[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for that centennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers, leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]
On the limits
but also the importance of mythology in the story of early rock ‘n roll.
According
to Haley’s Wikipedia page, the liner notes for Bill
Haley and His Comets’s 1955 album
Rock Around the Clock (featuring the title sing, which reached #1 70
years ago this week and fully established the artist and band at the forefront
of the emerging genre of rock ‘n roll) included an overtly mythologized account
of Haley’s ascent to stardom: “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. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were
hard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. 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 yodeled with any band that would have him,
and worked with a traveling medicine show. Eventually he got a job with a
popular group known as the 'Down Homers' while they were in Hartford,
Connecticut. 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.”
As the
phrase “continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner” overtly indicates, this narrative
of Haley’s early career is far from exact (to put it mildly). To cite just one
particularly striking contrast, Haley not only got steady work as a cowboy yodeler in the
1940s (during his late teens and early twenties), but for much of that decade
was one of the nation’s most prominent and successful yodelers, performing under
the stage name “Silver
Yodeling Bill Haley.” He also fronted his own band during that time, The
Four Aces of Western Swing; perhaps that’s what the liner notes mean by “be
his own boss again,” but saying that on the notes for a Comets record makes it seem
as if it’s that 1950s band to which the phrase refers. Which is to say, Haley’s
story, like that of most artists who make it big, was a long-developing and
multi-stage process; and given that rock ‘n roll only really emerged in the
1950s, it makes clear that his process and stages included genres and styles
quite different from the rocking one that he and His Comets would embody.
On the
other hand, liner notes for a rock album aren’t necessarily intended to be a
highly detailed and precise biography—nor, indeed, would we want them to be.
Just like an album cover or a music video (a medium not yet invented in 1955 of
course) or even a concert performance, those notes are part of the mythmaking,
part of the ways in which artists and bands and songs and albums are made into
something larger than life, presented to audiences as an entertainment that we’ll
want (no, need) to experience. If that’s still true today (and I’d say it
definitely is), it was significantly more true in the first years of rock
music, when the genre was anything but a sure thing and its performers had to
scratch and claw to create a foothold on the landscapes of music and popular
culture. That Bill Haley and His Comets did so, and so successfully at that,
isn’t just a reflection of their rockin’ hits (although they had a number of
them to be sure)—it’s also an illustration of the importance of mythmaking.
Next
groundbreaker tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
recent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?
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