Customer Reviews

Rock Around the Clock

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Rock Around The Clock - the album, should be just as significant in music history as James Brown's Please Please Please album, a not only great sounding album but an album demonstrating the roots of Brown.

I do however have a special interest in both albums. My father co-wrote Dim Dim The Lights featured on the Rock Around The Clock album. My father knew Haley and Alan Freed so what I am about to say not only gives this album its deserved kudos, it also sets the record straight via primary source information about the history of some of the songs on the album.

Haley first recorded Rock Around The Clock in April of 1954. It didn't do that great, coming in at #33 and only staying on Billboard's Popular chart for one week.

Freed had met Haley in 1953. He showed great interest in Haley, even having him on his radio show out in Cleveland Ohio. What interested Freed about Haley, like Elvis interested Sam Phillips, was that he was looking for a white artist to take R&B to the mainstream and thought Haley could be that vehicle. Freed wasn't naive. He knew he had to do it in this racist world using a white music act. However, he was not willing to do it at the expense of legitimacy. Haley would first have to get the stamp of approval not by white music critics or a white music audience. Haley would have to get his stamp of approval by the Black music audience. This is why, other than a featured guest spot,you don't hear Haley songs until Dim Dim The Lights on Freed's radio shows.

Haley than scored a #7 pop hit doing a cover of Joe Turner's "Shake Rattle and Roll." He recorded his version somewhere in July of 54. Even that song was not played on a Freed show, although maybe Freed wanted to play it.

However, after Haley recorded Dim Dim The Lights in the month of November 54, Freed noticed that it was getting a lot of airplay on R&B stations. Freed started playing the song when Dim Dim The Lights became the first R&B song recorded by a white artist to not only get on the R&B charts but land in its Top Ten. Freed was on WINS New York by then playing an authentic R&B program. Dim Dim was also a Top Ten Pop hit on the Variety Charts, which was a more prestigious chart than Billboard or Cash Box back then, making Dim Dim The Lights the first record by a white act to be on two charts - top ten at that.

Everyone started playing and buying the three Haley songs that were lingering out there, which included left over Rock Around The Clock 45's still hanging around record stores from 54 and juke boxes. That's why one might see Rock Around The Clock getting significant juke box play around January of 55, which was clearly off the heels and success of Dim Dim The Lights.

This would explain why the producer of the movie "The Blackboard Jungle" starring Glen Ford heard his little preteen daughter playing Rock Around The Clock in January of 55 on her record player. He liked the response his daughter was giving the record so he decided to use it in the movie's soundtrack.

The success of the movie and its soundttrack told Decca Records to re-release Rock Around The Clock as a single in July of 55. That's why this album gets to us in 56.

While there is no question that Rock Around The Clock became the anthem of the R&B genre under the now agreed term Rock n' Roll with its first Rock n' Roll Icon, Bill Haley, rather than Rhythm and Blues and historically is considered the first international R&B/RR record, Dim Dim The Lights no doubt led the way and as Alan Freed said, "...is the grand daddy song of Rock n Roll."

There is room for little doubt that when Haley put an original thumb print on an R&B song he clearly performed a song in the Rhythm and Blues' spirit. That he didn't do with Shake Rattle and Roll. Maybe because he leaned away from the genre due to a command R&B performance by Joe Turner. But when he recorded Rock Around The Clock it was original and in the true R&B vain. It just had to wait for a stamp of approval. That came after he decided to record Dim Dim The Lights. My father told me that Haley did follow his demo that was given to him.

So when listening to this great album you will see Haley at his finest R&B performance level with most of the songs. Pay close attention to Thirteen Women. It has a Cab Calloway Band feeling to hit.

1. Rock Around the Clock
2. Shake, Rattle & Roll
3. A.B.C. Boogie
4. Thirteen Women
5. Razzle Dazzle
6. Two Hound Dogs
7. Dim, Dim the Lights
8. Happy Baby
9. Birth of the Boogie
10. Mambo Rock
11. Burn that Candle
12. Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie

Bonus Tracks:
13. R-O-C-K
14. The Saints Rock'n'Roll
15. See You Later, Alligator

This 2004 Universal CD reissue gives us all 12-tracks of the original US Mono album on Decca BL 8225 released just a week before the Christmas festivities of 1955. It's remastered to gorgeous sound quality from the 1st generation master tapes by Erick Labson of Universal and its bonus tracks are 3-sides of two singles in and around the release of the LP. It's a bit of an omission leaving out "The Mail Boy (On Main Street, USA)", the B-side to "See You Later, Alligator", which would have given us 16 tracks instead of 15 thereby allowing the listener to sequence no less than 8 of his Decca singles (A&B) as follows:

