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Elvis Presley Biography

Elvis Presley may be the single most important figure in American 20th century popular music. Not necessarily the best, and certainly not the most consistent. But no one could argue with the fact that he was the musician most responsible for popularizing rock & roll on an international level. Viewed in cold sales figures, his impact was phenomenal. Dozens upon dozens of international smashes from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, as well as the steady sales of his catalog and reissues since his death in 1977, may make him the single highest-selling performer in history.

More important from a music lover's perspective, however, are his remarkable artistic achievements. Presley was not the very first white man to sing rhythm & blues; Bill Haley predated him in that regard, and there may have been others as well. Elvis was certainly the first, however, to assertively fuse country and blues music into the style known as rockabilly. While rockabilly arrangements were the foundations of his first (and possibly best) recordings, Presley could not have become a mainstream superstar without a much more varied palette that also incorporated pop, gospel, and even some bits of bluegrass and operatic schmaltz here and there. His 1950s recordings established the basic language of rock & roll; his explosive and sexual stage presence set standards for the music's visual image; his vocals were incredibly powerful and versatile.

Whirlwind Biography

Whirlwind was a rockabilly revival band from the U.K. during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Composed of members Nigel Dixon, Chris Emo, Phil Hardy, and Mike Lewis. They helped establish a link between the roots rock community and the punk rock community during this time, opening for the likes of The Clash, Elvis Costello, and Ian Dury. After the band called it quits after two albums, Nigel Dixon went on to form Havana 3 a.m. with Paul Simonon, formerly of The Clash.

The Chop Tops ''On Tour'' Biography

Their Story-
Sinner began The Chop Tops back in 1995, he had tried a range of other musical styles, only to return to what came naturally to him…rockabilly music! Sinner had played guitar, bass, and piano while performing as lead vocalist for his group. But it wasn’t until he went back to his child-hood favorite the drums (standing no less) that he had found his true call, still soulfully covering his ground as lead vocalist. Sinner next teamed up with grestch guitar extraordinaire Shelby after seeing one of his blistering guitar performances. Shelby shared Sinner’s passion for a frantic rock’n’roll beat and was quickly welcomed as the bands guitarist. Last, but not least, came the search for an upright bassist that would glue The Chop Tops stompin’ vocalist/drummer and live-wire guitar slinger together into one red-hot rockin’ act. And their prayers were answered when Brett joined adding the finishing touch to the ‘Revved-Up Rockabilly’ trio - The Chop Tops. Brett had perfected his wild stage shows while performing upright slap bass with tons of LA groups! A few years later, the band really began to make a name for themselves playing supporting sets for rock’n’roll legends, but with all the showmanship and excitement of the evenings headliner! The Chop Tops continue to tour their ‘Revved-Up’ breed of rockabilly music through the entire United States.

The BossHoss 'On Tour' Biography

The BossHoss are seven people from Berlin, Germany.
Alec „Boss Burns“ Völkel, Sascha „Hoss Power“ Vollmer, Ansgar „Frank Doe“ Freyberg, Malcolm „Hank Williamson“ Arison, André „Guss Brooks“ Neumann, Stefan „Russ T. Rocket“ Buehler and Tobias „Ernesto Escobar de Tijuana“ Fischer specialise in covering pop, rock and hip hop songs in country style.

The band was founded in Berlin 2004 by Boss and Hoss, named after the well known song “Boss Hoss” by The Sonics.

With their cover version of “Like Ice in the Sunshine” they became famous with the Langnese (the famous “heart-brand” ice cream) TV and cinema advertisements in 2005. Their first album “Internashville Urban Hymns” sold over 100,000 copies.

Rusty and the Dragstrip Trio Biography

From the wild west… comes Rusty & the Dragstrip trio!

Forming in Perth, Western Australia, in 2001, this four piece rockabilly outfit geared itself towards a traditional 50s look and sound. With energetic live performances Rusty and the boys never fail to deliver the goods. You’ll surely be boppin’ and a-hollerin’ for more.

These cats will take you back to the cool and dangerous sounds of the 1950s, playing songs from the vaults of the Sun Studio with early Elvis, to those rockabilly obscurities that you can’t hear anywhere else. They will also pull back with spooky ballads and real gone blues. But this is not just a 50s cover band…

Rusty & the Dragstrip Trio have no shortage of originals, as proven on their debut album “Playing for you” recorded live at The Satellite Studio, Perth, W.A., and their second release, “I ain’t ready” recorded live at Revolver Sound Studio, Perth, W.A., released on the “Wild Records” label, Hollywood, C.A. Due to popular world-wide demand, both CDs have been re-released in Australia, USA, and Europe. If you don’t have one …get one and see what all the fuss is about!

Over the years, Rusty & the Dragstrip Trio have played at many incredible places across the world. Locally, The Mustang bar in Perth had Rusty and the boys playing every week from 2001 to 2007. The international Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Festival hosted the band on their main stage, twice (both times the band received raving reviews). In Los Angeles at many Wild Record Shows in L.A., the boys played alongside other great rockabilly acts. Back in Australia, Queensland’s Wintersun Festival and Melbourne have also seen the Dragstrip Trio. They have done festivals all around their home town as well as played in many local bars and clubs.

They have had the pleasure of supporting Chris Isaak twice. Chris accidentally discovered the Dragstrip Trio when he walked past The Mustang Bar where they were playing at the time. He jumped on stage, jammed with the band, and invited Rusty to sing with him and his band at the Burswood Casino.

In 2007 the Dragstrip Trio took a break. Now in 2009, demand for the band has pulled them out of retirement. During the two year break, Rusty started the Rusty Pinto Combo, specialising in 40s and 50s rhythm and blues. These days both bands play regularly, each having their own sound and style.

Rusty & the Dragstrip Trio reformed with the original members Rusty (vocals), Richie (bass), Matt (guitar), and welcome their new drummer Matt.

Restless Biography

Restless was formed in 1978 by Mark Harman (g/v), Paul Harman (b) and Ben Cooper (d). The band name was borrowed from a Carl Perkins song. In 1981 “The Restless” EP was issued-limited to 400 copies. Once ‘Why Don’t You Just Rock!’ was out, the boys were pretty much doing the regular Rock ‘n’ Roll circuit throughout England. Restless played their own style of Rock ‘n’ Roll and are arguably one of the most influential British Neo-Rockabilly bands. One time they played a 50´s Rockabilly standard just to follow with a pure Psychobilly song.

Jeff Bayly replaced Paul in 1984 and Restless hit the UK Independent Charts with “Mr. Blues”. In 1986 Restless optioned for a second guitar and added Mick Malone. After the departure of Bayly & Cooper, Restless wanted to quit. But the addition of ex-Frenzy/ ex-Shark Steve Whitehouse (b) brought them back in business. In 1989 Rob Tyler (d) ,one of the better known Rockabilly drummers, also joined his old fellow Mark Harman.

1998 Restless played their “last” show in London just to be back in 2002 with the original lineup, that has split in 1984.

Ray Campi Biography

Ray Campi (b. 1934 in Yonkers, New York) is a distinguished musician often called The King of Rockabilly. Campi’s trademark is his white double bass, which he often jumps on top of and “rides” while playing.

After his family moved to Austin, Texas in 1944, Campi began a lifetime of performing and recording music in numerous American genres, including folk, country, and rock and roll as well as rockabilly. He rarely concentrated on his musical career exclusively, working a wide variety of jobs, notably twenty-five years spent as a high-school teacher in Glendale, California.

Campi worked with many of the most prominent pioneers of rock and roll music, including Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and Gene Vincent. He has fiercely criticized the mainstream music industry, in particular its connections with drug culture.

