, who also recorded the song, could make a hit out of it. Haley himself succeeded in doing this three years later, in September 1955, with a cover version of his own song. In December 1952, Haley and his band said goodbye to the cowboy image, and Haley changed the name of his group to Bill Haley & His Comets. He refined his band style with the Essex label with the rock numbers Real Rock Drive and, for the first time with a saxophone line-up, Live It Up , and was then able to place himself in the Nation's Top Twenty charts in the summer of 1953 with his song Crazy Man, Crazy . With more than 750,000 records sold, Crazy Man, Crazy was the first national rock 'n' roll hit in the USA.

In addition to Bill Haley and the Comets, Art Ryerson as lead guitarist and Billy Gussak as drummer were involved in this track, recorded at Coastal Studios in New York. Since this type of music could not be assigned to the previous traditional styles, but the term "rock 'n' roll" was not yet used in the commercial music business, in 1953 the US still referred to the "Haley sound" or "Bill Haley's music" ". In the same year, the Comets were listed by Cash Box Magazine as "One of the Best Small Instrumental Groups of 1953".

breakthrough

Shake, Rattle and Roll , 1954

The good and harmonious connection between the duo Jimmy Myers & Bill Haley and Dave Miller, boss of the Essex label, had been good until 1953, after a dispute about the recording of a new song by Max C. Freedman, at the time entitled We're Gonna ' Rock Around the Clock Tonight , noticeably cooled. This finally moved Jimmy Myers to look for an arrangement with another record company for his protégé after Haley's contract with Essex had expired in early 1954. Dave Miller was unable to redeem his contract extension option due to a production trip in Europe at the time in question, and so the chances for Myers of bringing Haley to one of the leading US labels after his first big bestseller Crazy Man Crazy were not bad.

While Steve Sholes from RCA Victor and Mitch Miller from Columbia Records initially responded wait-and-see to Myers' inquiries, Milt Gabler from Decca Records was already well informed about Haley's musical successes. He knew the potential of this new music and did not hesitate when Myers called from Philadelphia. His reaction was: "Of course, I remember Crazy Man Crazy, well, he's available, come up and I'll talk to you about it". In April 1954, Myers, Gabler, and Haley agreed in New York to sign a record deal for four records a year with a standard commission of 5 percent of record sales and $ 5,000 in advance. In addition, Decca took over the promotion with 2000 DJ copies for the leading radio stations in the USA as well as the press work in Billboard and Cash Box .

After moving from Essex Records to Decca, Haley and his new producer Milt Gabler achieved three million sellers in quick succession at the Pythian Temple in New York, namely first Shake, Rattle and Roll , written by Jesse Stone under the pseudonym Charles Calhoun , which was published in June 1954 appeared and became Haley's first gold record . This was followed by Rock Around the Clock , which was recorded in April 1954, and in December 1955 the Bobby Charles title See You Later, Alligator .

The song Rock Around the Clock owed its global success to the MGM film The Seed of Violence . First presented as the B-side of Thirteen Women in Billboard magazine in May 1954 as a Foxtrot , the song disappeared from the hit lists after a week in the top 30. The director Richard Brooks heard the play in the house of his main actor Glenn Ford , whose son Peter was a Bill Haley fan, and decided that the song should be played in the opening credits and again as background music at the end of the film The Saat der Kraft . After the success of the title, Decca followed suit and published the title again as the A-side in the summer of 1955. Rock Around the Clock was, not least because of its reuse in the Columbia film of the same name, Rock Around the Clock , the most successful number one hit in the USA, Australia, Great Britain and Germany in 1955 and 1956 (as the only non-German-language title of the year) and many other European countries.

In Germany and England it was the first foreign record to be sold over a million times and to be awarded a gold record. Over the years, the title has made it back into the charts several times around the world. The song is one of the best-selling singles of all time , after Elton John's Candle in the Wind and Bing Crosby's White Christmas . Already at the end of the 1960s there was talk of nearly 20 million records of the DECCA original song sold. According to Marshall Lytle, who played bass with the Comets until September 1955, by the 50th anniversary in 2004 the piece had been sold over 200 million times on various recordings worldwide and thus has a good chance of being the most widespread To be the piece of music of history.