1. (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock/Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town) (1954, Decca 29124)
2. Shake, Rattle & Roll/ABC Boogie (1954, Decca 29204)
3. Dim, Dim The Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)/Happy Baby (1954, Decca 29317)
4. Mambo Rock/Birth Of The Boogie (1955, Decca 29418)
5. Razzle Dazzle/Two Hound Dogs (1955, Decca 29552)
6. Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie/Burn That Candle (1955, Decca 29713)
7. See You Later, Alligator/The Paper Boy (on Main Street, USA) (1956, Decca 29791)
8. R-O-C-K/The Saints Rock 'N' Roll (1956, Decca 29870)

But as you can see, the fifteen songs that are provided are that rarity - all killer and no filler - every last one of them released on 45 because they were ace.

Back to the album. Right from the off, the joy of the band is audible in every song and you can 'feel' why people went nuts for "rock 'n' roll". You can just imagine the new 'teenagers' of the USA - and everywhere else for that matter - sitting down in their local movie theatre, glued to the opening credits of "Blackboard Jungle", when Bill Haley's irresistible and infectious "Rock Around The Clock" comes out of the speakers and literally blew away the cobwebs of a hurting decade after the Second World War. It must have seemed like a cultural atom bomb - and best of all - scared the living crap out of their parents! A sense of sly fun pervades the whole record.

So why then is Haley seen by some as 'Uncle Bill'? Haley was 30 when the album was released, and yet somehow he seemed older - and some felt he was a pretender. Given his good looks, his voice and his sheer animal magnetism, it`s easy to see why Elvis would be adopted as the true "King of Rock'n'Roll" by the teens just a few months later. Elvis was cool; Haley was your Dad! And although Elvis ripped the entire fabric of the known Universe apart in 1956, this extraordinary album is where it all really started for Rock 'n' Roll and Bill Haley should be loved for that. Haley laid the groundwork and Elvis, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers - they all followed in his footsteps - and all prospered because of him.

You can't help but think that this album and Haley himself are forgotten - and they shouldn't be. A fantastic listen - an important and timely reissue - and surely one of the great debut albums of all time. Start your journey to the dark side here children and swear to your parents, you'll only look at Bill from the waist up!

PS: A few words on the "ROCK 'N' ROLL 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION" Series in general:
It should also be noted that this issue is part of the above named series issued in 2004 by Universal. This secondary series title is displayed vertically on the side inlay beneath the see-through tray, but unfortunately, if you try to search the Amazon database for ANY titles in the series, it doesn't recognize the 'name' at all. For those interested in a visual, I've placed a full list of all seven titles in Listmania called "Rock 'N' Roll 50th Anniversary Edition Series". Other goodies in the series include "Buddy Holly" ('58) by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry's "After School Session" ('58) and "St. Louis To Liverpool" ('64), Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger" ('60), and the "Rock, Rock, Rock!" soundtrack from 1956 featuring Chuck Berry, The Moonglows and The Flamingos. I can't recommend these titles enough - each album remastered to beautiful sound quality, colour artwork lovingly restored and each bolstered up with 3 or 4 relevant single releases from the time (some previously unreleased). Fans of Haley, Holly, The Crickets, Berry, Diddley and Rock'n'Roll in general should quickly acquire all of these exemplary CDs. They make for the best basis of a collection in a minefield of lesser compilations. Enjoy!

Before Elvis checked into the heartbreak hotel, before Chuck Berry caught Maybellene on the top of the hill, before Carl Perkins put on his blue suede shoes, Bill Haley and his Comets were rockin' around the clock. What do you get with this c.d.? Guitar work that would sound right at home with todays modern jump blues, some of the earliest rockabilly ever recorded, birth of the boogie, and the first great album of the rock'n'roll era! He may have looked like a square, but hey, Bill Haley was one hip cat.
See you later, alligator
Thanks,
Tom

Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets was the first rock and roll album to chart. Bill Haley and the Comets had released the earlier Shake, Rattle, and Roll LP album in early 1955 and the Essex LP album in 1954, but both albums failed to chart. The Rock Around the Clock LP charted in January, 1956, making the Billboard Top 40 Album Chart. The album collected the Decca singles or 45s that were released in 1954 and 1955 by Bill Haley and the Comets. The album includes the single ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK, which was no. 1 for 8 weeks on the Billboard singles charts and which eventually sold over 25 million copies. (Rock Around the Clock is in the Guinness Book of World Records. Here is the quote from the 1973 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records:

"The top-selling 'pop' record has been Rock Around the Clock by Wlliam John Clifton Haley, Jr. (born Detroit, Michigan, March, 1927) and the Comets, recorded on April 12, 1954, with sales of 16,000,000 by January, 1972."

