ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK!!

Well I know I am old but not quite this old and no I didn't buy this track when it came out thank you!! . . . HOWEVER it is a seminal track for me in my introduction to music and I took this and a couple of others for granted somehow. It could have been that my brother Steve was somehow responsible but my parent's being almost exclusively classical in their tastes, it remains a mystery now that my earliest memory of Rock and Roll and Skiffle come from the family owning a 78' record player, wind up and with a horn and a very particular smell somehow. I recall the felt disc platter and the needles but the first 78 that I still have somewhere, that I heard and haunted me forever with it's slap bass and guitar based and special drum beat was this track by 'Bill Haley and his Comets' and along with some Paul Robeson discs, a copy of Lonnie Donnigan's 'Puttin on The Style' both were rarely off the wind up gramophone in my earliest years. Can you dig it? I think you can!

On this day in music history: July 9, 1955 - “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley And His Comets hits #1 on the Billboard Best Sellers chart for 8 weeks. Recorded on April 12, 1954 at the Pythian Temple in New York City, the song goes largely unnoticed when it is initially released in May of 1954 as the B-side of the single “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)”. It is only after it is used for the opening title sequence to the film “The Blackboard Jungle” (starring Glenn Ford), nearly a year later that record finally takes off. Entering the Best Sellers chart at #22 on May 21, 1955, it climbs to the top of the chart seven weeks later. The song creates a sensation around the world, causing teenagers to riot and dance in the aisles of movie theaters. It is regarded as a landmark in music history as the first number one single of the Rock Era. The record also earns a place in the Guinness World Book Of Records for the largest selling rock and roll record of all time, with sales to be estimated at over 25 million copies sold worldwide. “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA, and is inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1982.

with thanks to Jeff Harris' wonderful blog 'Behind The Grooves  On this day in Music History