BILL HALEY
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1948–1979 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Rock Around The Clock
(1954) |
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Compilation
released: Dec. 19, 1955 |
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Tracks: 1) (Weʼre Gonna) Rock Around The Clock; 2) Shake, Rattle
& Roll; 3) A.B.C. Boogie; 4) Thirteen Women;
5) Razzle Dazzle; 6) Two Hound Dogs; 7) Dim, Dim The Lights; 8) Happy Baby;
9) Birth Of The Boogie; 10) Mambo Rock; 11) Burn That Candle; 12) Rock A-Beatinʼ
Boogie. |
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REVIEW
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Technically
speaking, Rock Around The Clock —
the album — is an early Decca compilation that collects six consecutive A-
and B-sides for Bill and his Comets, beginning with ʽRock Around The Clockʼ — the song — recorded on April 12, 1954, and all the way to ʽRock A-Beatinʼ Boogieʼ, recorded
September 22, 1955. It might be worth noting that, although chronologically ʽRock Around The Clockʼ was indeed the first single included in this package, it did not
become a big hit until someone got the bright idea to include it in the
soundtrack to Richard Brooksʼ classic Blackboard Jungle. Actually, Haleyʼs first major «rock and roll era» hit was the
lyrically sanitized version of Big Joe Turnerʼs ʽShake, Rattle
& Rollʼ — appropriately,
an even earlier Decca compilation placed huger emphasis on that particular song,
naming the record after it; however, there is no point in allocating a
separate review to Shake, Rattle &
Roll since it is merely a mini-LP with but eight songs on it, and all of
its material would eventually be incorporated into Rock Around The Clock anyway, after ʽRock Around The Clockʼ (the song) turned out to be so much more impactful. So
whatʼs the real deal
about these particular six 45ʼs? Doubtlessly,
this is the finest «small» set of Bill Haley & The Comets in existence —
the birth of a new type of music, and a 100%-motivated band which seems only
too happy to serve as the midwife. Yet it is also undeniable that, compared
to the general rockʼnʼroll sound of 1956, it comes across as way too
«clean» and «sanitized». The 30-year old (already not be trusted!) Bill Haley,
with his background in country music, was, first and foremost, a professional
entertainer, quite interested in having fun and gaining fame and fortune, but
hardly interested in coming across as an «aggressive», «rebellious» icon for
American youth. Come to think about it, donʼt all those wild stories about teen riots across the States and the UK
during the initial run of Rock Around
The Clock (the second, not the
first movie to feature the song) seem so hard to believe nowadays —
considering the utterly peaceful and friendly message of the tune? How did it
all come to this? Surely, when The Comets recorded the song, they were simply
thinking of doing their own take on some good old jump blues, albeit in just a
slightly rowdier and speedier way than this stuff used to be played by the
likes of Wynonie Harris and Big Joe Turner (and even that can be debatable).
The last thing on their mind must have been to awake the sleeping dragon in
the American (let alone worldwide) teenager. Not
that the band felt too shocked or terrified when they did realize what they
had unleashed — because no sooner had ʽShake, Rattle & Rollʼ and ʽRock Around The Clockʼ hit the big time than Haleyʼs country-western schtick of the past was all but forgotten. Well, itʼs not as if it does not leave any traces — but the album is all about stepping up and taking it to the next
level: 12 tracks of non-stop boogie beats, with energetic danceable grooves all
the way through and not even a single itty bitty ballad to let us catch our
breath in between. In terms of loudness, cleanness, and discipline it is certainly
«softer» than whatever followed, and some of it may seem «dumber» than one
would expect from a bunch of true classics (for instance, Al Russelʼs ʽABC Boogieʼ comes to mind as a really tepid and unconvincing projection
of rockʼnʼroll values onto the subject of school education, particularly
next to something like Chuck Berryʼs ʽRing Ring Goes The Bellʼ), but if it is primarily F-U-N youʼre after, rather than a commitment to revolutionary
ideals, The Comets come across as serious experts in the matter, even if it
is totally unclear where all that expertise came from in the first place. Of
course, we might as well mention the technical aspects of these guysʼ musical approach. The efficiency of basic rockʼnʼroll depends,
tooth and claw, upon the individual prowess of the players, and The Comets
had one of the hottest rhythm sections around (simple double-bass lines and
drum fills, but each note and each hit is delivered with the motivation of a
bulldozer), and a great lead guitarist in the newly-arrived Franny Beecher,
who had formerly made a name for himself in the Benny Goodman Orchestra; for
a particularly awesome example, check out his fast, lilting, arch-precise, melodic-as-heck
solo on ʼHappy Babyʼ. (It is also important to note that Beecher had replaced
the prematurely deceased Danny Cedrone, who was no quack himself, responsible
for the slightly whacky, wobbly soloing on ʽRock Around The Clockʼ). And even if
Bill himself could never, by a long stretch, be called a «great» vocalist,
his decidedly non-rockʼnʼrollish vocals not only seem perfectly suited for The
Cometsʼ «inoffensive» sound,
they can also be a nice change from the «rougher» performers — after all,
nobody said that true rockʼnʼroll always
has to exude burly masculinity, and in a way, it is even more of a challenge
to combine genuine rockʼnʼroll excitement and energy with a touch of
gentlemanly restraint, which somehow Bill and the boys were able to achieve
on their best cuts. That
said, burly masculinity is still implicitly present all over the place, and from
time to time, you might come across a relatively more «daring» number — for