Ray Campi is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

The Hillbilly Moon Explosion Biography

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work up a plausible old-school sound these days—a few twangy guitars, a pile of echo, a sneering lead vocal on top, and presto, you’re ready to rumble. There’s a difference, however, between a true vintage-tinged update and another in a series of Eddie Cochran copycats. Which brings us to Hillbilly Moon Explosion, Zurich-based rock revivalists who’ve spent the past few years touring Europe, issuing a pair of acclaimed releases (2002’s Introducing The Hillbilly Moon Explosion, 2004’s Bourgeois Baby) while watching their fan base grow by leaps and bounds. Mind you, this is no quaint Sun Records send-up; at their best, HME— bassist/vocalist Oliver Baroni; rhythm guitarist/vocalist Emanuela Hutter; guitarist Duncan James and drummer Luke Weyermann—come across like a Sam Phillips-produced soundtrack to a Sam Raimi shock flick, a furious bed of slap bass and pounding snare underpinning layers of menacing guitar lines, wailing background vocals, and eerie keyboard flourishes, with front-woman Hutter providing the perfect aural/visual focal point, fishnet stockings and all.

When it came time to lay tracks for a third independent effort, head Hillbillies Baroni and Hutter eventually headed for the US and wound up at the door of producer-engineer Mark Neill, owner of San Diego’s Soil of the South Studios, where it’s all-analog, all the time. One could not imagine a better match-up: Neill, a rockabilly bred Southerner whose client list includes The Paladins, Los Straitjackets and Old 97s, is a rock archeologist of the highest order and vast collector of choice old-school audio tools, who knows how to nail it down in just a few takes using as few tracks possible (the way it was before we all had too much time and tracks on our hands). In order to provide Baroni and Hutter with the proper instrumental framework, Neill enlisted the support of cohorts like guitarist Eddie Angel (of Los Straitjackets fame), sax man Archie Thompson and drummer Craig ‘Flash’ Packham, with Neill himself overlaying lead and rhythm guitars. The result is All Grown Up, a faithfully prepared (and mainly mono-mixed) amalgam of unbridled rock tracks that clock in at a Ramones-like two-and-a-half minutes apiece, featuring Baroni’s saxes-with-axes classic “Live the Life,” Hutter’s sensually exotic take on “House of Bamboo,” not to mention a tour-de-force rendering of Mel Larson’s “Little Lil,” with Baroni’s lead vocals authentically distorting like a Little Richard 45. And in case anyone’s forgotten what real country is supposed to sound like, there’s the Baroni-penned “Brown Eyed Boy,” a lilting Loretta Lynn pastiche that belies the murderous intent described within.

Hi-Voltage Biography

Featuring a classic rockabilly sound, Hi-Voltage hails from Edinburgh, Scotland. Formed in 1999, the band tours internationally, playing at music festivals such as Rhythm Riot in the U.K. and Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender in the U.S. The band’s latest release is I Gotta Gun from Rollin Records, 2008.

Band members:
Keith Turner - Vocals
Paul Paterson - Lead Guitar
Matt Curtis - Doghouse Bass
Ian Morris - Drums/Vocals
Kenny Tomlinson - Sax

Guana Batz Biography

The Guana Batz were formed in 1983 in Feltham, Middlesex.

The groups initial line up consisted of Pip Hancox (vocals), Stuart Osbourne (guitar), Dave ‘Diddle’ Turner (drums) Mick Wigfall (Double Bass). This line up didn’t relase any material and so Stuart told Mick he favoured an electric bass at that time and that’s how Mick White replaced him. Then in 1984, the Guana Batz opted for a double bass player again, which was Sam Sardi.

In May 1987, Diddle decided to quit the band as he had decided by then that the hectic touring schedule was beyond him, and elected to dedicate his life to the pursuit of ‘love and money’ (his building job and his girlfriend). He was replaced by former Get Smart sticksman, Johnny Bowler, who now plays Slap Bass for the band, with John Buck on drums.

Diddle sadly died in the summer of 2001 from a stroke, he is sadly missed by all his friends and family.

Johnny Bowler now plays bass for the band, having started out as their drummer. He too lives in San Diego

MEMBERS

Pip: Voice
Stuart Osbourne: Guitar
Johnny Bowler: Drums
John Buck: Drums

Foggy Mountain Rockers Biography

Foggy Mountain Rockers is a German rockabilly band that has been active since 1992.

It all started in a little yard shed in the year 1992 where five Rock `n´ Roll maniacs out of the area around Bonn, Germany got together to start a band. They tried a lot of different things, discussed back and forth trying to find their style. They didn’t just want to cover but were determined to create their own music, incorporating each musician’s favorite feel in order to produce their own compositions based on motives of the British Teddyboy Rock `n´ Roll with influences of Skiffle and Country music.

The small yard shed was only a temporary “new home”. When Jörg “Paul” Webber joined the band as second guitarist, he offered his parents’ basement as a new place to jam. At around the same time the drummer was replaced by an ideal alternative: Sven Schürmann.

At this point in time the members of the band were as follows: Heiko Piecha (vocals), Mario Oehlmann (guitar), Jörg “Paul” Webber (guitar), Frank “Jummi” Jungbluth (bass), Sven Schürmann (drums) and Domenico “Duck” Todaro (percussion).

In this set-up the band performed their first concerts in the Cologne/Bonn area. In the year 1993, through the achievement of a 3rd place at the Rock `n´ Roll-Newcomer-Festival in Bielefeld, the band became known in regions beyond their home base as well. The five musicians now released their first sample recordings.

El Rio Trio Biography

El Rio Trio is a Dutch Rockabilly, Riobilly band, formed in 2001 in Amsterdam, Netherlands and currently recording for Tombstone Records.

Current members

* Bopper – Contrabass, vocals (2001–present)
* Hans – Drums, backing vocals (2001–present)
* Richard – Rhythm Guitar, Blues Harp, vocals (2001–present)
* Wouter - Lead Guitar, vocals (2006-present)

Past members

* Alex – Lead Guitar, vocals (2001–2006)

Darrel Higham Biography

Darrel Higham (born January 5, 1970) is an English rockabilly guitarist.

Higham started playing lead guitar with British rockabilly bands in the late 1980s. By the mid-1990s, he had created the band that would become his main gigging and recording project: Darrel Higham & The Enforcers. Although The Enforcers would go on to become one of the most popular UK Rockabilly bands of their time, it was Higham’s solo projects that would get him far greater recognition, including session work as guitarist with the likes of Chrissie Hynde[1], Jeff Beck, Rocky Burnette, Billy Lee Riley, Shakin’ Stevens (on the 1999 UK tour). Eddie Cochran’s last road band - The Kelly Four - employed Higham as their front man for a 6 month period in 1992 for gigs and recordings in the US.

In 1996, he also appeared in London’s Prince Of Wales Theatre playing the role of Scotty Moore and Eddie Cochran for 8 months in a revival of Jack Good’s Elvis: The Musical.[1] This would lead to further roles as Eddie Cochran in touring theatre shows around the UK for a couple of years afterwards.

He is currently playing guitar for Imelda May

Cave Catt Sammy Biography

Hailing from San Antonio, TX since forming in high school in 1997, Cave Catt Sammy exhibit maturation and a darker lyrical content with their self penned material. They also conjure up learned covers by greats such as Jerry Reed (“Your Money Makes You Purty”) and Roy Orbison (“Cast Iron Arm”, originally recorded for Decca by Peanuts Wilson). No doubt their youthful enthusiasm has been tempered by 5 years of hard national touring and international festival appearances.