Further success hits in 1954, 1955 and 1956 were Dim, Dim the Lights , with which Haley was the first white rock musician to place himself in the black R&B charts, Happy Baby , Razzle Dazzle , The Saint's Rock 'n' Roll , Burn That Candle , ROCK , Rip It Up , Mambo Rock and Rudy's Rock . From early 1955 to September 1956, Haley dominated the new music scene before being ousted by Elvis Presley after his appearance on the Ed Sullivan TV show in September 1956.

Success abroad

Bill Haley & his Comets, 1966

Bill Haley became even more popular worldwide through his films Out of the Edge and Out of Band and Out of Edge and Volume II , in which, due to his visual impairment, he was usually only shown with dance actions and audience from certain angles. The extraordinary success of Aus Rand und Band in mid-1956, which was often extended in German cinemas, was, unlike the Presley films that soon followed, not so much in the person of Bill Haley, but rather in that of the time - especially by young people - found the new sound of his music perceived as explosive.

In addition, the audience in this film moved the premiere of the American singing group The Platters with their world successes Only You and The Great Pretender . It was the only film in German post-war history that was not infrequently accompanied by youth riots before, during and after many performances, which even led to the performance being canceled or banned in some cities. Nonetheless, these first rock 'n' roll films brought Bill Haley's record label Decca to sales of well over ten million Haley records within a few months, which had previously not been considered possible.

Bill Haley started on New Year's Day 1957 as the first American rock 'n' roll star on a tour to another continent, namely to Australia. During this tour he was the first rock 'n' roll star to play three days in a row in the Melbourne stadium in front of 40,000 enthusiastic fans, the start of the big rock open air concerts, so to speak. Just a month later, in February 1957 on his first tour of England, the Haley sound and the hysteria associated with it among British young people were a political issue. On this tour, Bill Haley & His Comets advanced to become the first megastars of a music genre that was exclusively aimed at the consumer group of young people and has since become the most important facet of the music industry.

Nevertheless, despite his extraordinary success and the first gold records by a foreign artist in England and Germany, Haley was denied recognition by the music establishment. Which at the time assigned to it by certain media "Blackboard Jungle" image, that is, as "rioters" "Wheel Music" only for "Underdogs" and yobs produce had been scattered deliberately. Bill Haley could no longer shed this label even in his prime and was even shadowed by the FBI for a while in the USA from early 1956 .

European tour

In the fall of 1958, on his first tour of the European continent, there was a scandal. Spain’s head of state Franco banned Haley from appearing officially. In Germany, not least because of the tour management's program, the atmosphere was so heated (the rock 'n' roll audience first had to hear classic big band jazz by Kurt Edelhagen and Schlager by Bill Ramsey twice before the concert break ) then there were serious tumults at Haley's appearances in Essen and Hamburg.

The climax were the riots in the Berlin Sportpalast , where Bill Haley & His Comets had to break off their concert because of a battle that started and even had to flee from the stage. The balance of the riots: destroyed audience stands, a hacked concert grand piano, property damage amounting to around 50,000 DM, 50 injured and 18 people in police custody. Peter Kraus and Cornelia Froboess , who were sitting in the front row, also had to flee to watch the show. However, that did not prevent the film producer Artur Brauner in Berlin from offering Bill Haley a film contract and incorporating him into his film Here I Am - Here I Stay , where Haley was able to present his pieces Hot Dog Buddy Buddy and Whoa Mabel and together in a duet Caterina Valente brought in the song Viva la Rock and Roll . The Lord Mayor of Stuttgart Arnulf Klett declared Haley's appearance as a gain for the city: DM 5795 amusement tax against DM 564 repairs and DM 1300 for 370 police hall guards.

In total, Bill Haley had 29 positions in the US hit lists, including 21 in the top 40. In England there were 19 top 100 placements, 15 of them in the top 20. From 1953 to 1957 Bill Haley & the Comets were the most successful rock 'n' roll band in the world.

After rock and roll

In 1958, Bill Haley said goodbye to the US pop / R&B charts with his last big hit, Skinny Minnie . Bill Haley's successful collaboration with DECCA and his producer Milt Gabler ended in September 1959 with his last six recordings in New York, including Skokiaan , Two Shadows and In a Little Spanish Town . In 1958, Haley founded a local label in Philadelphia that he called Clymax Records , on which he released records of local talent. For example, Sally Starr was discovered by him.