instance, not only does ʽThirteen Womenʼ covertly convey every manʼs wish to get it on with several lovely ladies at
once, but it also hints at the H-bomb as one possible way to get that wish
accomplished, all of this fantasy being set to an ominous, if not exactly
apocalyptic, combination of sax riff and lead guitar siren. Ironically, the
song used to be the A-side on the single where ʽRock Around The Clockʼ was the B-side
— how coincidental is it, then, that the single in question was produced by
Milt Gabler, the same man who had, fifteen years earlier, taken on the risk
of producing Billie Holidayʼs ʽStrange Fruitʼ? There
are also tunes here that feature surprisingly self-analytical lyrics: ʽBirth Of The Boogieʼ, for instance, twenty years before AC/DCʼs ʽLet There Be
Rockʼ tries to come
up with a mythological origin for the «boogie lick», acknowledging its
African roots in a slightly Brʼer Rabbit-ish
(but perfectly respectable for the time) fashion while Franny offers yet
another top notch example of the «boogie lick» in question. And yet it was
not the lyrically disturbing and provoking, but musically less exciting ʽThirteen Womenʼ, and not the lyrically educational ʽBirth Of The Boogieʼ with its
flattering portrayal of «Zulu Joe», but the lyrically inane, yet musically
riveting ʽRock Around The
Clockʼ that made
history after all — as well as ʽRazzle Dazzleʼ ("if itʼs all night long") and the already mentioned ʽABC Boogieʼ. And thatʼs the way it
goes in general: the common mood of Rock
Around The Clock is not paranoia or innuendo, but reckless love of life,
perfect not only for the middle-ground-oriented teens from happy American families
in the 1950s, but, most of the time, even for their parents, if theyʼd only be willing to loosen up just for a moment
(actually, it is hard to understand how any American parent at the time who
had, at least once in his/her life, somersaulted to a wild performance by a
big jazz band or a jump blues combo — which would probably include the
absolute majority of American parents, at least in the big cities — could,
even in theory, object to The Cometsʼ rockʼnʼroll antics). Yet, at the same time, even fifty
years after the fact, the aura of freshness, excitement, and inspiration of
these recordings still persists. Perhaps this is not the proverbial spirit
of perfectly distilled rockʼnʼroll that we find here, but if not, then it is at
least the proverbial spirit of rockʼnʼrollʼs elder, slightly less rebellion-prone, brother. |
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Album
released: Aug. 13, 1956 |
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Tracks: 1) Calling All Comets; 2) Rockinʼ Thru The
Rye; 3) A Rockinʼ Little Tune; 4) Hide
And Seek; 5) Hey Then, There Now; 6) Goofinʼ Around; 7) Hook, Line
And Sinker; 8) Rudyʼs Rock; 9) Choo Choo ChʼBoogie;
10) Blue Comet Blues; 11) Hot Dog Buddy Buddy; 12) Tonightʼs
The Night. |
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REVIEW
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Of the Haley-sung vocal numbers, ʽRockinʼ Thru The Ryeʼ is the obvious highlight, not least because it is
the first attempt to adapt a classic old bit of poetry to the newly emerged
rockabilly genre — Robert Burnsʼ ʽCominʼ Throʼ The Ryeʼ is given an
unexpected twist, but, since the latter had originally been written in the
style of a party folk tune, it would make perfect sense to adapt it to contemporary folk values, and the
band does fine, placing another early rockabilly classic under their belt.
Nobody in his right mind would call this the emergence of Celtic folk-rock,
but as a subtle demonstration of the all-encompassing powers of young baby
rockʼnʼroll, it works perfectly as long as you are even
aware of the origins of the song (thereʼs hardly anything in the melody to betray them, though I guess an
innocent bystander might be
confused as to the exact reasons why this hillbilly from Pennsylvania would
start singing "Bonny me lassie is on the beat"). Some of the new tunes sound a little silly and
hoedown-ish (even in 1956, it would probably be a little distasteful to
start a song called ʽA Rockinʼ Little Tuneʼ with the sound of an accordeon, no matter how well played). But in
general, the instrumentals are fine. Rudy Pompilliʼs sax rarely ventured on a wilder spree than on ʽCalling All Cometsʼ, and it sounds particularly delicious when punctuated by
wild-west-style twanging from Beecherʼs guitar. Beecher himself gets to rip it up on ʽGoofinʼ Aroundʼ, playing sped-up jazzy licks like a maniac
schoolboy (presaging a similar, if much more progressive, attitude from Ten
Years Afterʼs Alvin Lee),
and on ʽBlue Comet
Bluesʼ, one of those angular,
slow-paced compositions that lies at the foundations of «blues rock» as a
genre, even if no one would probably remember this, what with «blues rock»
always being associated with the likes of John Mayall and Canned Heat. One thing that is really satisfying is that the band
clearly wishes to experiment: try as you might, you shall not find even a
single tune here that would blatantly rewrite any of Haleyʼs biggest hits — no clones of ʽRock Around The Clockʼ or ʽRazzle Dazzleʼ in sight. Instead, in addition to the «Celtic»
trace of ʽRockinʼ Through The Ryeʼ, we find a touch of «Oriental exotica» on ʽRudyʼs Rockʼ, which begins as a standard dance number and then
unexpectedly shifts to a jungle-style tribal attack in the middle section, or
a pinch of old school vaudeville or two (ʽHey Then, There Nowʼ, ʽTonightʼs The Nightʼ). Perhaps it does not always work as well as
intended, and most of the «experiments» are just bouts of meek synthesis with
well-established conservative genres, but in the context of a Fiftiesʼ pop band such «experimentation» already places them
on the genreʼs cutting edge. On the down side, tinkering with all these
traditions means that this LP does not pack nearly as much punch as its
predecessor — not to mention that it lacks one or two truly killer stand-out
