Roots of music | BILL HALEY & THE COMETS : ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK

 One of the greatest joys of a cultured family life was not only having a father who loved his classical music (Mozart, Beethoven Mahler etc) who read out loud to us fiction dn Peter (Dickens and Dylan Thomas etc)  (there weren’t televisions then!) and mother who adored dance band music of the time (Gnat Gonella, Al Bowly  Bix Biederbeck etc) but having an older brother. My big brother Steve brought several revolutionary sounds into the house (not least Bobby Dylan) and I vividly remember him having Lonnie Donegan (MY Old Man’s A Dustman, Does your Chewing Gum Lose it’s Falovour (on the Bed Post over night!) Rock Island Line) and also American music and he got hold of Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran and my earliest merry a 78 of these guys! I was gone, man SOLID GONE!

Been a rockin’ around the clock ever since!

Intro by the legendary Alan Freed

Bill Haley was born in Highland Park, Michigan on this day in 1925

ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK

Bill Haley His Comets - Rock Around The Clock - 1955

We had this on a 78 one of the first singles (sic) my brother bought as memory serves although I assume it had been out for a while as I was two and and my brother 6 when it came out but I recall it as a first piece of ‘pop’ music we could play on a hand cranked wind up player! My parents listened almost exclusive to classical music although my mother enjoyed a broader taste that included Joan Sutherland and she sang with the Halle Orchestra choir and really enjoyed Northern songs and folk songs like The Oldham Tinkers and later enjoyed Bix Biederbecke and the Pennies From Heaven Soundtrack (the TV Dennis Potter series not the theatrical version). I don't know whether it was somehow Steve who bought it later on say bout 11 or 12 or so but it is amongst my earliest memories. 

from Route publisher . . . .