

The sleeve notes conclude: "For six years Bill Haley was a musical director of Radio Station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania, and led his own band all through this period.

One source states that Haley started his career as "The Rambling Yodeler" in a country band, The Saddlemen. During the 1940s Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America as "Silver Yodeling Bill Haley". Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decide at some time or another, to be his own boss again – and he has been that ever since." These notes fail to account for his early band, known as the Four Aces of Western Swing. Eventually he got a job with a popular group known as the 'Down Homers' while they were in Hartford, Connecticut.

Bill hailey rock around the clock how to#
Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at an open-air park show, sang and yodelled with any band that would have him, and worked with a traveling medicine show.
Bill hailey rock around the clock full#
The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were hard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. The anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album Rock Around the Clock describe Haley's early life and career: "When Bill Haley was fifteen he left home with his guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame and fortune. One of his first appearances was in 1938 for a Bethel Junior baseball team entertainment event, performing guitar and songs when he was 13 years old. Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. Haley's father William Albert Haley (1900–1956) was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin, and his mother, Maude Green (1895–1955), who was originally from Ulverston in Lancashire, England, was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training. As a result of the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area, his father moved the family to Bethel Township, Pennsylvania, when Bill was seven years old. It is said that he adopted his trademark kiss curl over his right eye to draw attention from his left, but it also became his "gimmick", and added to his popularity. In 1929, the four-year-old Haley underwent an inner-ear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve, leaving him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. Haley was born Jin Highland Park, Michigan. In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.īiography Early life and career Haley has sold over 60 million records worldwide. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-selling hits such as " Rock Around the Clock", " See You Later, Alligator", " Shake, Rattle and Roll", " Rocket 88", " Skinny Minnie", and "Razzle Dazzle". William John Clifton Haley ( / ˈ h eɪ l i/ J– February 9, 1981) was an American rock and roll musician.