tracks that would really make all the difference; why they didnʼt, for instance, include ʽSee You Later, Alligatorʼ, easily the most well-known Haley tune at the time
whose appearance on an LP was, nevertheless, delayed until 1958 is beyond my
understanding of Deccaʼs commercial
strategies. But on the other hand, this way you can simply suck in the recordʼs overall consistency — without a ʽRock Around The Clockʼ on it, it is much easier to come to the conclusion that Bill Haley
and his Comets were not a one-hit or two-hit wonder, but actually one of the
most professional, inventive, and exciting rockʼnʼroll outfits of
the decade, despite the lack of leather jackets, burning pianos, swiveling
hips, duck walks, or any other extra-musical markers which, unfortunately,
were often deemed necessary to gain the performer rightful entry into the VIP
rockʼnʼroller club. Poor Bill just had to do with his
signature curl instead. |
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Album
released: Aug. 12, 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) The Dipsy Doodle; 2) You
Can’t Stop Me From Dreaming; 3) Apple Blossom Time; 4) Moon Over
Miami; 5) Is It True What They Say About Dixie?; 6) Carolina In The
Morning; 7) Miss You; 8) Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone; 9) Ain’t Misbehavin’; 10) One Sweet Letter From
You; 11) I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter; 12) Somebody
Else Is Taking My Place. |
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REVIEW
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As you might have already guessed, this is far from
the most illuminating moment in Bill Haley’s life story. Although the album’s
opening track, ‘The Dipsy Doodle’, was released as a single, it failed to
become a hit, and the album never attracted much attention either: if there
really ever was a goal to create «wholesome family entertainment» in this
manner, it never reached the mark — in reality, teen fans must not have been too
happy about dancing their heads off to all these titles they knew (and probably
abhorred at the time) from their parents’ records; likewise, the conservative
parents would not be too thrilled to hear their old favorites not-too-subtly transformed
into the Devil’s own music. Time, of course, brings new perspectives; and
now, in retrospect, when titles like ‘Apple Blossom Time’ and ‘Carolina In
The Morning’ no longer provoke the kind of allergies that they used to for
rebellious teens in the 1950s, and now that Bill Haley’s brand of rock’n’roll
is, in itself, an antique as quaint as the swing movement that it was meant
to replace, Rockin’ The Oldies has
actually become a quirky — and moderately instructive — historical artefact
to observe and cherish. With the Comets still in top instrumental form, and
all the standards revved up to proper band standard, these songs hardly sound
that much worse than the band’s
original classic hits. It is true that most of them get very similar
arrangements, that the original Broadway melodies are drastically simplified
to fit inside the rockabilly formula, and that, conversely, due to the nature
of the material the overall atmosphere is oftentimes too lightweight even for
Haley’s usual standards. The one true rocking number on the record is not
even ‘Dipsy Doodle’: it is the even faster-moving ‘You Can’t Stop Me From
Dreaming’, going all the way to Guy Lombardo’s songbook and given new life
here through Franny Beecher’s one-note guitar «shots» and boogie solos. All the other oldies do seem to be «rocked» indeed,
but whether they accept the rockabilly virus happily or quickly develop
antibodies is a big open question. Some of this stuff ends up quite similar
in tone and mood to Carl Perkins’ early brand of country-bop, except that the
Comets are far more fluent and tight in their performance than Carl’s backing
band. Some of it ends up just boring and pathetic if you know the context:
‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, for instance, is so inextricably associated with Fats
Waller and his piano chops that hearing it deconstructed this way (and there
ain’t even a guitar solo in sight!) just makes me sad and confused. Still, do give the record some love even if it is
essentially a failed experiment — to the best of my knowledge, this is the
first album in rock history to do the «nostalgic genre reversal» thing, at
least formally paving the way to all similar experiments in the future. Call
it the grandaddy of David Bowie’s Pin
Ups, if you wish. Of course, it might be the most miserable type of rock
experiment in general, but at least they sometimes get you a-thinkin’ on
metaphysical issues, such as what it is that makes a song great and how does
relevance get transferred through the ages and what the hell is a dipsy
doodle anyway... you know, that kind of train of thought. |
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Album
released: March 17, 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Pretty Alouette; 2) Piccadilly
Rock; 3) Rockin’ Rollin’ Schnitzlebank; 4) Vive La Rock And Roll; 5) Come
Rock With Me; 6) Wooden Shoe Rock; 7) Me Rock-A-Hula; 8) Oriental Rock; 9)
Rockin’ Matilda; 10) El Rocko; 11) Rockin’ Rita; 12) Jamaica,
D.J. |
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Not only are we still going conceptual — we are
actually witnessing the true birth of worldbeat!! Forget Peter Gabriel, discard
David Byrne, toss down Paul Simon — this
is where it all really begins... well, at least from one possible
perspective. Although it would be tough to suspect Mr. Haley of a particularly
high level of musical sophistication, Rockin’
Around The World shows that his knowledge and love of pop music was
hardly limited to contemporary or traditional American forms. Now that those
traditional American forms have all been taken care of with Rockin’ The Oldies, the next artistic
goal is to sail across the Atlantic, take bits and pieces of traditional folk
tunes and classic «ethnic» melodies, and mold them all in a rock’n’roll
