One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock - rock!
Continuing my trip back through the 1956 album charts.
28/10/56 : Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley And His Comets
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I've missed out three weeks - I had a bit of a think about how to deal with weeks where I've reviewed every album in the charts and I decided that simply ignoring them was probably the easiest option. The only thing I think I will say is that TKAI spent two of those weeks at #1 and Elvis took the other one (the one week it spent there). Considering Bill Haley, I obviously know the title track - I'm hoping the rest of it is more like that than our previous visit was.
The title track does somewhat stand out but I was also aware of "Shake Rattle And Roll" and the rest of it doesn't stray too far from the formula. Under other circumstances, I might complain it's a bit samey but having experienced what happened when they tried something a bit different, I think I prefer this and it feels like it's more linked to what others take later and build upon.
We're at #4 in the charts this week on their last of a ten week run, with it having peaked at #2 - all in all it spent 25 weeks on the chart, with it last being seen for a five week run in, somewhat bizarrely, 1968. The rest of the top five were TKAI, Bill Haley and OSTs from Oklahoma! and Carousel.
Wikipedia tells me this album normally wouldn't make the grade because it's a compilation album - interestingly, all the tracks are also present on Shake, Rattle And Roll which was a 1955 compilation released in a 10 inch format before they really knew what an album was going to look like. And that's your lot really apart from the fact that it was one of the first rock and roll albums to chart.
"Customers also listened to" Jerry Lee Lewis, The Big Bopper, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran - some pretty historic names there. As is Bill Haley - for me there's not a lot there other than the title track but I'm probably just being a bit harsh, and this album was certainly better than the other one.
The history of Rock Around the Clock is worth a read - it happened almost by accident after it was originally released as a b-side.
ReplyDelete"As Gabler intended, "Rock Around the Clock" was first issued in May 1954 as a B-side to "Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)". While the song did make the American Cashbox music charts (contrary to popular opinion that it was a flop), it was considered a commercial disappointment. It was not until 1955, when "Rock Around the Clock" was used under the opening credits of the film Blackboard Jungle, that the song truly took off.
Many versions of the story behind how "Rock Around the Clock" was chosen for Blackboard Jungle circulated over the years. Recent research, however, reveals that the song was chosen from the collection of young Peter Ford, the son of Blackboard Jungle star Glenn Ford and dancer Eleanor Powell. The producers were looking for a song to represent the type of music the youth of 1955 were listening to. The elder Ford borrowed several records from his son, one of which was Haley's "Rock Around the Clock".