Cave Catt Sammy’s previous release, Love Me Like Crazy (their Rubric Records debut) perked the ears of national publications. Articles appeared in Guitar Player, No Depression, Goldmine, Atomic and Country Standard Time. The core band of leader Beau Sample on vocal & upright bass, Steve Scott on guitar, Dustin Hutchinson on Acoustic Guitar and Paul Ward on drums have added tenor sax player Ruben Lara. This adds a bit more raunch and authenticity to the proceedings.

Go Cat Go Story

I first met Darren Spears late on a summer night in 1986. he was sitting on a picnic bench in his backyard strumming an acoustic and singing Elvis ballads to his dog. His voice was beautiful - smooth and resonant, strong and distinct. I was completely wowed.Later that year I met drummer Lance LeBeau who was soon telling me his dreams for starting a band. One day we were at a junk yard when Darren drove by on a fork lift. We had no idea that he worked there. "There's the guy who sings like Elvis," I said. They exchanged numbers and made vague plans to get together.
Late summer of 1988 they finally met up in Lance's basement, instruments in hand. They rounded up some high school friends to fill out the empty spots. The guitar player wanted to play Led Zeppelin and the bass guitar player, Paul Turley, was willing to play anything. At the end of a very long afternoon, Lance and Darren got them through a version of Gene Vincent's "Baby Blue." There was a spark.
A year passed before Lance, Darren, and Paul got together again. Darren called Lance and said, "Listen to this!" Lance heard someone picking "Mystery Train" on the other end. It was awesome. "Who is that?" Lance had to know. Darren laughed his dirty old man laugh. I could picture him wringing his hands with glee. "Oh, just an old friend of the family. D'you want to get together?" This time it was in front of Darren's neighbor's garage. Bill Hull, the mystery "Mystery Train" picker insisted that he was "just" a rhythm player while Darren shook his head and laughed. There was a bigger spark.

Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps

Like so many of his contemporaries in rock 'n' roll, the young Gene Vincent served an apprenticeship amidst a poor community in the deep South, integrating his country music roots with the rhythms of R&B. Vincent Eugene Craddock, born February 11, 1935, showed his first real interest in music while his family lived in Munden Point, VA, near the North Carolina line where they ran an old country store. Gene acquired his first guitar at the age of 12 when he was visiting a friend in West Virginia who had a guitar-playing sister. This buddy gave Gene the guitar and told him to keep it, a gesture that baffled Gene, not knowing if the gift was out of fate or just a friend trying to get rid of the sister's practicing sounds. Passers-by would sit on the porch as a teenage Vincent played the blues, gospel and country tunes of the day. His father (Ezekiah Jackson Craddock) and mother (Mary Louise) eventually gave up the store and moved back to Norfolk, VA. Gene dropped out of school to serve in the military. In February of 1952 he joined the US Navy, but would never see any military action.
Three years later during a July weekend, while still in the navy, Gene had an accident while riding his brand new Triumph motorcycle. A woman in a Chrysler ran a red light, hit Gene and put him into the naval hospital with a severely smashed left leg. By all accounts Gene's doctors were considering amputation but he begged his mother not to allow the operation. He was released from the navy and was to spend the rest of 1955 in and out of the hospital. His leg remained severely damaged and steel brace was attached. The navy may have lost a sailor, but the world gained a rock 'n' roll legend.
In September 1955 Gene was well enough to attend and see Hank Snow's All Star Jamboree in Norfolk, VA, brought into the town by the local country radio station WCMS, the hottest station in town. This show featured country stars: Cowboy Copas, the Louvin Brothers and Jimmy Rogers as well as a young hillbilly cat from Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis Presley. At that time Gene was 5' 9" tall, weighed 150 pounds (he gained weight in the late 60's), had dark curly hair, brown eyes, enjoyed swimming, was an avid football fan and his favorite food was a cheeseburger.

By early 1956, his leg still in plaster, Gene began hanging around this radio station occasionally singing with the staff band, The Virginians. He regularly appeared on WCMS's Country Showtime program and would perform a song called "Be Bop A Lula."

Crazy Cavan & The Rhythm Rockers

It was during the early sixties that the popularity of Rock 'n' Roll music was at it's lowest. 1960 saw the media pushing sloppy Bobbie and Frankie type crap and watered down Elvis look-alikes, etc., until the explosion of the Liverpool Beat groups came and everything. Amongst teenagers at this time, to mention even the words "rock 'n'roll", brought scorn. (Ironic really, when you consider that even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones relied on Chuck Berry songs). Teddy Boys were labelled along with the Greasers and the Ton-up boys as "Rockers" for their love of the 50's Rock 'n' roll music, which by now was considered out-dated. If you went to a dance you saw only beatgroups playing the charthits of the time. So if you was an "oddball" who still loved real wild Rock 'n' Roll - it was impossible to find. The answer, as far as five teenage Teddy Boys from Newport, South Wales, were oncerned, was to play it themselves.

Rip Carson Story

Rip Carson and The Twilight Trio was formed in the hot summer of 97’. The band started out with Rip Carson slappin’ bass and singing. Then Rip Carson found Reece Linley to play bass and Rip switched over to lead guitar. Since the early days of the band they have gone through major lineup changes. Once Rip Carson met Danny Angulo and heard his amazing picking a bond was instantly formed.

Rip Carson switched to just singing and playing rhythm guitar with Danny on lead. Then next addition was of Charles Henning on drums. As soon as all the elements came together they have had a tight unique sound all there own since. According to Rip Carson he has been searching for these boys his whole life, and now that he has found them they are going to the top.

Scotty Moore biography

Scotty Moore is one of the great pioneers of rock guitar. As the guitarist on Elvis Presley's Sun Recordings, he may have done more than anyone else to establish the basic vocabulary of rockabilly guitar licks, as heard on classic singles like "That's All Right," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Baby Let's Play House," and "Mystery Train." Moore took the stinging licks common to both country music and blues, and not only combined elements of country & western and R&B, but added a rich tone through heavier amplification. His concise, sharp phrasing, and knack for knowing both what to play and when not to overplay were perfect accents to Presley's vocals. Although his Sun riffs may be his most famous, Moore in fact continued to play on Presley records until the late '60s and laid down some of his best
accompaniments to the star on RCA discs. Unsurprisingly, the best of these were in Elvis' early RCA years in the 1950s, when Moore added more wattage and recklessness to his riffs to come out with classic solos on "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," and "Too Much," among others.

Vince Taylor biography

Vince Taylor was born Brian Maurice Holden on July 14th 1939 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England.
In 1946, his family immigrated to America and settled in New Jersey where Brian's father took work in a coal mine.

By 1955, his sister married Joe Barbera aka “Joe Singer”, who was claimed by some to have been Joe Barbera of Hanna-Barbera productions, the successful animated cartoon company who had produced Tom & Jerry cartoons. As a result, the Holdens moved to California where Brian attended Hollywood High School and studied radio and weather reports. He eventually took flying lessons at Glendale School and obtained a pilot's license.
In 1957, impressed by the music of Bill Haley, Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley, Brian began to sing at parties, school proms and amateur gigs. Backed by a local band, he started playing for the benefit of the American Legion as well as

Johnny Cash biography

Johnny Cash was one of the most imposing and influential figures in post-World War II country music. With his deep, resonant baritone and spare, percussive guitar, he had a basic, distinctive sound. Cash didn't sound like Nashville, nor did he sound like honky tonk or rock & roll. He created his own subgenre, falling halfway between the blunt emotional honesty of folk, the rebelliousness of rock & roll, and the world-weariness of country. Cash's career coincided with the birth of rock & roll, and his rebellious attitude and simple, direct musical attack shared a lot of similarities with rock. However, there was a deep sense of history -- as he would later illustrate with his series of historical albums -- that kept him forever tied with country. And he was one of
country music's biggest stars of the '50s and '60s, scoring well over 100 hit singles.

