While the movie was being shot, Haley moved on to his next single, a cleaned-up cover of Big Joe Turner’s raunchy “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” It went to No. Ford’s teenage son Paul had Haley’s 45 of “Thirteen Women,” and with the smarts of youth, knew that the flipside was the hip side. Brooks needed an opening song to set the mood. Director Richard Brooks was bringing Evan Hunter’s novel The Blackboard Jungle to the screen, with Glenn Ford starring as an inner city teacher. Though his solicitations were refused, his timing was right. He mailed copies to everyone he knew in Hollywood. “Thirteen Women” failed to ignite the charts, but still Myers didn’t give up on his favorite B-side.
Cedrone, a session player, apparently had done a similar solo on several songs cut prior to “Clock,” including Haley’s “Rock the Joint.” As Lytle would comment, “It was his gimmick.” Comets bass player Marshall Lytle recalled in Haley’s bio, “We spent two-and-a-half hours on the A-side and 30 minutes on the B-side, and in 30 minutes, we came up with what is now the anthem of rock ’n’ roll.”Īn explosive snare drum, a thumping bass, a spirited vocal-there were several magical elements to this two-minute, eight-second recording, but what really gave it a jolt of electricity was Danny Cedrone’s fiery, staccato guitar solo. Two takes were cut on the B-side, with Haley shouting out his vocal above the raucous joy of the band. Milt Gabler had a stake in the publishing of “Thirteen Women,” so he spent most of the session on it. They arrived at the studio hours late, with time running out. On April 12, 1954, Haley and the Comets were booked into the Pythian Temple studio, a converted Masonic temple in downtown New York, to record two songs-“Thirteen Women” and “Rock Around the Clock.” That afternoon, the band got stranded in the Delaware River when their ferry ran aground. Milt Gabler, the man behind all the great Louis Jordan sides of the early 1950s, was slated to produce the sessions. By then, Myers had landed a new deal for Haley with Decca. While Haley played the song in his live set, another act, Sonny Dae and His Knights, cut the first record on it. Every time Miller would see it, he’d come in and tear it up and throw it away.” “Three times I took the tune in the recording studio. “Myers and Miller didn’t like each other,” Haley recalled in his biography. At the time, Haley was recording for the Essex label, a company owned by Dave Miller. He championed it, pitching it first to his old friend Bill Haley. Freedman, who died in 1962, wasn’t around to dispute that account, but others, including founding Comets member Johnny Grande told NPR, “Freedman wrote the song.” Whether Myers pulled an Irving Mills and put his name on it, in a publishing arrangement, we may never be known.īut without Myers, the song may never have been recorded. According to what Myers told NPR in 2000, he had “most of the song written” when Freedman helped him finish it. Myers, a publisher and hustler who “dabbled” in songwriting, had collaborated with Haley on a few tunes in the late 1940s when the singer was with the Saddlesmen. Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight, whose real name was James Myers. “Rock Around the Clock,” copyrighted in 1952, is credited to Max C. He’d also started wearing the Brylcreem spit curl that would become an iconic image of early rock ’n’ roll.
By the early 1950s, Haley had cut two songs, “Crazy Man Crazy” and “Rock the Joint,” that pointed the way to his future. It was one of his band members, a Philly kid named Joey Ambrose, who introduced Haley to rhythm and blues. In his 20s, he led a country swing band and had his sights set on becoming the next Gene Autry. Born Jin Highland Park, Michigan to musical parents, he became known as a teenage yodeler, then worked for a time as a DJ. Music historians may disagree about who recorded the first rock ’n’ roll song (Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” and Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” are two leading contenders), but there’s no doubt about what record punched an electric guitar–shaped hole in the society at large.īill Haley was an unlikely rock ’n’ roll hero. 50 years ago, when The Blackboard Jungle hit screens across the country, the controversial opening salvo of the film was a shot of amplified fury called “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets. The New York Times called it “nightmarish and bloodcurdling.” And after it incited a near riot in a local theater, the city of Memphis banned it. The American Legion and the Boy Scouts denounced it.
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