Rock Around the Clock was originally the theme song for the teenage angst movie BLACKBOARD JUNGLE starring Glenn Ford in 1955 where it was used in four strategic parts in the movie. It was the first rock and roll record to go no. 1 on Billboard. The record ushered in the rock and roll era and revolutionized pop music, going no. 1 around the world. The reord later was the theme song of the ABC TV series HAPPY DAYS and was in AMERICAN GRAFFITI. April 14, 2004 marks the 50th anniversary of the recording of the record at the Pythian Temple in New York City. This was the record that launched rock and roll. John Lennon (in his last Playboy interview in 1980) said that Rock Around the Clock was the record that got him into rock and roll. Elton John, David Gilmour, the lead guitarist of Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, John Fogerty, Jeff Beck, were also influenced by that record.

The album includes the other important Decca singles as well. The gold single SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL is also included. All the Decca hits are on this album. There are also three bonus tracks: "R-O-C-K", "The Saints Rock and Roll", and "See You Later, Alligator". There are five songs that Bill Haley composed on this album: "The Birth of the Boogie", "Two Hound Dogs", "Rock-A-Beatin'Boogie", "The Saints Rock and Roll", and "R-O-C-K". The records showcase the remarkable lead guitar work of Danny Cedrone and Franny Beecher, who were ahead of their time. Danny Cedone's lead guitar break on Rock Around the Clock is one of the greatest and most revolutionary in rock and roll. It is the guitar solo everybody knows and remembers from the 1950s. Franny Beecher's guitar solo on "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie" is years ahead of its time. The album also features "Mambo Rock", "Dim Dim the Lights", and the B-side to Rock Around the Clock, "Thriteen Women (And Only One Man in Town".

This is the album that started it all. Alan Freed always said he got the term "rock and roll" from Bill Haley and the Comets. Several records have been cited as the source for the term: "Rock the Joint" (1952), "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie" (1952 Esquire Boys version with Danny Cedrone;1955, Bill Haley and the Comets version with Franny Beecher), and "Two Hound Dogs" (1955). There is no doubt, however, that Freed got the term from Bill Haley and his recordings. Haley was consciously attempting to forge or create a new pop movement and a new sound, which was called rock and roll. Bill Haley was always at the forefront of the rock and roll movement. This album shows his impact and influence. It was these Decca singles collected on this album that initially were part of the rock and roll explosion that opened the door for the new music.

Rock Around the Clock was the first rock and roll album or LP to make the charts. This was what it sounded like at the beginning. This is an album every rock and roll fan should have. This is the alpha and omega of rock and roll. This is where it all started.

I highly recommend this album to everyone. Rock and roll became the greatest musical idiom of the twentieth century. Listen to what it sounded like at the very beginning on Rock Around the Clock. This album remains one of rock and roll's greatest and most important albums. In the record "R-O-Ck", Bill Haley stated that classical composer Johann Strauss popularized the waltz in the late 1800s, while William Handy popularized the blues in the 1920s, but in the 1950s, rock and roll had taken over from classical music and blues as the dominant form of music: "Strauss discovered waltzing, the Handy man found the blues..." Haley pointed to his record from 1953 CRAZY MAN CRAZY on Essex as the record that introduced rock and roll. It was the first rock and roll record to chart on the Billboard singles chart, reaching no. 15.

But it was Rock Around the Clock in 1955 that broke the door wide open for rock and roll. And this album contains all the Decca singles that were part of the initial rock and roll explosion. Do yourself a favor and buy this CD. You will enjoy the seminal rock and roll records on this historic album. It is a unique experience. Enjoy it! And rock around the clock, rock, rock, rock 'til broad daylight!

Most of the songs that put Haley's indelible stamp on early R&R are present in this, a remastered version of the Comets first original studio album for Decca Records, on which he was onboard following the success of "Crazy Man Crazy." As it is, the material here is more engaging, the group tighter. Signature motifs, such as the harmony chants and steel guitars, are joined by sizzling guitar solos and some hot tenor sax.