Cash was born and raised in Arkansas, moving to Dyess when he was three. By the time he was 12 years old, he had begun writing his own songs. He was inspired by the country songs he had heard on the radio. While he was in high school, he sang on the Arkansas radio station KLCN. Cash graduated from high school in 1950, moving to Detroit to work in an auto factory for a brief while. With the outbreak of the Korean War, he enlisted in the Air Force. While he was in the Air Force, Cash bought his first guitar and taught himself to play. He began writing songs in earnest, including "Folsom Prison Blues." Cash left the Air Force in 1954, married a Texas woman named Vivian Leberto, and moved to Memphis, where he took a radio announcing course at a broadcasting school on the GI Bill. During the evenings, he played country music in a trio that also consisted of guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. The trio occasionally played for free on a local radio station, KWEM, and tried to secure gigs and an audition at Sun Records.

Eddie Cochran biography

Somehow, time has not accorded Eddie Cochran quite the same respect as other early rockabilly pioneers like Buddy Holly, or even Ricky Nelson or Gene Vincent. This is partially attributable to his very brief lifespan as a star: he only had a couple of big hits before dying in a car crash during a British tour in 1960. He was in the
same league as the best rockabilly stars, though, with a brash, fat guitar sound that helped lay the groundwork for the power chord. He was also a good songwriter and singer, celebrating the joys of teenage life — the parties, the music, the adolescent rebellion — with an economic wit that bore some similarities to Chuck Berry. Cochran was more lighthearted and less ironic than Berry, though, and if his work was less consistent and not as penetrating, it was almost always exuberant.

Cochran's mid-'50s beginnings in the record industry are a bit confusing. His family had moved to Southern California around 1950, and in 1955 he made his first recordings as half of the Cochran Brothers. Here's the confusing part: although the other half of the act was really named Hank Cochran, he was not Eddie's brother. (Hank Cochran would become a noted country songwriter in the 1960s.) Eddie was already an accomplished rockabilly guitarist and singer on these early sides, and he started picking up some session work as well, also finding time to make demos and write songs with Jerry Capehart, who became his manager.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller biography

A complete biography of the lives of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and their contribution to rock & roll could easily take up an entire book. Very simply, Leiber and Stoller are two of the most important songwriters of the early days of rock & roll. Although they had penned songs for R&B artists such as Jimmy Witherspoon, Floyd Dixon, and Charles Brown in the early '50s, Leiber and Stoller more or less exploded onto the rock scene in 1953 by writing "Hound Dog" for Big Mama Thornton (later to be covered by Elvis). From that point on, the duo composed and produced a string of hits that include some of the most instantly recognizable songs in rock history. They were also pushing the art of rock songwriting (and record production) into, at the time, uncharted territory. As is noted by critic Greg Shaw in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll: "They were the true architects of pop/rock...Their signal achievement was the marriage of rhythm & blues in its most primal form to the pop tradition."

Buddy Holly biography

Buddy Holly is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll -- he had his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded. Holly was unique, his legendary status and his impact on popular music all the more extraordinary for having been achieved in barely 18 months. Among his rivals, Bill Haley was there first and established rock & roll music; Elvis Presley objectified the sexuality implicit in the music, selling hundreds of millions of records in the process, and defined one aspect of the youth and charisma needed for stardom; and Chuck Berry defined the music's roots in blues along with some of the finer points of its sexuality, and its youthful orientation (and, in the process, intermixed all of these elements). Holly's influence was just as far-reaching as these others, if far more subtle and more distinctly musical in nature. In a career lasting from the spring of 1957 until the winter of 1958-1959 -- less time than Elvis had at the top before the army took him (and less time, in fact, than Elvis spent in the army) -- Holly became the single most influential creative force in early rock & roll.

Born in Lubbock, TX, on September 7, 1936, Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holley (he later dropped the "e") was the youngest of four children. A natural musician from a musical family, he was proficient on guitar, banjo, and mandolin by age 15 and was working as part of a duo with his boyhood friend Bob Montgomery, with whom he had also started writing songs. By the mid-'50s, Buddy & Bob, as they billed themselves, were playing what they called "western and bop"; Holly, in particular, was listening to a lot of blues and R&B and finding it compatible with country music. He was among those young Southern men who heard and saw Elvis perform in the days when the latter was signed to Sam Phillips' Sun Records -- indeed, Buddy & Bob played as an opening act for Elvis when he played the area around Lubbock in early 1955, and Holly saw the future direction of his life and career.

Link Wray biography

Link Wray may never get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but his contribution to the language of rockin' guitar would still be a major one, even if he had never walked into another studio after cutting "Rumble." Quite simply, Link Wray invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists. Listen to any of the tracks he recorded between that landmark instrumental in 1958 through his Swan recordings in the early '60s and you'll hear the blueprints for heavy metal, thrash, you name it. Though rock historians always like to draw a nice, clean line between the distorted electric guitar work that fuels early blues records to the late-'60s Hendrix-Clapton-Beck-Page-Townshend mob, with no stops in between, a quick spin of any of the sides Wray recorded during his golden decade punches holes in that theory right quick. If a direct line can be traced forward from a black blues musician crankin' up his amp and playing with a ton of violence and aggression to a young white guy doing a mutated form of same, the line points straight to Link Wray, no contest. Pete Townshend summed it up for more guitarists than he probably realized when he said, "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and "'Rumble,'" I would have never picked up a guitar."

Everything that was handed down to today's current crop of headbangers from the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Who can be traced back to the guy from Dunn, NC, who started out in 1955 recording for Starday as a member of Lucky Wray & the Palomino Ranch Hands. You see, back in the early '50s, it was a different ball game altogether. Rock & roll hadn't become a national event in the United States yet, and if you were young and white and wanted to be in the music business, you had two avenues for possible career moves. You could be a pop-mush crooner like Perry Como or a hillbilly singer like the late Hank Williams, and that was about it. With country music all around him as a youth in North Carolina, the choice was obvious; Wray joined forces with his brothers Vernon and Doug, forming Lucky Wray & the Lazy Pine Wranglers, later changing the band name to the spiffier-sounding Palomino Ranch Hands. By the end of 1955, they had relocated outside of Washington, D.C., and added Shorty Horton on bass. With Link, Horton, and brothers Doug and Vernon ("Lucky," named after his gambling fortunes) handling drums and lead vocals respectively, they fell in with some local songwriters, and the results made it to vinyl as an EP on the local Kay label, with the rest of the sides being leased to Starday Records down in Texas.

But by 1958, the music had changed, and so had Wray's life. With a lung missing from a bout with tuberculosis during his stint in the Korean War, Link was advised by his doctor to let brother Vernon do all the vocalizing. So Link started stretching out more and more on the guitar, coming up with one instrumental after another. By this time, the band had sweated down to a trio, and changed its name to the Ray Men. After a brief flirtation as a teen idol -- changing his name to Ray Vernon -- the third Wray brother became the group's producer/manager. Armed with a 1953 Gibson Les Paul, a dinky Premier amp, an Elvis sneer, and a black leather jacket, Link started playing the local record hops around the D.C. area with disc jockey Milt Grant, who became his de facto manager. One night during a typical set, says Link, "They wanted me to play a stroll. I didn't know any, so I made one up. I made up "'Rumble.'"

