Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a rock and roll song in the 12-bar blues format written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1954 for American Decca. It was a number one single for two months and did well on the United Kingdom charts; the recording also reentered the UK Singles Chart in the 1960s and 1970s.
It was the first rock and roll record to top the pop charts in both the US and UKBill Haley had American chart success with "Crazy Man, Crazy" in 1953, and in 1954, "Shake, Rattle and Roll" sung by Big Joe Turner reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. Haley's recording became an anthem for rebellious 1950s youth, particularly after it was included in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle. It was number 1 on the pop charts for two months and went to number 3 on the R&B chart.
The recording is widely considered to be the song that, more than any other, brought rock and roll into mainstream culture around the world. The song is ranked No. 159 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Although it was first recorded by Italian-American band Sonny Dae and His Knights on March 20, 1954, Myers claimed the song had been written specifically for Haley but, for legal reasons, Haley was unable to record it himself until April 12, 1954.
The original full title of the song was "We're Gonna Rock Around the Clock Tonight!". This was later shortened to " Rock Around the Clock", though this form is generally used only on releases of the 1954 Bill Haley Decca Records recording; most other recordings of this song by Haley and others shorten this title further to its present form.
In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
False starts
There are sources that indicate that "Rock Around the Clock" was written in 1953, but documents uncovered by historian Jim Dawson indicate it was in fact written in late 1952. The original arrangement of the song bore little resemblance to the version recorded by Haley, and was in fact closer to a popular instrumental of the day called "The Syncopated Clock".The song was credited to Myers and Max C. Freedman when it was copyrighted on March 31, 1953. However, its exact authorship is disputed, with many speculating that Freedman wrote the song on his own. There were several earlier songs of the title "Rock Around the Clock", but they are unrelated to the Freedman/Myers song. In addition, it is sometimes erroneously stated that "Rock Around the Clock" is copied from a late-1940s Big Joe Turner recording, "Around the Clock Blues". Though the titles are similar, the two songs bear little resemblance. There are many blues songs with the theme of partying or making love "round the clock", with various actions specified at various hours.
However, the verse melody of "Rock Around the Clock" does bear a very close similarity to that of Hank Williams' first hit, "Move It On Over", from 1947.
According to the Haley biographies Bill Haley by John Swenson and Rock Around the Clock by Dawson, the song was offered to Haley by Jimmy Myers in the wake of his first national success, "Crazy Man, Crazy" in 1953, after being copyrighted with the U.S. Library of Congress on March 31. Haley and his Comets began performing the song on stage, but Dave Miller, his producer, refused to allow Haley to record it for his Essex Records label.
Haley himself claimed to have taken the sheet music into the recording studio at least twice, with Miller ripping up the music each time. Nonetheless, rumors of a 1953 demo recording by Haley persist to this day, although surviving members of the Comets deny this, as did Haley himself ; a late-1960s bootleg single of the Decca Records version of "Rock Around the Clock", with "Crazy Man, Crazy" on the B-side and carrying the Essex label, occasionally turns up for sale with the claim that it is the demo version.
Myers next offered the song to Sonny Dae & His Knights, a novelty all-white musical group led by Italian-American Paschal Vennitti, and organized the recording on March 20, 1954. The group's subsequent recording, on the Arcade Records label, was a regional success, although it sounded very different from what Haley would later record.
Decca recording session
After leaving Essex Records in the spring of 1954, Bill Haley signed with Decca Records, and the band's first recording session was set for April 12, 1954, at Decca's studios in the Pythian Temple in New York City. The recording session almost failed to take place because the band was traveling on a ferry that got stuck on a sandbar en route to New York from Philadelphia. Once at the studio, producer Milt Gabler, insisted the band work on a song entitled "Thirteen Women ", which Gabler wanted to promote as the A-side of the group's first single for Decca.Near the end of the session, the band finally recorded a take of "Rock Around the Clock", but Haley's vocals were drowned out by the band. A second take was quickly made with minimal accompaniment while Sammy Davis Jr. waited outside the studio for his turn behind the microphone. Decca engineers later combined the two versions into one version.
Many musicians have claimed that they performed on the recording session for "Rock Around the Clock". Song co-writer Myers once claimed he had played drums on the piece, although he also claimed to have been advising the sound mixer in the recording booth. According to the official record sheet from the session, however, the musicians on the famous recording are:
- Bill Haley – vocals, rhythm guitar
- Marshall Lytle – double bass
- Franny Beecher – guitar
- Billy Williamson – steel guitar
- Johnny Grande – piano
- Billy Gussak – drums
- Danny Cedrone – electric guitar
- Joey Ambrose – tenor saxophone
The version of "Rock Around the Clock" that was used in the movie Blackboard Jungle differs from the hit single version. The difference is in the two solo breaks. The record has the guitar solo taking the first break and the sax solo taking the second break. The movie version is just the opposite with the sax solo coming first.
In a 2005 retrospective on his uncle Milt Gabler's work, Billy Crystal identifies Haley's 1954 recording of "Rock Around the Clock" as the single most important song Gabler ever produced. Gabler had previously been responsible for the highly successful string of R&B and jump blues recordings by Louis Jordan in the late 1940s, which were characterised by their strong beat, clearly enunciated lyrics and high production values, all features which Gabler sought to repeat in Haley's recordings. Also significantly, "Rock Around the Clock" was recorded in the very same month that Atlantic Records issued Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll". In relation to "Rock Around the Clock", Gabler said: "I was aware that rock was starting. I knew what was happening in the Philadelphia area, and "Crazy Man, Crazy" had been a hit about a year before that. It already was starting and I wanted to take it from there."
