The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (74 page)

FEBRUARY

Monday 9

Bill Haley

(William John Clifton Haley Jr - Detroit, Michigan, 6 July 1925)

Bill Haley & His Comets (The Saddlemen)

(Various acts)

The kiss-curled ‘great uncle of rock ‘n’ roll’ was never really cool enough to be considered an icon of any movement, but he was, of course, instrumental in placing rock firmly on the map. Bill Haley was born blind in one eye, and found in music an outlet to help him overcome the shyness this impediment caused him as a boy. And overcome it he did: fascinated by the singing cowboys he encountered in his youth and taught to play guitar by his father, Haley fronted his own band at fifteen. After founding country acts The Downhomers and then the extravagantly named Four Aces of Western Swing, Haley – who also performed as a yodelling soloist – found work as a DJ at Pennsylvania pop/country station WPWA. He made his first inroads into recording his own music with The Saddlemen, an early fifties guitar band that specialized in ‘cowboy jive’; this group hit regionally with ‘Rocket 88’ (1951), the Jackie Brenston song considered by many to be rock ‘n’ roll’s first. The Saddlemen became The Comets – and thus music history was duly made.

‘Rock around the Clock’ (1955) was actually the fourth single release by The Comets (the first hit had been 1953’s ‘Crazy, Man, Crazy’, perhaps the first rock ‘n’ roll record to chart in America). ‘Rock around the Clock’ had been penned for them by writer James Myers and was only a moderate hit until licensed for the title sequence of Richard Brooks’s 1955 teen-rebel movie
The Blackboard Jungle;
after this, the song topped Billboard’s listings for two months and became the theme song of the young, who saw in rock ‘n’ roll a channel for their disaffection. The song became a worldwide smash, topping the charts in numerous countries; in Britain – where Haley was even bigger than at home – it re-entered the charts an impressive seven times. (The record is still the world’s third-biggest-selling pop hit, behind Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ and Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’.) And there were many other hits: the rousing ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ – with its pre-equality demands for ‘kitchen action’ – had already given Haley and his band a million-seller in 1954 and ‘See You Later, Alligator’ came pretty close to doing likewise in 1956. But, for all this phenomenal success, Haley was never a rich man. His manager, ‘Lord’ Jim Ferguson, is believed to have squandered much of Haley’s income over the years, to the degree that the singer, unable to meet the demands of the US tax inspectors, had to go into exile from his native land during the sixties. By this time, although he was still recording with Warners, Haley had been usurped by hipper, leaner creatures like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry – he was always a big-set individual (not really designed for wall posters), and his health was to suffer accordingly. 1974 brought renewed interest in ‘Rock around the Clock’, which was back in both US and UK chart listings (the former because it was an early theme tune to the hit TV comedy
Happy Days),
but the death of his longtime friend and sax-player Rudy Pompilli
(
February 1976)
affected Haley enormously. The singer became withdrawn as a result, and his touring days ended with a 1979 performance in South America.

‘I haven’t done much in my life except give birth to rock ‘n’ roll. And I’d like to get credit for it.’

Bill Haley in 1968

Bill Haley (top ) , pictured in 1955 with ‘rising’ Comets Billy Williamson, Johnny Grande (who died in 2006), Joey Ambrose, Marshall Lytle and Dick Richards (Dick Boccelli)

The circumstances surrounding Bill Haley’s death are disputed to the degree that only the date can be agreed upon by all. Haley spent the last six years of his now-anonymous life at a modest home in Harlingen, Texas, shunning company and, according to the local police, becoming delusional to the extent that he would even deny who he was to occasional visitors. Haley was believed to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease – highly unusual for a man only in his fifties. He had also become a heavy drinker. Just hours after he had spoken on the phone to his two sons, he was found dead in his house, a bottle at hand: he is generally thought to have suffered a heart attack, although some insist he died of a brain tumour. He may have been no young buck when he hit the big time, but Bill Haley was a true rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. He was there before anyone else, pumping boogie into country and rockabilly while Elvis was still trying to sing gospel, while The Beatles were still just high-school rebels and before the blues had even reached the UK.

See also
Danny Cedrone (
Pre-1965)

DEAD INTERESTING!

FALLEN COMETS

Attempting to unravel the ever-mutating history of Bill Haley’s Comets - both during and after the big man’s involvement - is near impossible. Below are Haley’s main protagonists now gone to rock around the celestial clock:

Ray Cawley
(bass, d 1980)

Danny Cedrone
(guitar, 20/6/1920-18/6/1954)

Harold ‘Curly’ Chalker
(steel, 22/10/1931-30/4/1998)

Doles Dickens
(bass,
c
1920-2/5/1972)

Dallas Edwards
(guitar, d 11/1982)

Johnny Grande
(piano, 14/1/1930-3/6/2006)

Billy Gussak
(drums, d 1994)

Ralph Jones
(drums, 1920-1/6/2000)

Arrett ‘Rusty’ Keefer
(guitar/bass/violin, d 1967)

John ‘Bam Bam’ Lane
(drums,
c
1947-19/2/2007)

Nick Masters
(Nick Nastos, steel, d 28/4/1995)

James E Myers
(drums/co-writer, 1919-9/5/2001)

Joe Olivier
(guitar, 10/12/1927-25/12/2001)

Ray Parsons
(rhythm guitar, d 10/4/2011)

Rudy Pompilli
(sax, 16/4/1924-5/2/1976)

Paul Pruitt
(guitar,
c
1943-14/5/2003)

David ‘Chico’ Ryan
(bass, 9/4/1948-26/7/1998)

Art Ryerson
(guitar, 1913-10/2004)

Billy Williamson
(guitar,
c
1925-3/1996)

Sunday 15

Michael Bloomfield

(Chicago, Illinois, 28 July 1943)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

Bob Dylan

Electric Flag

A young Jewish blues fan who longed for stardom and the excuse to play before an audience, guitarist/singer Mike Bloomfield earned a reputation for jumping up on stage and hijacking club gigs on a regular basis years before he made his name with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. So good was his playing that black players eventually accepted him and by the age of twenty Bloomfield was running his own blues club.

In fact, there was greater antagonism from the fans of Bob Dylan when the previously acoustic folk prodigy plugged in and went electric: Mike Bloomfield was Dylan’s guitarist at this point, appearing on his
Highway 61 Revisited
album (1965). At the same time he had joined The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, (a move precipitated by the band’s producer, Paul Rothchild), which was to cement Bloomfield’s name as a major American blues player. Electric Flag was his own band, an unadorned though experimental blues combo formed in 1967 with longtime collaborator Nick Gravenites: the group played Monterey to some acclaim, but drug use and bad management made this a short project. Bloomfield’s album with keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Stephen Stills –
Super Session
(1968) – was also well received, but the stop-start nature of his career ensured a low profile for this very gifted musician. Just months before he died there, Bloomfield rejoined Bob Dylan for a concert at the guitarist’s home town of San Francisco.