"Rumble" was originally issued on Archie Bleyer's Cadence label back in 1958, and Bleyer was ready to pass on it when his daughter expressed excitement for the primitive instrumental, saying it reminded her of the rumble scenes in West Side Story. Bleyer renamed it (what its original title was back then, if any, is now lost to the mists of time), and "Rumble" jumped to number 16 on the national charts, despite the fact that it was banned from the radio in several markets (including New York City), becoming Wray's signature tune to this day. But despite the success and notoriety of "Rumble," it turned out to be Wray's only release on Cadence. Bleyer, under attack for putting out a record that was "promoting teenage gang warfare," wanted to clean Link and the boys up a bit, sending them down to Nashville to cut their next session with the Everly Brothers' production team calling the shots. The Wrays didn't see it that way, so they immediately struck a deal with Epic Records. Link's follow-up to "Rumble" was the pounding, uptempo "Rawhide." The Les Paul had been swapped for a Danelectro Longhorn model (with the longest neck ever manufactured on a production line guitar), its "lipstick tube" pickups making every note of Link's power chords sound like he was strumming with a tin can lid for a pick. The beat and sheer blister of it all was enough to get it up to number 23 on the national charts, and every kid who wore a black leather jacket and owned a hot rod had to have it.

But a pattern was emerging that would continue throughout much of Wray's early career; the powers that be figured that if they could tone him down and dress him up, they'd sell way more records in the bargain. What all these producers and record execs failed to realize was the simplest of truths: if Duane Eddy twanged away for white, teenage America, Link Wray played for juvenile delinquent hoods, plain and simple. By the end of 1960, Wray found himself in the mucho-confining position of recording with full orchestras, doing dreck like "Danny Boy" and "Claire de Lune." But when these gems failed to chart as well, relations with Epic came to a close, and by years' end, Link and Vern formed their own label, Rumble Records.

Rumble's three lone issues included the original version of Wray's next big hit, "Jack the Ripper." If "Rumble" sounded like gang warfare, then "Jack the Ripper" sounded like a high-speed car chase, which is exactly what it became the movie soundtrack for in the Richard Gere version of Breathless. Link's amp was recorded at the end of a hotel staircase for maximum echo effect, while he pumped riffs through it that would become the seeds of a million metal songs. After kicking up noise locally for a couple of years, it was going through another period of disc jockey spins when Swan Records of Philadelphia picked it up and got it nationwide attention. Certainly Wray was at his most prolific during his tenure with Swan, and label president Bernie Binnick gave Link and Vernon pretty much free rein to do what they wanted. Turning the family chicken coop into a crude, three-track studio, the Wray family spent the next decade recording and experimenting with sounds and styles.

At least now they could succeed -- or fail -- on their own terms. Most of these sides were leased out as one-shot deals to a zillion microscopic labels under a variety of names like the Moon Men, the Spiders, the Fender Benders, etc. What fueled this period of maximum creativity is open to debate. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Link and the boys honed their particular brand of rockin' mayhem working some of the grimiest joints on the face of the planet when these tracks were cut. When Swan label chief Binnick was questioned as to how he could issue such wild-ass material, he would smile, throw his hands up in the air and say, "What can you do with an animal like that?"

As the new decade dawned, Link Wray's sound and image were updated for the hippie marketplace. Wray's career fortunes waxed and waned throughout the '70s, a muddle of albums in a laid-back style doing little to enhance his reputation. After a stint backing '70s rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, Wray went solo again, taking most of Gordon's band (including drummer Anton Fig) with him. But if the studio sides were a bit uneven, (Wray recorded several albums in the '80s backed by nothing more than a clumsy drum machine), he still could pack a wallop live, and his rare forays on the stages of the world spread the message that rock & roll's original wild guitar man still had plenty of gas left in the tank.

Wray married and moved to Denmark in 1980, recording the stray album for the foreign market, and throughout the 1990s he was still capable of strapping on a guitar and making it sound nastier than anyone in his sixties had a right to. And his back catalog got a lot attention in the '90s when the grunge revolution hit, with several young, hip guitarists citing Wray as an influence, and his early work continued to be reissued under various imprints. He recorded two new albums for Ace Records, Shadowman in 1997 and Barbed Wire in 2000 and toured up until his death in Copenhagen on November 5, 2005.

Chuck Berry biography

Of all the early breakthrough rock & roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers. Quite simply, without him there would be no Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, nor a myriad others. There would be no standard "Chuck Berry guitar intro," the instrument's clarion call to get the joint rockin' in any setting. The clippety-clop rhythms of rockabilly would not have been mainstreamed into the now standard 4/4 rock & roll beat. There would be no obsessive wordplay by modern-day tunesmiths; in fact, the whole history (and artistic level) of rock & roll songwriting would have been much poorer without him. Like Brian Wilson said, he wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock & roll beats." Those who do not claim him as a seminal influence or profess a liking for his music and showmanship show their ignorance of rock's development as well as his place as the music's first great creator. Elvis may have fueled rock & roll's imagery, but Chuck Berry was its heartbeat and original mindset.

He was born Charles Edward Anderson Berry to a large family in St. Louis. A bright pupil, Berry developed a love for poetry and hard blues early on, winning a high school talent contest with a guitar-and-vocal rendition of Jay McShann's big band number, "Confessin' the Blues." With some local tutelage from the neighborhood barber, Berry progressed from a four-string tenor guitar up to an official six-string model and was soon working the local East St. Louis club scene, sitting in everywhere he could. He quickly found out that black audiences liked a wide variety of music and set himself to the task of being able to reproduce as much of it as possible. What he found they really liked -- besides the blues and Nat King Cole tunes -- was the sight and sound of a black man playing white hillbilly music, and Berry's showmanlike flair, coupled with his seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh verses to old favorites, quickly made him a name on the circuit. In 1954, he ended up taking over pianist Johnny Johnson's small combo and a residency at the Cosmopolitan Club soon made the Chuck Berry Trio the top attraction in the black community, with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm their only real competition.

But Berry had bigger ideas; he yearned to make records, and a trip to Chicago netted a two-minute conversation with his idol Muddy Waters, who encouraged him to approach Chess Records. Upon listening to Berry's homemade demo tape, label president Leonard Chess professed a liking for a hillbilly tune on it named "Ida Red" and quickly scheduled a session for May 21, 1955. During the session the title was changed to "Maybellene" and rock & roll history was born. Although the record only made it to the mid-20s on the Billboard pop chart, its overall influence was massive and groundbreaking in its scope. Here was finally a black rock & roll record with across-the-board appeal, embraced by white teenagers and Southern hillbilly musicians (a young Elvis Presley, still a full year from national stardom, quickly added it to his stage show), that for once couldn't be successfully covered by a pop singer like Snooky Lanson on Your Hit Parade. Part of the secret to its originality was Berry's blazing 24-bar guitar solo in the middle of it, the imaginative rhyme schemes in the lyrics, and the sheer thump of the record, all signaling that rock & roll had arrived and it was no fad. Helping to put the record over to a white teenage audience was the highly influential New York disc jockey Alan Freed, who had been given part of the writers' credit by Chess in return for his spins and plugs. But to his credit, Freed was also the first white DJ/promoter to consistently use Berry on his rock & roll stage show extravaganzas at the Brooklyn Fox and Paramount theaters (playing to predominately white audiences); and when Hollywood came calling a year or so later, also made sure that Chuck appeared with him in Rock! Rock! Rock!, Go, Johnny, Go!, and Mister Rock'n'Roll. Within a years' time, Chuck had gone from a local St. Louis blues picker making 15 dollars a night to an overnight sensation commanding over a hundred times that, arriving at the dawn of a new strain of popular music called rock & roll.

