Best of Bill Haley 1951-1954

Before Bill Haley began rocking around the clock tonight, he released singles with his group the Saddlemen. So what to call this new brand of music? Western swing mixed with polka? A fusion of country-western and 40's R&B set to a steady beat? Country boogie? Call it what you will, but this collection consists of A and B-sides of his singles on Holiday and later Essex Records, which veers closely to his later chart-toppers.

Clearly, Haley saw this R&B style music as his fugure, given by his own cover of Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88", which is considered by some to be the first R&R song and not "Rock Around the Clock," and Jimmy Preston's #6 R&B hit, "Rock This Joint," both included here. The latter definitely predicts his later style, with some piercing steel guitar reflecting the country roots, but it was also the song Alan Freed played over and over and yelling "rock and roll, everybody!" on the King of the Moondogs...Read more

Bill Haley usually gets his due for helping to kick off the rock & roll era with "Rock Around the Clock" in 1954, but as it happens, Haley had been cutting solid rock sides several years before that. Haley covered Jackie Brenston's epochal "Rocket '88" within a few months of its 1951 release with his Western swing outfit, Bill Haley & the Saddlemen, and after that it didn't take long for Haley and his bandmates to make with the boogie and add some strong proto-rockabilly material to their set. The result was a string of regional hits for the Essex label that eventually led to Haley's signing to Decca Records and the recording of the song that became both his greatest triumph and the millstone he could never escape. "The Best of Bill Haley and His Comets 1951-1954" is hardly the first album to skim the cream off Haley's pre-Decca hits (pick up "Rock the Joint" for a more complete picture of this era), but it's more concise and better sounding than most collections of Haley's Essex...Read more

For many artists, the public's perception of their career begins with a watershed moment. For Haley, that moment was the 1954 recording of "Rock Around the Clock," magnified by the song's re-appearance in the 1955 film "Blackboard Jungle." But also like many artists, Haley's career - nor what he was really famous for - was born in that seemingly single moment of inspiration. This collection shows off the years before the public's light bulb switched on, as Haley and His Comets transitioned from a western swing band to one of the (if not "the") earliest of rock 'n' roll acts.

Throughout the 40s Haley had made his way as a western swing artist. But when he signed with Essex Records in the early 50s, he began to cross-pollinate his country influences with beat-oriented R&B. The seeds of 1954's "Rock Around the Clock" can be heard loud and clear across the sixteen tracks anthologized here. What's particularly fine about these sides is their...Read more