Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock" is the biggest hit in the history of rock ’n’ roll. It has sold more copies—over 25 million, according to the Guinness Book of World Records— than any other rock record, and has been the popular anthem of the 50’s for a quarter of a century now, from The Blackboard Jungle to Happy Days. In light of this, it might seems odd to describe Bill Haley as an unsung hero of rock ’n’ roll, but the truth is that it is what Bill Haley did before “Rock Around The Clock,” rather than that silly song itself, that deserves recognition.

William John Clifton Haley was born on July 6, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan. When he was seven, he moved with his family to Wilmington, Delaware. Not long after, Haley built and began to play a homemade guitar. At the age of 13, he got his first paying job, performing at a local auction for a dollar a night. Two years later, he left home and picked up work as a hillbilly singer with various bands in rural Pennsylvania.

In Hartford, Connecticut, Haley met up with a country band called The Downhomers, who had recently lost a member, Kenny Roberts, to the draft army. Haley replaced Roberts, and when The Downhomers cut a record called “We’re Recruiting” for Vogue, in 1944, he finally had something to call home about.

After parting with The Downhomers, Haley got a job as a disc-jockey at WSNJ in Bridgeport, New Jersey, where he was often known as Yodeling Bill Haley. In 1948, Haley moved across the Delaware River to station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he remained as musical director until 1954.

In 1949, Bill Haley & The Four Aces of Western Swing, the band Haley had formed after moving to Chester, cut their first records, for the local Cowboy label. These records were mostly cover versions of recent country hits, such as George Morgan’s “Candy Kisses,” Red Foley’s “Tennessee Border,” and Hank Williams’ “Too Many Parties, Too Many Pals.”

Late in 1949, after cutting one record for Center, another local label, Haley renamed his group Bill Haley & The Saddlemen. In early 1950, this group cut two records for the Keystone label. In September of that year, Haley succeeded in selling masters to Atlantic Records in New York, who released his “Why Do I Cry Over You” and “I’m Gonna Dry Ev’ry Tear With A Kiss” with little promotion and little success.

All of Haley’s recordings through 1950 were common country records with their roots in slick Western swing. But by 1951, Haley had begun to forsake country music. He took off the cowboy hat he had worn since his Yodeling Bill Haley days, and began to cultivate the appearance of a hepcat—or, more precisely,>the appearance of a hepcat who resided in Chester, Pennsylvania. He fashioned a spitcurl upon his forehead. He put on a garish dinner jacket. He beheld himself and saw that it was good.

When Bill Haley & The Saddlemen signed with Holiday, a Philadelphia label operated by Dave Miller, in 1951, the first record they cut was a .version of the outlandishly tough “Rocket ’88’,” which had been a Number One R&B hit earlier that year for Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats. (Years later, Sam Phillips, who produced the Brenston record and leased it to Chess, reflected that “Rocket ’88’ ” was the first frue rock ’n’ roll hit.)

Although some of his Holiday recordings leaned more heavily on country music than on R&B, such as the 1952 “Jukebox Cannonball,” which fit hepster lyrics, not too successfully, to Roy AcufPs “Wabash Cannonball,” most of Haley’s efforts throughout 1951-2 were inspired by the R&B charts. In 1952, with a female voice identified only as Loretta, he cut duet versions of the Griffin Brothers’ “Pretty Baby” and Memphis Slim’s “I’m Crying” which continue to stand as examples of his best work.

Haley began recording for Essex, another Dave Miller label in Philadelphia, in 1953. It was then that he began calling his group Bill Haley and His Comets, or, on a handful of Essex records, Bill Haley with Haley’s Comets Oust, one presumes, to be sure you didn’t miss the point).

The first Essex release was “Icy Heart,” obviously inspired by “Cold, Cold Heart,” the Hank Williams hit of the previous year. But the flip-side of “Icy Heart” was “Rock The Joint,” a wild, fiery rocker—not merely a cover of an R&B nit (Jimmy Preston’s 1949 original was on Gotham, another Philadelphia independent), but one of the first instances of a white boy. really getting down to the heart of hep.

Bill Haley’s first hit came in the spring of 1953. “Crazy, Man, Crazy” rose to Number 15 on the pop charts at a time when “Song From Moulin Rouge” by Percy Faith was Number One. There had been rock ’n’ roll records on the pop charts before, going back to 1951 and “Sixty Minute Man” by The Dominoes; but “Crazy, Man, Crazy” was the first white rock hit. The trouble was, and is, that it was nowhere near as good, as heartfelt, as “Rock The Joint.” Within a year, Bill Haley had gone from being one of the first blue-eyed rockers to the first decadent show-biz rocker.

In other-words, he had played out the entire history of rock ’n’ roll about two vears before anybody ever heard of rock ’n’ roll.

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Largely on the basis of “Crazy, Man, Crazy,” Haley was signed by Decca in 1954. On April 12 of that year, in New York, Bill Haley and the Comets cut “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock.” The song had been written in 1953 by two Tin Pan Alley veterans, lyricist Max Freedman and composer Jimmy DeKnight. Freedman, bom in 1895, had written “Sioux City Sue” and “Song Of India.” DeKnight was really James Myers of Myers Music, a New York publishing firm. Haley had known DeKnight since the late 40’s, and had cut several of his songs back in those early days.

“(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” was released as the flip-side of “Thirteen Women” in May, 1954. Despite a full-page ad in Billboard, the record went unnoticed.

Haley went back into the studio and cut a cover of Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” which had been issued in April and was now heading fast up the R&B charts.

Haley’s “Shake, Raffle and Roll” was released in the summer of 1954. The August 7 issue of Billboard carried an ad for the record, in which Decca billed Haley and, the Comets as “The Nation’s ‘Rockingest’ Rhythm Group.” This same issue of Billboard also carried the first review of Elvis’ first single, which had been recorded the month before.

“Shake, Raffle and Roll” broke into the Top Ten, but that didn’t alter the fact that it was an inferior record. The way Haley and the Decca boys had censored the original sexy lyrics was shameful. '

Haley’s next two singles, “Dim, Dim The Lights” and “Birth Of The Boogie,” were Top Twenty hits. When Evan Hunter’s 1954 novel, The Blackboard Jungle, was made into a movie, Jimmy DeKnight was chosen as the film’s technical advisor. He dug up the failed “Rock Around The Clock” for the movie’scentral song. The movie was released in March, 1955, and the rest is history, of a sort.

Bill Haley continued to have very minor hits with Decca until 1960, when he went to Warner Bros, sundry other labels, and oblivion. But by the end of 1955, he had been superceded by Elvis Presley, whose fame continued to rise throughout the late 50’s, as Haley’s fell.

This is the way it should have been. “We use country and Western instruments,” Haley was quoted as saying in a 1955 collection of sheet music, “play rhythm and blues tunes and the result is”—hold your breath—“pop music.” He didn’t even know what to call it, for the love of Christ.

But the fact remains, Bill Haley was there first and he helped to set the stage for Elvis and all that came in his wake. For that, Bill Haley, who walks among us at the age of fifty-five, deserves, as all things hep, to be honored. Just don’t go overboard, y’hear?