Bill haley and the comets biography examples
Home / Biography Templates & Examples / Bill haley and the comets biography examples
Bill and his family then moved to Pennsylvania. During the March tour, Haley recorded several tracks in London for his next album, Everyone Can Rock & Roll, issued later in 1979, was the last release of new recordings by Haley before his death.
In November 1979, Haley and the Comets performed for Queen Elizabeth II, a moment Haley considered the proudest of his career.
They then went and signed with Capital Records and recorded as the Jodimars. Glenn Ford would play the lead role of Richard Dadier, a new teacher at North Trades School, in Blackboard Jungle. Haley replaced them but resented their leaving for many years.
Lytle was replaced by Al Rex Haley's original basist from the Saddlemen, D'Ambrosio by Rudy Pompilli and Richards by Ralph Jones.
"We took parts of four different types of music: dixieland, country and western, rhythm and blues, and our old jazz standards"
Bill Haley, BBC interview, September 14, 1956
In 1957, Haley began touring touring Britain as his popularity began fading at home.
Formal recognition of his impact on music history arrived posthumously in 1987 when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and again in 2018 when “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” was inducted into the National Recording Registry, an archive maintained by the Library of Congress to preserve culturally significant recordings.
The Estate of Bill Haley is represented exclusively by Artist Legacy Group / ALG Brands.
Please contact us for information on how to license music and all other inquiries.
© 2025 The Estate of Bill Haley.
In 1951, however, Haley recorded a cover of Jackie Brenston’s R & B hit “Rocket 88”. But that's exactly what he became, when his song "Rock Around the Clock" was featured over the opening scene of the juvenile-delinquent drama "Blackboard Jungle," and became a worldwide hit, by some estimates making Haley the first Rock and Roll star.
A working guitarist by the age of 15, Haley was rooted in Country and Western Swing (the Saddlemen was his group's initial name), but added elements of Rhythm and Blues — as he told Rolling Stone years later: "We put Country and Western together with Rhythm and Blues, and that was Rock." The group scored chart success with "Crazy Man, Crazy" in 1953; the next year their recording of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll" proved a bigger hit, reaching No.
The British soon found out what American teenagers already knew. Gabler would convince Haley to change his sound. They finished the year with the two-sided hit “Burn That Candle/Rock-A-Beatin’ Boogie”. Haley lost three key members of the Comets over money issues at this time. They left to form their own group called the Jodimars.
Despite having to add three new members, the hits continued in 1956 with “See You Later, Alligator”, “R-O-C-K”, “The Saints Rock ‘N’ Roll”, “Hot Dog Buddy Buddy”, “Rip It Up”, “Don’t Knock The Rock”, and the instrumental, “Rudy’s Rock”.
Only then, after he was thirty years old, did he marry.
Haley's father played the banjo and mandolin. "Rock Around the Clock" was a modest hit, until the song was used as the title track of "The Blackboard Jungle," a movie about juvenile delinquents, some 12 months later.
|
His next record a cover of Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll' was a top ten hit. It was the first rock & roll record to sell a million copies
Danny Cedrone
On July 17, 1954, three months after the Shake, Rattle and Roll session the Comets lost their studio guitarist Danny Cedrone, who laid on Rock Around the Clock the first recognizable guitar solo of rock and roll.
In June of 1940, just before his fifteenth birthday, Haley left school after finishing the eighth grade and went to work bottling water at Bethel Springs. Bill and the band followed up “Rock Around The Clock” with the hit “Razzle-Dazzle” during the summer of 1955. But by the middle of 1960, Bill had faded completely from the Billboard charts.
Haley and His Comets were still considered a major attraction overseas during the time their star was fading in the U.S.
In Germany, a riot occurred among teenage fans at a sold-out 1958 Berlin concert. It was also the last time he performed in Europe and the last time most fans saw him perform "Rock Around the Clock
In 1980, Bill Haley and His Comets toured South Africa, but Haley's health was failing, and it was reported that he had a brain tumor.
In addition, the Comets’ musical sound had also not changed with the years and had begun to sound a little old-fashioned to teen record buyers. 1957 singles, “Forty Cups Of Coffee” and “(You Hit The Wrong Note) Billy Goat”, did not make the Top 40.