fashion, along the same lines the Comets used for the old swing and lounge
tunes half a year earlier. |
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Overall,
this seems like a silly novelty idea, and the predictable result is a silly novelty
sound. But at least it is a hilariously
silly novelty sound — at the very least, it is exciting and instructive to
see just how much technical effort the band, and Bill in person, had invested
in the creation of these odd concoctions. They rewrote most of the lyrics,
inserting all sorts of contemporary references to «rocking». They sped up the
tempos. They bluesified the main melodies. They appropriated and modified
everything to the point of making source material barely recognizable — all
in the name of the all-powerful rock’n’roll, conqueror of all. And they did
it all in the friendliest of spirits, so much so that you’d really have to be
on the batshit crazy spectrum of political correctness to condemn them for
such musical mischief. Unfortunately, few people, if any at all, saw the
entire effort as anything other than a one-time musical joke — which, for all
I know, it might have been, but this does not prevent us from being able to
dig up some musical symbolism along the way. For
instance, all of us are well acquainted with Elvis’ transformation of ‘O Sole
Mio’ into ‘It’s Now Or Never’, which basically amounted to a new set of
English lyrics and the addition of a steady pop rhythmic base. But few of us
know that two years before the
fact, the Comets took the same tune, did all the same things with it, but
also accelerated the tempo, installed a boogie bass line, threw out the romantic
sap (while still leaving the romantic plot), and ended up with a driving
dance number called ‘Come Rock With Me’. So if this were a creative contest,
who’d be the winner? Would it be Elvis, just because Elvis can always sing
Bill Haley under the table? Or would it be Bill, who actually did a far more complicated
job of showing how far in a completely different direction you can go with
that kind of melody?.. okay, cutting the bullshit, it would still be Elvis,
but actually, if you ever thought romantic Neapolitan songs were corny as
hell in the first place, the Comets’ recipé for cooking them up might
work for you just fine. Now,
obviously, modern day purists and puritans would castigate Haley for almost
completely identifying «the World» with «the Western World»: other than a brief clarinet-centered incorporation
of unspecified Middle Eastern motives into ‘Oriental Rock’ (what a title!),
and steel guitarist Billy Williamson’s oh-so-1950s imitation of the Caribbean
accent on ‘Jamaica, D. J.’, all of the source material essentially stems from
Europe (France, Germany, England, Holland), maybe with a little Latin America
in tow: in short, no attempts to put Australian aboriginal music or Mongolian
throat singing to a good old rock beat. Then again, it is unlikely that the
record was motivated by some profound understanding of conceptual artistry, let
alone any early predecessor to the modern feeling of liberal guilt. It is more likely that Bill and the people
at Decca genuinely believed that this would be a good way to bring the new
sounds of rock’n’roll closer to the ears of as many different immigrant
minorities in the US as possible (too bad we all had to wait for the Ramones
in order to bring ‘Chinese Rock’ into this world, though). If
this were indeed so, odds of success for the Comets would have been hardly
any higher than when they were wooing teenagers’ mothers with the nostalgia-meets-modernity
sounds of Rockin’ The Oldies. For
instance, would a conservative citizen of French origin be genuinely able to
admire the re-write of ‘Frère Jacques’ as ‘Vive La (sic!) Rock And Roll’? Or, conversely,
would a not-so-conservative citizen of French origin, already sick to death
of all the stereotypes about «gay Paris», find new respect for ‘Frère
Jacques’ upon finding out that it has been remade as a fast dance number for
the local ballroom? And would the average German-American really be happy to
hear the old nursery rhyme of ‘Schnitzelbank’ remade as ‘Rockin’ Rollin’
Schnitzlebank (sic!)’ instead of an
actual ‘Rock Around The Clock’? In any case, I have no info on Rockin’ Around The World to have been
a smash hit in circles of American citizens with non-Anglo-Saxon European
ancestry, so if I got that marketing strategy right, it was doomed to fail. Yet
as a curious experiment in genre-mashing which could be fun for younger generations
to dig out fifty years after the fact, Rockin’
Around The World is, I believe, a total gas. The only way one can truly
enjoy all these classic ditties these days (for the record, Haley’s range
also covers ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’, ‘Hawaiian War Chant’, and ‘La Cucaracha’ in one sitting — I
feel silly even typing out all these names) is from a deconstructivist point
of view, and, without knowing it, Haley went on record as their first, or
one of the first, post-modern interpreters. Too bad there was nobody to see
it from that point of view back in 1958 — had the record made more of an
impact on discerning musical minds, who knows, maybe rock music could have
turned into an art form several years earlier than it did. Then again, by
1958 Bill Haley’s image was so much set in stone that even if he wrote a rock
opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind pinball wizard, critics and fans alike
would just call it virtually undanceable and move on. |
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Album
released: Aug. 11, 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) New Rock The Joint; 2) Move It
On Over; 3) How Many?; 4) See You Later, Alligator;
5) The Beak Speaks; 6) Forty Cups Of Coffee; 7) The Saints’ Rock And Roll; 8)
Sway With Me; 9) It’s A Sin; 10) Burn That Candle; 11) Rock Lomond; 12) Rip
It Up. |
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Two
classic singles, ‘See You Later Alligator’ and ‘The Saints’ Rock And Roll’,