It seems strange that "Rock Around The Clock" initially only made it to #23 when first released, but when it was featured in the opening credits of the Glenn Ford/Anne Francis movie The Blackboard Jungle (1955), it shot to #1, where it stayed for eight weeks, its immortality in rock history thus insured. When rereleased in the UK, it made the Top 20 in 1968 and 1974.

The B-side, "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)" is a black nuclear fantasy about an H-bomb explosion, with the only survivors being, well, figure it out. He has two girls look after him, feeding him, giving him money, etc. but it shows that even after a nuclear catastrophe, women in rock songs were still portrayed in demeaning roles.

His cover of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" is sanitized, placing the action in the kitchen--"rattle those pots and pans" and away from the bedroom, but the third most riveting tune after "Rock/Clock." It reached #7 on the charts and became his first million-seller. Its B-side is the relatively tame "A.B.C. Boogie," a watered down R&B throwback to the material he covered under the Saddlemen.

"On your mark, get set, now ready, go" goes the opening lines to "Razzle Dazzle" a #15 hit faster than "Shake, Rattle, Roll" about a dance the hipsters do, full of the frat harmonies and its silly "wackadoo wackadoo" refrain. On its B-side, Haley gives a nod to one of his influences, "Two Hound Dogs" named Rhythm and Blues. The "hound dog" refrain the Comets chant reflect Big Mama's Thornton's "Hound Dog." Similar recognition is given to "Mambo Rock," a #18 hit about the Latin dance craze also sweeping the nation at the time.

If parts of "Rock A Beatin' Boogie," garnished with Rudy Pompilli's honking and wailing tenor sax, sounds like Louis Jordan's "I Want You To Be My Baby," it's because Haley's producer was Milt Gabler, who managed Jordan a decade earlier. The chanting refrain of "rock rock, rock, everybody, roll roll roll, everybody" further cemented rock as a genre that wasn't going to be just a passing craze, as is the inclusion of the phrase "crazy man crazy" (Haley's first hit) in the chanting jam of "R.O.C.K.", presented as a bonus track.

The other two bonuses are "The Saints Rock and Roll," a rock arrangement of "When The Saints Go Marchin' In," benefiting from Rudy Pompilli's tenor sax. And lastly, one of Haley's other big signature tunes, the #6 "See You Later, Alligator," originally by Bobby Charles. After being told off by his girl, the guy pays her back with her own putdown when she tries to worm her way back to his graces: "can't you see you're in my way now, don't you know you cramp my style?" Oh yes!

This has most of his famous hits. I presume "Rudy's Rock" and "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" were on other albums. In closing, I know I said in my other Haley review that his success came at the expense at black R&B musicians, but to totally lambast him as a white impersonator denies his importance as a rock pioneer.

Though Haley and his Comets had been combining western swing and R&B into rock 'n' roll for a couple of years (see Varese Vintage's "The Best of Bill Haley 1951-1954), these tracks, waxed in '54 and '55, are the finished drafts. From the April 1954 session that begat the title song and "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town)" through a slew of Top-10s and Top-20s, Haley and His Comets waxed an impressive series of rock 'n' roll icons. The "Rock Around the Clock" album originally took the earlier 8-song "Shake, Rattle and Roll" release augmented with four more tracks ("Two Hound Dogs," "Razzle Dazzle," "Rock-a-Beatin' Boogie," and "Burn That Candle").

Haley's cover of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (a source Haley was always quick to acknowledge) is an entirely new vision of the song. Haley sounds simply overjoyed to be singing with such a jumpin' backbeat, and the Comets blow and shout with similar abandon. The rest of the album provides numerous rock 'n' roll dance tunes, including "Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)" "Happy Happy Baby," and "Boogie Beat," each framing Haley's smiling vocals with ripping electric guitar runs and hot blowing on the saxophone. You can literally hear the Comets moving from their country swing roots to meatier R&B sounds.

MCA's expanded edition augments the original LP with three tracks released in 1956, including the Top-10 "See You Later, Alligator," and the Top-20, "R-O-C-K." These are fine additions to an essential building block of any collection of rock 'n' roll.

Bill Haley and his Comets/ Rock around the Clock/ 50th Anniversary Edition with bonus tracks: This is THE Bill Haley CD to get! This edition has the original album plus the other three hits that were not on the original release, sounding better than they have ever sounded.

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Great re-issue of the orignal LP with a three bonus tarcks. I play this CD almost about everyday. Its in my CD Jukebox and when on shuffle the songs pop up quite frequently. I bought a second disc to keep in the car.