The hits started coming thick and fast over the next few years, every one of them about to become a classic of the genre: "Roll Over Beethoven," "Thirty Days," "Too Much Monkey Business," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "You Can't Catch Me," "School Day," "Carol," "Back in the U.S.A.," "Little Queenie," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Johnny B. Goode," and the tune that defined the moment perfectly, "Rock and Roll Music." Berry was not only in constant demand, touring the country on mixed package shows and appearing on television and in movies, but smart enough to know exactly what to do with the spoils of a suddenly successful show business career. He started investing heavily in St. Louis area real estate and, ever one to push the envelope, opened up a racially mixed nightspot called the Club Bandstand in 1958 to the consternation of uptight locals. These were not the plans of your average R&B singers who contented themselves with a wardrobe of flashy suits, a new Cadillac, and the nicest house in the black section. Berry was smart with plenty of business savvy and was already making plans to open an amusement park in nearby Wentzville. When the St. Louis hierarchy found out that an underage hat-check girl Berry hired had also set up shop as a prostitute at a nearby hotel, trouble came down on Berry like a sledgehammer on a fly. Charged with transporting a minor over state lines (the Mann Act), Berry endured two trials and was sentenced to federal prison for two years as a result.

He emerged from prison a moody, embittered man. But two very important things had happened in his absence. First, British teenagers had discovered his music and were making his old songs hits all over again. Second, and perhaps most important, America had discovered the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, both of whom based their music on Berry's style, with the Stones' early albums looking like a Berry song list. Rather than being resigned to the has-been circuit, Berry found himself in the midst of a worldwide beat boom with his music as the centerpiece. He came back with a clutch of hits ("Nadine," "No Particular Place to Go," "You Never Can Tell"), toured Britain in triumph, and appeared on the big screen with his British disciples in the groundbreaking T.A.M.I. Show in 1964.

Berry had moved with the times and found a new audience in the bargain and when the cries of "yeah-yeah-yeah" were replaced with peace signs, Berry altered his live act to include a passel of slow blues and quickly became a fixture on the festival and hippie ballroom circuit. After a disastrous stint with Mercury Records, he returned to Chess in the early '70s and scored his last hit with a live version of the salacious nursery rhyme, "My Ding a Ling," yielding Berry his first official gold record. By decade's end, he was as in demand as ever, working every oldies revival show, TV special, and festival that was thrown his way. But once again, troubles with the law reared their ugly head and 1979 saw Berry headed back to prison, this time for income tax evasion. Upon release this time, the creative days of Chuck Berry seemed to have come to an end. He appeared as himself in the Alan Freed bio-pic, American Hot Wax, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but steadfastly refused to record any new material or even issue a live album. His live performances became increasingly erratic, with Berry working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances that did much to tarnish his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers alike. In 1987, he published his first book, Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, and the same year saw the film release of what will likely be his lasting legacy, the rockumentary Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll, which included live footage from a 60th-birthday concert with Keith Richards as musical director and the usual bevy of superstars coming out for guest turns. But for all of his off-stage exploits and seemingly ongoing troubles with the law, Chuck Berry remains the epitome of rock & roll, and his music will endure long after his private escapades have faded from memory. Because when it comes down to his music, perhaps John Lennon said it best, "If you were going to give rock & roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."

Bill Haley biography

Bill Haley is the neglected hero of early rock & roll. Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly are ensconced in the heavens, transformed into veritable constellations in the rock music firmament, their music respected by writers and scholars as well as the record-buying public, virtually every note of music they ever recorded theoretically eligible for release. And among the living rock & roll pioneers, Chuck Berry is given his due in the music marketplace and by the history books, and Bo Diddley is acknowledged appropriately in the latter, even if his music doesn't sell the way it should. Yet Bill Haley -- who was there before any of them, playing rock & roll before it even had a name, and selling it in sufficient quantities out of a small Pennsylvania label to attract attention from the major labels before Presley was even recording in Memphis -- is barely represented by more than a dozen of his early singles, and recognized by the average listener for exactly two songs among the hundreds that he recorded; and he's often treated as little more than a glorified footnote, an anomaly that came and went very quickly, in most histories of the music. The truth is, Bill Haley came along a lot earlier than most people realize and the histories usually acknowledge, and he went on making good music for years longer than is usually recognized.

The central event in Haley's career was the single "Rock Around the Clock" topping the charts for eight weeks in the spring and summer of 1955, an event that most music historians identify as the dawn of the rock & roll era. Getting the song there, however, took more than a year, a period in which the band had already done unique and essential service in the cause of bringing rock & roll into the world, with the million-selling single "Shake, Rattle and Roll" to their credit; equally important, in the three years before that, Haley and his band had already broken new ground with the singles of "Rocket 88," "Rock the Joint," and "Crazy, Man, Crazy."

Born in Highland Park, MI, in 1925, Haley was blind in one eye from birth, and, as a consequence, suffered from terrible shyness as a boy. The family moved to Boothwyn, PA, during the mid-'30s, where Haley developed a strong love for country music and began playing guitar and singing; by 14, he had left school in the hope of pursuing a career in music. He bounced through a few country bands based in the Middle Atlantic states and also tried to establish himself as a singing and yodeling cowboy. His first big break came in 1944, when he replaced Kenny Roberts -- who was being drafted -- in the Downhomers, with whom Haley made his first appearance on records. Haley left the group in 1946 and went through several other bands before returning to his home in Chester, PA, where he initially hoped to get some work as a DJ. Instead, he formed a new band, the Four Aces of Western Swing, with keyboardman Johnny Grande, bassist Al Rex, and steel guitar player Billy Williamson, and signed a contract with Cowboy Records, a new label formed by James Myers, a composer, musician, and publisher, and his partner, Jack Howard. Their first record was released in 1948, a version of "Candy Kisses"; by 1949, the group had changed its name to the Saddlemen and began moving between labels, including liaisons with the fledgling Atlantic Records, Ivin Ballen's Gotham Records, and Ed Wilson's Keystone Records, before finally settling at Holiday Records, a small label owned by David Miller, in 1951. Their first release, done at Miller's insistence, was a cover of "Rocket 88," a song that originated out of Sam Phillips' fledgling recording operation in Memphis, courtesy of Jackie Brenston. It was a pumping piece of sexually suggestive, rollicking R&B, and Haley and the Saddlemen simply put a broader, slightly loping country boogie sound onto it and boosted the rhythm section, while a lead guitar (probably played by Danny Cedrone) noodled some blues licks on the break. Haley hadn't liked the idea of doing the song, but Miller wanted it, and the result -- though no one knew it at the time -- was the first white-band cover of what is now regarded by many scholars as the first real rock & roll song.

Just to put this in perspective, rock & roll is usually written about as a phenomenon (and a reaction to) the complacency of the Eisenhower era. But Haley had released what amounted to a rock & roll single in 1951, when "Ike" wasn't even yet running to be president, the country was still mired in Korea, and John Kennedy not yet even a senator. Howlin' Wolf was still based in Memphis and cutting sides for Sam Phillips, while a 15-year-old Elvis Presley was in tenth grade. The members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were still in grammar school; Lonnie Donegan was still known as Anthony Donegan and thinking of becoming an entertainer; and Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies had not yet even met. And Big Bill Broonzy was about to introduce American blues to England.