alone suffice to guarantee for this record the status of second most important
Bill Haley release from the classic years of the Comets. The original version of ‘Alligator’,
written and recorded by the obscure Cajun songwriter Bobby Charles, is a cute
little piece of jump blues, but next to Haley’s interpretation, it sounds
downright dead — a stiff and monotonous vamp, waiting for somebody to come
along and light that spark properly. The Comets did precisely that, creating
the perfect swinger anthem for their era and immortalizing the trademark
Louisiana farewell for generations to come. And nobody else in the rockabilly
business could have delivered the tune as efficiently as Haley — perhaps only
Carl Perkins was as good at converting bitterness into cheerfulness, but he
did not typically perform that sort of «blues-pop». The
same old state of Louisiana continues to be relevant on the band’s cover of
‘The Saints’, arguably the one and only rock’n’roll variant of the song that
matters — again, because the song is perfectly adaptable to the Comets’
style, so much so that Haley even changed the lyrics to match the band’s
identity ("...when old Rudy starts to wail... when the Comets rock and
roll..."). You might complain that the band takes all the soul out of
the tune, and you might even be right from a certain angle, but every once in
a while, in order to breathe a bit of new soul into a tune, you have to shake
the old one out first. On this particular number, the Comets really give it
all they got — one hundred percent, each single band member; if that ain’t
soul, I don’t really know what is. The frantic shootout between Rudy’s sax
and Franny’s guitar on the coda is one of the most breathtaking moments in
the band’s catalog. Nobody else in the business had that kind of sound going
on at the time — like a crazyass Benny Goodman big band condensed and packed
into one tight rock’n’roll unit. Other,
less notorious, highlights on this collection include ‘The Beak Speaks’, a
Franny Beecher instrumental composition co-written with the band’s steel
guitarist Billy Williamson, giving Franny an opportunity to showcase a few
nice jazzy licks; and ‘How Many’, a relatively recent Nashville ballad which
Haley gives a bit of a gospel flair, adding suitable backing vocals in an
unusual stylistic departure from the formula. On
the darker side of things, ‘New Rock The Joint’ may be a louder, more
aggressive and «modern» version of the original ‘Rock The Joint’, released by
Bill way back in 1952, yet the important thing is that it was really a timid
melodic precursor to ‘Rock Around The Clock’, and reviving it for another
single is basically self-repetition. ‘Move It On Over’ is a rather
unfortunate re-adaptation of the Hank Williams’ original — one of the very
few cases when Haley’s cover of an oldie is less rock’n’roll than the source material, since Hank’s tune was
actually faster and livelier. (Rule of thumb: you do not cover Hank Williams unless you totally and completely
reinvent Hank Williams, because Hank will get you beat every time). ‘It’s A
Sin’ is another Nashville ballad with a semi-doo-wop, semi-gospel topping,
but it gives off a generic rather than epic feeling, with its far less
distinctive vocal melody. ‘Rock Lomond’, as you might guess from the title,
is actually an outtake from Rockin’
The Oldies, where it should properly belong. And they probably forgot
that ‘Burn That Candle’ had already been released on an earlier LP — great
song, but why do we need it twice? Especially
considering that some of Bill’s finest singles from that period, for some
reason, did not make the grade. For
my own digital version of the album, I compiled some of them as bonus tracks
— most importantly, ‘Teenager’s Mother’ (the B-side to ‘Rip It Up’), a
surprisingly grim lyrical indictment of stubborn parents ("cause the
same thing that’s worrying you is the same thing you used to do
yourself") set to one of the band’s toughest and fastest grooves on
record; ‘Rockin’ Rollin’ Rover’, one of the happiest rock’n’roll tunes about
a dog ever written; and ‘Don’t Knock The Rock’, the title track to the movie
of the same name which was basically a follow-up to Rock Around The Clock, but failed to replicate its success. These
three should have been there instead of ‘Rock Lomond’ and ‘Move It On Over’. Naturally,
these «complaints» are all anachronistic: like most of Haley’s original LPs, Rockin’ The Joint has long since been
retired from the catalog, and today all of these songs find themselves in
solitary streaming rotation, or, for those of us who still like the feel of
something solid in our hands (excuse me), on Decca’s compilation CDs and
boxsets. The main point of the review, for what it’s worth, is to stress that
the Comets had about 5–6 years of «vital» singles in them, which, if you
think about it, is actually a longer period of time than fortune allocated to
most of the classic early rock’n’rollers (who typically only lasted about three,
four at max) — a good argument for preferring a calmer and healthier
lifestyle to a more raucous and rebellious one, if you think about it! |
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Tracks: 1) Whoa Mabel!; 2) Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider; 3)
Eloise; 4) Dinah; 5) Skinny Minnie; 6) Mary,
Mary Lou; 7) Sweet Sue, Just You; 8) B.B. Betty; 9) Charmaine; 10) Corrine,
Corrina; 11) Marie; 12) Lean Jean. |
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REVIEW Had more Fifties’ artists adopted that particular practice
after Bill Haley — namely, building a concept LP around a successful hit
single or two — art-rock might have been born, baptized, graduated, become
the basic laughing stock currency of the Addison DeWitts of pop music, and
buried six feet under way before the hippie movement even started. It is,
consequently, unclear if we should be thankful to Fifties’ artists for
refusing to follow the advice, or pouting at them for such conservatism. It
probably depends on whether the idea of, say, Gene Vincent as the author of