Although the record is sometimes claimed to be the first in the rock and roll genre, Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that "Rock Around the Clock" and "That's All Right" were generally not considered the first rock and roll records but rather "the first white artists' interpretations of a sound already well-established by black musicians almost a decade before. It was a raucous, driving, unnamed variant of rhythm and blues that came complete with lyrics that talked about 'rocking'." Later in the same article, Petridis relates that Tony Cajiao, then the editor of Now Dig This!, offered the conclusion "... you have to say that Rock Around the Clock was the first record that really brought everything together, that made tremors around the world."
Slow road to classic hit status
As Gabler intended, "Rock Around the Clock" was first issued in May 1954 as a B-side to "Thirteen Women ". While the song did make the American Cashbox music charts, it was considered a commercial disappointment. It was not until 1955, when "Rock Around the Clock" was used under the opening credits and four additional times in the film Blackboard Jungle, that the song truly took off.Many versions of the story behind how "Rock Around the Clock" was chosen for Blackboard Jungle circulated over the years. Recent research, however, reveals that the song was chosen from the collection of young Peter Ford, the son of Blackboard Jungle star Glenn Ford and dancer Eleanor Powell. The producers were looking for a song to represent the type of music the youth of 1955 were listening to. The elder Ford borrowed several records from his son, one of which was Haley's "Rock Around the Clock". In 2004, the song finished at #50 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
On July 9, 1955 "Rock Around the Clock" became the first rock and roll recording to hit the top of Billboard's Pop charts, a feat it repeated on charts around the world. The song stayed at this place for eight weeks. The record was also no.1 for seven weeks on the Cashbox pop singles chart in 1955. The Bill Haley version also hit number three on the R&B charts. Billboard ranked it as the No. 2 song for 1955, behind Perez Prado's "Cherry Pink ".
In the UK, Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was released on Brunswick Records, reaching number 17 on the UK Singles Chart in January 1955, four months before it first entered the US pop charts. The song re-entered the UK chart to reach number one in November 1955 for three weeks, and after a three-week break returned there for a further two weeks in January 1956. It re-entered the charts again in September 1956, reaching number 5. The song was re-issued in 1968, when it made number 20, and again in 1974, when it reached number 12. The song's original release saw it become the UK's first million selling single and it went on to sell over 1.4 million copies in total.
The band performed the song on the May 31, 1955 episode of Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle in an a cappella and lip-synched versions. On August 7, 1955, the band performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show, hosted by Ed Sullivan.
On the heels of the song breaking into the Top 20 in the UK in 1968, Decca began plugging the single in the US, where it briefly re-entered the Billboard charts in June 1968, peaking at #118.
"Rock Around the Clock" became wildly popular with teenagers around the world. The single, released by independent label Festival Records in Australia, was the biggest-selling recording in the country at the time. Columbia Pictures cashed in on the new craze by hiring Haley and his band to star in two movies, Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock. In 1957, Haley toured Europe, bringing rock 'n' roll to that continent for the first time.
In 1964, Bill Haley and His Comets recorded a sequel song entitled "Dance Around the Clock". Haley actually recorded this song on five occasions, two live versions for Buddah Records recorded in New York in 1969. Despite these efforts, the song was not a commercial success.
Haley would re-record "Rock Around the Clock" many times over the years, but never recaptured the magic. In 1974, the original version of the song returned to the American charts when it was used as the theme for the movie American Graffiti and a re-recorded version by Haley was used as the opening theme for the TV series Happy Days during its first two seasons. In the UK, the song again reached the top 20 and as of 2013 remains the only non-Christmas single to have done so on five separate occasions. The original version was also featured in the 1978 film Superman, heard playing on a car radio just prior to Glenn Ford's final scene in the film; Ford, as noted earlier, had starred in Blackboard Jungle. In 1981, about a year before Haley's death, a portion of the 1954 recording was featured in the opening credits of Season 6 of Austin City Limits.
During the 1970s, Haley shortened his performances of "Rock Around the Clock", dropping one verse and the second instrumental break from most performances. However, his last known recorded performance of the song, at a November 1979 command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, was a complete version.
Following Haley's death in February 1981, a number of major tributes involving "Rock Around the Clock" occurred. That fall, a TV special marking the 30th anniversary of American Bandstand saw an all-star "supergroup" perform the song. In 1982, Haley's original recording was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. An excerpt from the recording was included in "Haley's Golden Medley", a hastily compiled single in the "Stars on 45" mold which made the UK record charts in 1982, reaching number 50. In 1989, Haley's original Decca recording was incorporated into the "dance mix" single "Swing The Mood", credited to Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, but legal considerations forced the album version to substitute a patchwork of re-recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. Since "Swing the Mood" was still on the sales charts going into 1990, it meant that Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", in one way or another, appeared on UK or US sales charts in five consecutive decades.
"Rock Around the Clock" is often cited as the biggest-selling vinyl rock and roll single of all time. The exact number of copies sold has never been audited; however, a figure of at least 25 million was cited by the Guinness Book of World Records in its category "Phonograph records: Biggest Sellers" from the early 1970s until the 1990s, when the advent of compact discs led to Guinness discontinuing the category. Guinness consistently listed "Rock Around the Clock" as having the highest claim of any pop music recording, coming second in sales only to Bing Crosby's 1942 recording of "White Christmas", which was also listed as having sold 25 million copies. Haley's version alone is estimated to have sold 15 million copies, with a total of 25 million copies counting all versions. A frequently used piece of promotion regarding the song is that it is said to be playing somewhere in the world every minute of the day.