At the time, "Rocket 88" didn't seem to matter too much in terms of sales, as it was neither fish nor fowl; not good enough R&B to eclipse Brenston's original among black record buyers, nor sufficiently a country record the way white audiences or the radio stations that catered to them wanted. No one even had a name for what it was; a "race record" as the trades called discs done in a style that seemed aimed at black listeners, but one done by a white band in a kind of country style. Indeed, the band itself remained strangely anonymous; Miller had seen to it that there were no publicity photos of Bill Haley & the Saddlemen, a calculated effort to obscure their race, though the band's name and the country ballad B-sides to those early singles pretty much told who they really were. That debut single sold just a few thousand copies regionally, as did its follow-up, "Green Tree Boogie." Meanwhile, when Haley and his band played, they and their business manager, Jim Ferguson, began to notice that it was the younger audience members who responded best to the R&B-style songs that Miller had them doing. They also saw all around them that enthusiasm for country music was flat, and that if they were looking for a hit, it likely wasn't going to come from this new direction.

They were trying all kinds of permutations of country and R&B and getting some response, but they didn't know what it exactly was that they were doing musically. Then came "Rock the Joint," their first release on Miller's new Essex Records label; it had a beat, it had a memorable catch phrase, and it had a great performance at its core (including the very same solo that Danny Cedrone would later use on "Rock Around the Clock"), and it sold well enough that the band had to go on tour promoting it. One of the places where it sold well was Cleveland, where DJ Alan Freed picked up on the song; it was immediately after this that Freed began referring to the music embodied by "Rock the Joint," music that he played every night on his show, as "rock & roll," thus giving Haley a good deal of justification for his later claim to have been in on the birth of the music before anyone ever knew it. [Note: Marshall Lyttle remembers "Rock the Joint" as the song Freed was playing during an appearance by the band on his radio show, when he began using the phrase "rock & roll" -- scholars who agree with the Haley connection also often attribute Freed's inspiration to the later single "Crazy, Man, Crazy," while other historians say that Freed appropriated the phrase from Wild Bill Moore's "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll".]

By this time, the bandmembers, all well into their 30s and long past being teenagers, were taking what amounted to a crash course in what that audience wanted; at Ferguson's suggestion, they played hundreds of high-school dances, not normally a venue that a professional country band would bother with. In the process, they also changed their image and name. By 1952, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen were history; instead, playing off of their leader's name and the celestial phenomenon called Halley's Comet, they became Bill Haley & His Comets. The cowboy hats and other country paraphernalia were junked as well. And they took a close look at the successful R&B stage acts of the time, especially the Treniers, and began working out wild quasi-acrobatic moves by their bass player and saxman, in particular, stuff that was unthinkable for a country band but seemingly what the kids devoured at dances.

Most important, they would try out material, phrases, and stage moves, seeing what worked and what didn't, in front of the teenage audiences they found in Pennsylvania; and they listened to the way that this teenaged audience talked. Haley tried to use phrases that he heard, and put them into this musical stew; some of what they came up with was pleasantly silly material like "Dance With a Dolly" and "Stop Beatin' Round the Mulberry Bush" (though even the latter had a guitar solo worth hearing more than once). But some of it, like "Rockin' Chair on the Moon," was years ahead of its time; and some of it, like "Crazy, Man, Crazy" -- a Haley original whose title came from a piece of teen slang that he'd heard -- did exactly what was intended, hitting the Top 20 on the pop charts in 1953, a first for a white band playing an R&B-style song.

Late that year, James Myers offered Haley and Miller a song that he had published (and, on paper, at least, co-authored as Jimmy De Knight) entitled "Rock Around the Clock." Written almost as a parody of R&B conventions, its principal composer was Max C. Freedman, a songwriter best remembered up to that time for his 1946 hit "Sioux City Sue," and also responsible for such songs as "Do You Believe in Dreams" and "Her Beaus Were Only Rainbows." Miller either genuinely didn't see the potential of the song, or else he didn't like the business arrangement that Myers had with Haley, because he refused to record it. After a few more attempts at cutting other songs for the teen market that simply didn't work, Haley and the band and their manager were ready to leave Miller and Essex Records. A meeting was set up with Milt Gabler, a producer at Decca Records, who not only liked the song and had no problem cutting it, but saw some serious potential in Bill Haley & His Comets, based on what Essex had done with them on "Rock the Joint" and "Crazy, Man, Crazy." A contract was signed, and on April 12, 1954, the band, with Danny Cedrone on lead guitar, did a two-song session in New York that yielded "Thirteen Women" -- a post-nuclear holocaust sex fantasy worthy of Hugh Hefner (who had only started up Playboy magazine a year earlier) -- and "Rock Around the Clock." It was released a month later and made the charts for one week at number 23, selling 75,000 copies, not bad but not very significant either. It was enough, however, for Gabler to schedule another session in early June, where the band recorded "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

That was the record that broke the band nationally on Decca, reaching number seven and selling over a million copies between late 1954 and early 1955. They followed it up quickly with "Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)," a jaunty piece that reached number 11 nationally and actually made the R&B charts for Haley, a first for him. Then, in early 1955, James Myers managed to get "Rock Around the Clock" placed in the juvenile delinquency drama The Blackboard Jungle, playing over the credits. The movie was a huge hit, and in its wake Decca re-released the song that spring. "Rock Around the Clock" shot up the charts this time, and the result was an eight-week run in the number-one spot; by some estimates, it became the second biggest worldwide-selling single after Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" (oddly enough, also a Decca release), 25-million copies sold worldwide.

The success of "Rock Around the Clock" took place while Elvis Presley had yet to chart a record nationally; at a point when Chuck Berry's very first single for Chess had barely been recorded; and when Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly weren't even close to auditioning for recording contracts. One has to visualize a reality in which Bill Haley & His Comets were the only established white rock & roll band, and the only white rock & roll stars in the world. Within a year, that would all change, but it was long enough for Haley and his band to become stars, with appearances on national television and a movie deal of their own. From the end of 1954 until the end of 1956, they would place nine singles into the Top 20, one of those at number one and three more in the Top Ten.

The Comets were one of the best rock & roll bands of their era, with a mostly sax-driven sound ornamented with heavy rhythm guitar from Haley, a slap-bass, and drumming with lots of rim-shots; they had the "blackest" sound of any white band working in 1953-1955. It wasn't always obvious then, and has been forgotten today, precisely how fluid their membership was, for all of the consistency of that sound. Haley's two original bandmates from his Four Aces days, Johnny Grande and Billy Williamson, were formal partners, joined to him at the hip legally, with fixed shares in the group's earnings; tenor saxman Joey D'Ambrosio, bassist Marshall Lytle, and drummer Dick Richards, by contrast, were hired employees earning 150 dollars a week plus expenses -- a respectable living for most working musicians in 1955 -- when "Rock Around the Clock" hit the top of the charts. Ironically, Danny Cedrone, whose guitar dominated that song and the key Essex hits "Rock the Joint" and "Crazy, Man, Crazy," died in an accident in July of 1954, and his successor, Franny Beecher, was earning 150 dollars a week when he worked with the band. In the late summer of 1955, with a number-one single to their credit and lots of work in front of them, D'Ambrosio, Lytle, and Richards all demanded raises, which Haley refused to grant them. They quit that month and formed a short-lived Comets soundalike unit called the Jodimars (taken from parts of their first names), who recorded for Capitol Records. Beecher was taken into the group as a full-time member (though not a partner) and remained with them until 1961, while D'Ambrosio's successor, Rudy Pompilli, became a core member of the band, working with them virtually without interruption for the next 19 years, until his death in 1975.