the first rock opera rather than Pete Townshend appeals to you or not. |
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That
said, in this particular case the «concept» of Bill Haley’s Chicks is restricted to song titles and choruses,
rather than actual music themes — which suggests that the man’s penultimate
LP for Decca would probably sound less odd to the general ear, but might have
the potential to beat all previous experimental records in terms of pure
entertainment. Which is exactly what it is: even more of a joke record than Rockin’ The Oldies or Rockin’ Around The World, but a far
more consistent and generally enjoyable one. On
March 3, 1958 the Comets released ‘Skinny Minnie’, a song credited to Bill
and some of his mates, which went on to become their last significant chart
success. Lyrically and, uh, conceptually it was clearly inspired by Larry
Williams and his ‘Bony Moronie’ (it is hard to believe that Williams and
Haley were independently obsessed with their imaginary girlfriends’ anorexia),
but musically, it was quite an original creation — not so much rock’n’roll as
blues-pop-meets-nursery-rhyme and crowns it with a glorious proto-surf rock
guitar trill. Despite the overtly comic tone (the verses are so funny that
the song even gets by without a proper hook for the chorus), the song became
so widely popular that even Tony Sheridan would record it on several
different occasions in Hamburg (not
with the Beatles), and even such wild guys as the Sonics would be bringing it
into the mid-Sixties garage era. The
unexpected popularity of the song, which temporarily returned Bill to the
chart area from which the Comets had fell off a whole two years earlier,
defined 1958 for the band — all through the year, they would be trying to
capitalize on its success by releasing more and more singles with the same
verbal formula, both self-penned and covers: ‘Lean Jean’, ‘Mary, Mary Lou’,
‘Whoa Mabel!’, ‘Corrine, Corrina’. Alas, of these, only ‘Lean Jean’ briefly
made the charts, although it is the least interesting of the four —
essentially just a musical variation on ‘Skinny Minnie’, but with the guitar
trill hook replaced by a simple and much less exciting brass mini-riff.
Undeterred and determined, Bill would push on and ultimately release this
entire LP, focused on a variety of named girls — perhaps in the hope that at
least all the Mabels, Idas, Eloises, Dinahs, Mary Lous, Sues, Bettys, and
Maries in the world would be interested in owning a copy? The
bad news is that the Comets’ songwriting energies were not enough to back the
concept with fully original songwriting, which meant that they would still be
obligated to delve into the Great American Songbook — which means quite a bit
of overlap with the spirit of Rockin’
The Oldies: not necessarily a good thing, no matter how much rockabilly
makeup is applied to the faces of old swing numbers and crooner tunes. I
mean, ‘Charmaine’? the most popular version of that song was recorded in 1951
by the Mantovani Orchestra — what else is there to say? ‘Ida, Sweet As Apple
Cider’? They probably got that one from the Mills Brothers rather than Bing
Crosby, but that only makes it more vaudeville in spirit. The
good news is that there are many sides to this story — for every unfortunate
lottery pick in an affair like this, there will always be a corresponding
lucky number. Thus, the project gave Bill a pretext to make another solid
cover of Big Joe Turner: his ‘Corrine, Corrina’ relates to Turner’s version
exactly the same way as ‘Shake, Rattle, & Roll’, transforming black
R&B into white rockabilly and slightly sanitizing it, but with the purest
of intentions at heart. Personally, I much prefer the classic Atlantic vibe
of Turner’s version (that opening tight-as-hell boogie guitar line alone is
worth the admission price), but Bill’s cheery delivery is hard to resist as
well, unless you want to consciously make one of those «stealing the black
man’s music» virtue-signaling stands or something. Other
points of interest include reserving a spotlight for Billy Williamson, who provides
a funny, slightly asthmatic-paranoid-sounding lead vocal on the original (somewhat
Chuck Berry-influenced, I’d say) composition ‘B. B. Betty’ (unfortunately, no
solo steel guitar part). Another original composition, ‘Whoa Mabel!’, returns
us to the world of nursery rhymes, but this time at an insanely fast tempo
even for the Comets — and, for what it’s worth, the song may have provided
some inspiration for Procol Harum’s Keith Reed almost a decade later
(remember ‘Mabel’ from the band’s debut? "Mabel, whoah Mabel, please get
off the kitchen table", that one? it also had a nursery rhyme echo
running through it — "put the peas in the pot, put the pot on the hot,
in the cellar lies my wife, in my wife there’s a knife". Gee, I wish
some smartpants post-rock outfit made a medley of these two...) Unfortunately,
fans of Franny Beecher will have to be disappointed: he only gets to thoroughly
shine on Irving Berlin’s ‘Marie’ — most of the other songs either do not have
instrumental solos at all, or most of the soloing goes to Rudy’s sax; only on
‘Marie’ do the two lead instruments get a chance to shine on their own, as
well as engage in some friendly sparring. Whether this oversight, in any way,
reflected a rift between Bill and Franny that would eventually lead to their
parting ways in 1960, I have no current way of knowing, but that’s simply the
way it is on the record. Regardless, this is just a minor nitpick, since,
after all, most people would probably associate the classic Comets sound with
Rudy rather than Franny, and with a sax player of that caliber, we can step
away from fetishizing the electric guitar for a bit. In
any case, Bill Haley’s Chicks is
probably the last Comets album that makes perfect sense to own and hear as an
album, rather than just pick out the obvious highlight and run with it — that
is, the last time when the whole is somewhat greater than its individual