A year later, Haley moved to Warner Bros. , but his recordings under this label did not bring him back on the road to success. He used the continued popularity of his songs for lucrative tours in almost every continent. But after his manager James Ferguson left him with a financial disaster at the end of 1959, Haley went to Mexico in 1960, worked there successfully for the Orfeon label and acted there as Bill Haley y sus Cometas with Florida Twist and Spanish Twist so successfully that he was in Mexico soon named the "Spanish King of Twist ".

Haley's comeback

Bill Haley on the right in a blue jacket, in the middle Rudy Pompilli, 1974

In 1962 another successful tour of Europe and Germany followed, including a ten-day guest performance at the Star Club in Hamburg. For his Berlin fans, Haley gave a “reparation concert” in 1964 for the disastrous Berlin concert in Berlin in the Berlin Sportpalast. Together with Little Richard , he performed on the first weekend in June on the Berlin Waldbühne on Saturday in front of 16,000 and on Sunday in front of 14,000 enthusiastic fans. Despite the worldwide dominance of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones , Bill Haley filled stadiums and concert halls with Manfred Mann on this European tour . In England, Manfred Mann, who was just on the charts, was the headliner of the tour, but that changed after the first shows, as Bill Haley probably had the larger fan base.

In 1968 Haley achieved a comeback in Great Britain, which no music expert thought possible, with Rock Around the Clock in the UK Top 20 and in Germany. His records have been reissued by Decca and Sonet, but new recordings by Bill Haley and new recordings of his great successes can also be heard on many other labels such as Logo, Newtown and United Artists. In October 1969 an appearance in New York's Madison Square Garden followed at Richard Nader's rock 'n' roll revival . 1972 brought more revival successes for Haley, such as his appearance in April in the US film Let The Good Times Roll (German title: Total verrockt und rolls ). In August 1972, Haley's farewell followed in front of almost 83,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium in London at the great rock 'n' roll revival , together with Little Richard, Chuck Berry , Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley . In the same year Haley produced a country sound LP entitled Rock Around the Country , also released under Bill Haley and His Comets Travelin 'Band, with songs like Me and Bobby McGee and A Little Piece at a Time .

In 1974, Haley toured Australia and New Zealand for the last time with his long-time partner and close friend, saxophonist Rudy Pompilli. Pompilli's death in February 1976 plunged Haley into deep depression from which he never recovered in the last years of his life. Producer Kenny Denton brought Haley to FAME Studios in Alabama in mid-1979 , and together with rock veterans Steve Murray, Jim Lebak, Gerry Tilley, Pete Spencer, Ray Parson, Geoff Driscol and Pete Wingfield, Haley made studio recordings for his final LP under the Sonet -Label Everyone Can Rock 'n' Roll! The last major highlight in his music career followed in November 1979, his concert in front of Queen Elizabeth II at the Theater Royal, London, followed by a reception and honor.

During his last tour in South Africa in 1980 , Haley confessed to a close friend that he had an inoperable brain tumor . Already marked by his serious illness, he planned another concert tour through Europe for November 1980. But it didn't come to that; on February 9, 1981, Bill Haley died at his home in Harlingen, Texas. The whereabouts of his urn is still unclear ; it was likely given to family or friends. No grave is known. What is certain is that Haley was laid out in the Kreidler Ashcraft Funeral and cremated in the Brownsville crematorium.

Encounters between Haley and Presley

Ticket for the package tour with Haley, Hank Snow and Elvis Presley

In the fall of 1955, Elvis Presley and Bill Haley met for the first time in Oklahoma City . At the time, Bill Haley toured the Midwest with Hank Snow . Haley had been at number 1 on the national charts for eight weeks with his recording Rock Around the Clock from June to August 1955. Colonel Tom Parker , the future manager of Presley, reached through an agreement with Haley's manager Jim Ferguson that the 20-year-old Presley, at that time still relatively unknown as a young star outside the southern states, could join this tour.