In the late spring of 1956, rock & roll changed again as Elvis Presley, who was younger, leaner, and a more fiercely sexual presence, emerged as a star; he not only made music that was as good as Haley's but he looked the role of a rock & roll star. The differences in their respective images could be summed up by examining the truest scenes in the movies that each did. Rock Around the Clock, starring Bill Haley & His Comets, was a highly fictionalized account of the band and its success, but it did capture something of the spirit of the early days of rock & roll, with some good performance clips; the comparable Elvis Presley movie was Loving You, in which the singer played a fictionalized version of himself, named Deke Rivers. In Loving You, when Deke Rivers performs in front of an audience and sets the girls screaming and swooning, his would-be manager comments, "If he'd gone on any longer, they'd be giving him their door keys." In Rock Around the Clock, by contrast, the single truest scene depicts a would-be promoter driving through rural Pennsylvania and chancing upon a dance where Haley and company are playing; he enters, sees hundreds of kids dancing to the band's music, and asks a woman being lifted up over the head of her partner, "Hey sister, what's that exercise you're getting?" She answers, exuberantly, legs in the air, "It's rock & roll!"

Haley's music was the soundtrack to a good time, whether dancing or more private recreation; Presley's music, at least where women were concerned, was an invitation to sexual fantasy about the singer. Nobody except the three Mrs. Haleys could have had sexual fantasies about pudgy, balding, dorky-looking Bill Haley. And, yet, Haley was every bit as outrageous and daring in what he got away with in his music as the worst accusations ever leveled against Presley; even Haley's bowdlerized version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" was the most overtly sexual song ever to reach the American Top Ten up to that time, and "Rock Around the Clock" wasn't very far behind. Though Max C. Freedman might've meant his song differently, taken literally in the true meaning of the word "rock" as it was used in 1953-1954, "Rock Around the Clock" was a bouncing, beguiling musical account of 24 hours of sexual activity, and the precursor to such numbers as "Reelin' & Rockin'" by Chuck Berry. Haley might've looked the part of the square trying to be cool once Presley came along, but on those two songs he was as culturally and morally subversive as the worst warnings of the anti-rock & roll zealots intimated.

Haley may not have seemed a cutting-edge artist after mid-1956, but he remained a force to be reckoned with in music for another year, cutting good singles -- including "Razzle-Dazzle," "Burn That Candle," and "See You Later Alligator" -- and several surprisingly strong albums. He did gradually lose touch with the teenage audience, and his square persona couldn't possibly compete with the likes of Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry, though the group always put on a good show. Additionally, overseas, where any visiting American artist was treated well, Haley was greeted like visiting royalty; he always had large and fiercely loyal audiences in England, France, and Germany, which would turn out in huge numbers to see him.

By 1959, Haley was no longer placing either singles or albums anywhere near the top of the charts. His brand of rock & roll, made up of R&B crossed with country boogie and honky tonk, was passé, and a switch to instrumentals didn't solve the problem of falling sales. None of this would have been so bad, except that Haley -- mostly through the horrendous job done by his business manager Jim Ferguson -- had managed to squander most of what he'd earned during the good years, and owed a crippling tax liability to the government as well. Contrary to the popular perception, he remained an active musician throughout the 1960s, recording for Warner Bros. and a brace of other U.S. labels, and he also found a lucrative performing and recording career in Mexico (where Haley, not Chubby Checker or Hank Ballard, started the "twist" craze). He pursued a music career while avoiding tax liens, and trying to keep a marriage and a collapsing publishing business together. Haley managed to pull it off, getting through the decade with some possessions still in his hands, mostly by juggling a lot of gigs in Mexico and Europe and taking lots of payments in cash. Curiously, during this period Haley himself became something of a rock & roll historian in interviews; perhaps sensitive to his own experience of being shunted aside, when he talked about the twist phenomenon, he went out of his way to credit Hank Ballard as the originator of the song, and always acknowledged his debt to Big Joe Turner for "Shake, Rattle and Roll."

By the late '60s, with the advent of the rock & roll revival, Haley suddenly found himself faced for the first time in a decade with major demand for his work in America. It couldn't have happened at a better time, because that same year, for the first time in more than ten years, he didn't owe anything to the government. The Internal Revenue Service had been seizing all of his royalties from Decca Records for a decade, and luckily for him, Decca (possibly thanks to Milt Gabler) had been honest in its accounting; in that time, sales of "Rock Around the Clock" and his other Decca hits, mostly overseas, had wiped out Haley's entire six-figure tax debt. And to top off the good news, Haley not only had a full concert schedule in front of him in the U.S.A., but major record labels interested in recording him; he ended up signing with Buddha/Kama Sutra Records for a pair of live albums. The next few years showed Haley in a triumphant comeback around the world. To top it all off, "Rock Around the Clock" even charted anew in the Top 40 during 1974 when it turned up as the theme music for the hit television series Happy Days during its first season.

By the 1970s, however, age and the ravages of time were starting to catch up on all concerned. Saxman Rudy Pompilli, who'd been with him since 1955, died in 1975, and Haley eventually retired from performing. During his final years, Haley developed severe psychological problems that left him delusional at least part of the time. By the time of his death in 1981, the process of reducing his role in the history of rock & roll had already begun, partly a result of ignorance on the part of the writers handling the histories by then, and also, to a degree, as a result of political correctness; he was white, and was perceived as having exploited R&B, and there were enough people like that in the early history who had to be written about but were easier to cast as "rebels."

In the years since his death, the surviving members of the Comets, including pianist Johnny Grande guitarist Franny Beecher, saxman Joey D'Ambrosio, bassist Marshall Lytle, and drummer Dick Richards, all in their 70s and 80s, have continued to work together and were still able to perform to sell-out crowds in Europe during the 1990s and early 2000s, doing Haley's classic repertory. Haley's own reputation has increased somewhat, particularly in the wake of Bear Family Records' release of two boxes covering his career from 1954 through 1969, and Roller Coaster Records' issuing of Haley's Essex Records sides. True, there are perhaps 45 songs on those 12 CDs of material that Haley should not have bothered recording, but there are hundreds more in those same collections, some of it dazzling and all of it constituting a serious body of solid, often inspired rock & roll, interspersed here and there with some good country sides. Perhaps little of the post-1957 stuff could set the whole world on fire, but Haley had already been there and done that, and still had a lot of good music to play.

The Sun Records Label Story

Sam C. Phillips was from Florence, Alabama. He had ambitions to be a lawyer, but had to drop out of high school to support his aunt and widowed mother. He became a disc jockey in 1942 at WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. After a series of jobs on other radio stations, he ended up on WREC in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1946. He was also promoting events at the Hotel Peabody in Memphis, and by 1950 had enough money to start a company to record local events and do custom recording. The company he formed was called Memphis Recording Service, with a small recording studio at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis. He developed contacts with Saul and Jules Bihari who owned Modern Records in Los Angeles and Sam's first recording was of Phineas Newborn, a jazz pianist, for them in June 1950.

A disc jockey on WHBQ named Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sam) came to Sam with the proposal to form a record label to record the many blues singers in and around Memphis. Dewey Phillips would run the label and Sam Phillips would record the music. The name of the record label was "It's The Phillips" The first and only record issued was It's The Phillips 9001/2, "Boogie in the Park"/"Gotta Let You Go" by Joe Hill Louis in August 1950. The record was unsuccessful, and Sam Phillips subsequently negotiated a contract with Modern Records for Joe Hill Louis recordings.

Phillips continued working for Modern Records, cutting sessions for B.B. King, Rosco Gordon and Walter Horton. In 1951, he also started an association with the Chess Brothers in Chicago. After recording Howlin' Wolf and Jackie Brenston, he offered to lease the masters to Chess. Modern Records was upset that Phillips had given Chess the first option on Brenston and Wolf recordings and after that used virtually nothing from the Memphis Recording service.

Jackie Brenston was a saxophone player in Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm band. Ike Turner had come to the Memphis Recording Service to record an automobile song he and the band had developed called "Rocket 88". Sam Phillips leased the song
to Chess records, where it was issued under the name "Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats." It became one of the biggest R&B hits of 1951.