parts. You can read it as a set of consecutive pages from Don Juan’s diary if
you wish, or just a bunch of harmless, friendly love letters arranged in the
Comets’ usual inoffensive, entertaining style. Most importantly, it is still
an inspired musical statement from a band that feels it is still somewhat
relevant for its time. |
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Tracks: 1) Joey’s
Song; 2) (Put Another Nickel In) Music! Music! Music!; 3) Mack The
Knife; 4) In A Little Spanish Town; 5) Two Shadows; 6) Shaky; 7) Strictly
Instrumental; 8) Skokiaan (South African Song); 9) Puerto Rican Peddler; 10) Drowsy
Waters; 11) Chiquita Linda (Un Poquite De Tu Amor); 12) The Catwalk. |
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REVIEW
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‘Joey’s
Song’, of course, is terrific. Written by Patti Page’s bandleader and record
producer Joe Reisman (hence the title), it’s not very rock’n’roll — more like
a bit of old-fashioned ragtime-slash-vaudeville sped up to rock’n’roll tempo
— but it features the Comets at their absolute best. The chugging rhythm
section, the flying brass section, the combination of joyful energy and tight
musical discipline — I don’t know how it could be possible to keep that grin
off your face with the band in such full swing. It’s, like, the perfect
marriage of the new rhythmic foundations of the rock’n’roll era with the gay
(not that gay), innocent vibe of
the pre-war jazz-pop aesthetics. It’s Rockin’
The Oldies all over again, yes, but with extra energy and creativity —
this is, after all, a fully original composition — and it falls squarely into
the category of ‘Mack The Knife’ style tunes: little musical reminders of how
to pick yourself up and brush yourself off after life hits you in the face.
Even despite the main theme being so hopelessly outdated in 1959, its
catchiness was seemingly so impossible to resist that the chart success was
completely understandable. It
must have been this unexpected last blaze of success that prompted Decca to
commission a Bill Haley album «without» Bill Haley — which, by itself, does
not seem like such a bad proposition, given the tightness, experience, and
creativity of the Comets throughout the decade. The problem, as it always
happens, was with carrying out the theoretical angle into practice. With such
a project, there would simply not be enough original contributions from
outside songwriters or band members themselves, so they’d inevitably end up
falling upon classics, and then it would all be down to their choice of
material... and when it came to choice of material, Bill and his boys weren’t
too picky, and did not always display great taste. Thus,
my association with ‘Mack The Knife’ was not triggered randomly, but was
actually aided by the fact that they did
cover ‘Mack The Knife’ on this very same album, and while the arrangement is
not entirely free of creative touches — for one thing, I really admire those
space rocket-style whooshes and zoops that Billy Williamson lets fly
off his guitar to counter the main brass theme — by 1959, ‘Mack The Knife’
was such a well-established jazz standard that the Comets could hardly hope
to match the likes of Ella Fitzgerald here. Then there’s their version of
‘Music! Music! Music!’, so carefully arranged as ‘Joey’s Song, Pt. 2’ that an
inattentive listener might not even realize that the previous track has ended
— except that it’s ever so slightly less infectious and energetic, and
there’s a piano lead instead of a guitar lead. It all sounds good because
it’s classic Comets... but ever so slightly underwhelming. For
the second single off the album (well, formally the first, since ‘Joey’s
Song’ was released several months earlier than the LP), Decca chose the
band’s version of ‘Skokiaan’, a song with tremendous historical importance
for South Africa, since it was one of the first tunes to put the country on
the map as a serious presence in jazz and pop, but hardly with any historical
importance for the Comets — once again, when you have people like Louis
Armstrong to compete against, you’re inevitably bound to lose. This does not
mean that we need to dismiss it: there is a beautiful battle of talent
between Pompilli’s sax and Beecher’s guitar raging all over the track, with
the two sometimes weaving rings around each other and sometimes joining in
perfect unison while celebrating the joys of afterwork intoxication
(‘Skokiaan’ apparently means moonshine
in Afrikaans, although the roots of the word probably lie in some unclear
Bantu idiom). It is simply not a composition to which the Comets could lay a
«native» claim, unlike ‘Joey’s Song’. Of
the three compositions actually credited to members of the Comets, Beecher
and Williamson’s ‘Cat Walk’ feels like a rather monotonous instrumental
variation on ‘ABC Boogie’, heavy on trills and little else; and Williamson’s
and pianist Johnny Grande’s ‘Two Shadows’ sounds, oddly enough, like a
proto-Shadows ballad, with the exact same muffled-ringing guitar tone that
Hank Marvin would soon favor for his work on the sentimental side of the band
— nice, clean, and generally forgettable. Slightly better is ‘Shaky’, another
Beecher-Williamson collaboration so called because of the «wobbly» effect on
the guitar that they probably get from running it through some early version
of the Leslie speaker or another gadget; but it hardly goes anywhere
interesting after piquing our interest with that audio effect on the main
riff. The
rest of the album is given over to even less exciting renditions of various
Latin-tinged numbers (‘Puerto Rican Peddler’; ‘In A Little Spanish Town’),
one of which (‘Chiquita Linda’) features the only vocals on the entire album
— thus making it a tad less
strictly than instrumental — but this hardly makes it interesting. (I do like
the desperately-drastic effect when Beecher cuts in with a high-pitched,
rough-wailing, rocking guitar lead midway through, adding grit to smoothness,
but it’s really not enough to save the tune for a best-of compilation or