Parker, already convinced of Presley's great talent at this point, worked to build him up in the American music business. In the two-week tour that followed, Haley and Presley got closer personally. Haley, who had been in the business for ten years, recommended, among other things, that Presley should develop and present more rhythmic pieces. According to an interview with Ken Kerry, Bill Haley said at the time: "Elvis, you rely too much on ballads, you have such a natural sense of rhythm, so bring it across and on stage too!" After the shows they went on trips together with Haleys new Cadillac .

In October 1955 there was a reunion at an appearance at Brooklyn High School in Cleveland , Ohio, this time on Bill Randle's live show; in addition to Haley and Presley, Pat Boone and The Four Lads were also there. Bill Randle, the leading exponent of the new genre of music after Alan Freed , had the idea to film this show with Haley and Presley for his own campaign. Under the title The Pied Piper of Cleveland: A Day in the Life of the Famaus Disk Jockey , a 15-minute film with Haley and Presley was created, but which was lost after only one broadcast on a local TV station under unexplained circumstances. The photo of Haley and Presley shaking hands, which was later given a place of honor in Haley's office in Chester, has survived.

In September 1956, Presley finally took over the reins of rock 'n' roll after his famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and the release of seven new RCA singles , despite Bill Haley's appearances in the Columbia films Rock Around the Clock and Don ' t Knock the Rock had the highest record sales in young rock history until the spring of 1957. Further encounters with Presley, stationed in Germany as the GI of the US Army, took place during Haley's tour of Germany in 1958 in Frankfurt and Mannheim.

Bill Haley in the German print media

In the German post-war society in the mid-1950s, the print media in particular excelled in defending morality and custom and in particular in defending against music that was “harmful to young people”. Already the German Illustrated Movie stage , illustrated supplement of each film at German box office, avoided in 1956 at the launch of the first rock 'n' roll film except edge and volume throughout the textual discussion of the triumphant Bill Haley and frantically his music to Use of the term "rock 'n' roll". Instead, it read: "... no wonder, because the band played a completely new kind of weird music, namely boogie!"

While in England in February 1957 when Bill Haley arrived in Southampton, the Daily Mirror headlined “Fantabulous!”, Printed Bill Haley's rise and life story and chartered a special train for fans from London to Southampton. 20 months later, Haleys Germany- Tour, the Rheinische Merkur , that Bill Haley, the "comet of instincts", in the diocese of Essen on the day of the papal election "dared a general attack on taste, decency and self-respect". The East Berlin SED newspaper Neues Deutschland accused the "rock 'n' roll gangster Haley" after his Berlin concert of having "caused an orgy of American unculture".

Bill Haley's Original Comets

In 1987, the Comets Johnny Grande and Franny Beecher joined forces in Philadelphia with the founding members of the new band The Jodimars , Joey D'Ambrosio , Dick Richards and Marshall Lytle , which emerged from the Comets in 1955 to form Bill Haley's Original Comets. Since 1990 they have been strengthened by the Englishman Jacko Buddin. The Comets toured the world until 2012, appeared in numerous television shows and released several new CDs in the typical Bill Haley & Comets sound.

The name Comets and the claim to be the only real Comets, however, claim various bands of former members or their successors. One is Bill Haley's Comets, which was headed by former Comets drummer John Lane until his death in 2007. Former bass player Al Rappa claims the same title for his band. Bill Haley's son tours under the name Bill Haley Jr. and the Comets. As Bill Haley's New Comets, there is also a band that manages completely without former members, but is often accompanied by Haley's daughter Gina or other former Comets members at their performances.

Discography

honors and awards

Web links

Commons : Bill Haley  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Craig Morrison: Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and its Makers , p. 34; University of Illinois Press
  2. Craig Morrison: Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and its Makers (1998), p. 35
  3. Scrapbook of the Comets, "Rock It - Concerts" (Munich), page 1
  4. Arnulf Klett . In: Spiegel Online . tape 48 , November 26, 1958 ( spiegel.de [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  5. At the age of 80 still wild for rock'n 'roll , Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , November 10, 2003
  6. ^ A wild drummer at 88 , RP Online , March 21, 2012
  7. 50 Years Rockin The World , Bill Haley's Comets , accessed March 2, 2020
  8. ^ Bill Haley Jr. and the Comets
  9. News area artist website , accessed on March 2, 2020
  10. Bill Haley | Hollywood Walk of Fame. In: www.walkoffame.com. Retrieved August 31, 2016 .