anything). In short, strange as it is, ‘Joey’s Song’ still remains an obvious
highlight on a collection of tunes most of which strive to be ‘Joey’s Song’
as well, but all fail like Penelope’s suitors next to brave Ulysses, to use a
metaphor of comparable antiquity with this record’s aesthetics. For
the sake of thoroughness, let us mention that the second half of 1959 was not
spent by Bill in completely silent mood: he still put out several vocal
singles, most notably his take on Louis Jordan’s classic ‘Caldonia’, as well
as a (rather belated) interpretation of Ray Charles’ ‘I Got A Woman’ and
producer Milt Gabler’s own novelty pop-rock number ‘Where Did You Go Last
Night?’. All of these songs feature the classic Comets sound and are
thoroughly enjoyable — but, just like most of this album, totally expendable
if you are not simply rooting for «more Comets, for God’s sake more of that
Comets sound!» None of them charted, either — even in such a supposedly
«backward» year for rock’n’roll as 1959, people were still looking for new
types of sounds (even if they were to be supplied by Chubby Checker), and the
Comets, even with all their joviality, friendliness, catchiness, and
professionalism, were perceived as something hopelessly stuck in 1955. In a
way, it was a miracle that ‘Joey’s Song’ still managed to break through to
the public — well, it was probably just that
good. It
is probably not coincidental that Bill’s breakup with Decca Records took
place soon afterwards — formally, it took place over a financial dispute, but
in reality I think that Decca was more than happy to let him go for no longer
being a serious cash-cow; and, on the other hand, Bill may have suspected
himself that the label bore some
responsibility for his failing status. Unfortunately, by losing Decca he also
lost Milt Gabler, the best producer and arranger he ever had; and as his
subsequent career on other labels would clearly prove, the root of the
problem lay not within his record label, but within his inability to adapt to
changing times — an inability that was pretty common for most of the early rock’n’rollers, but which may have hit Haley
even more than the others, given how much older he was than the others; after
all, his musical foundation was
constructed in the mid-1940s, whereas for most people of the Elvis breed it
happened in the early 1950s, and that’s like an entire world of difference
for that particular age. |
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Tracks: 1) Crazy Man, Crazy; 2) Kansas
City; 3) Love Letters In The Sand; 4) Shake Rattle And Roll; 5) I’m In Love
Again; 6) Stagger Lee; 7) Rock Around The Clock; 8) I Almost Lost My Mind; 9)
Blue Suede Shoes; 10) My Special Angel; 11) Blueberry Hill; 12) Whole Lotta
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It is quite an ironic coincidence that the first man
to have placed a bona fide rock’n’roll hit on the charts and introduced his
entire nation, if not the entire world, to the Devil’s latest tastes in
music, would also become the first man to introduce the soon-to-be-common
practice of endlessly re-recording those older hits for new labels. The
practice as such was, of course, already widespread in the jazz and blues
communities (I have already lost count of how many different versions of Duke
Ellington’s ‘The Mooche’ I have sitting in my music library), yet, funny
enough, I do not see it openly popping up in the early rockabilly circles
prior to Bill Haley’s migration from Decca to Warner Bros. in early 1960.
Probably just because of the short time span — most of the rockers did not
yet have the time to juggle their contracts, or were simply too busy dying or
marrying their cousins anyway. |
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Anyway,
it’s clear enough, when you look at the album cover, that with his move to
Warner Bros. Haley sort of intended to «reboot» himself from a clean slate.
Not only is the record self-titled — drawing all the attention to the freshly
re-announced man and his band, rather than one of Decca’s «concepts» — but it
even has a picture of Haley on the front sleeve, something that never ever
happened with Decca (for some reason, the executives there probably thought
that Bill’s «over-age» mug would not find much appeal with the
rock’n’roll-loving youngsters, and who knows, they might even have been right
about that). Admittedly, only three out of twelve songs are straightahead
re-recordings of Bill’s classic hits for Decca; however, all the others are
respectable and well-remembered oldies, rather than new compositions, ranging
from the straightforward rock’n’roll of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Whole Lotta
Shakin’ Goin’ On’ to softer R&B like ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’ and Lloyd
Price’s version of ‘Stagger Lee’ to old standards like ‘Love Letters In The
Sand’. Apparently, a complete album of nothing but hit re-recordings felt
embarrassing even to Bill himself — even so, unless 1960 was the year in which you were first
introduced to music as a form of entertainment, Bill Haley And His Comets must have produced a fairly morose
impression on, let’s say, the somewhat more critically-minded part of Bill’s
fanbase. On
the surface, it’s not that bad. As
a band, the Comets escaped the label change largely intact: the line-up for
the sessions is pretty much the same as it was for Strictly Instrumental, and the change of producer from Milt
Gabler to George Avakian (whose reputation in the jazz community was even
higher) meant that the overall quality of the recordings was not expected to
suffer at all. The new versions of the oldies were not complete carbon
copies, either: ‘Shake, Rattle And Roll’, for instance, was remade in a
slightly more Chuck Berry-esque manner (even borrowing the classic ‘Johnny B.
Goode’ bridge for the intro), ‘Rock Around The Clock’ gets collective vocal
harmonies for the introduction, and ‘Crazy Man, Crazy’ is totally dominated
by Ralph Jones’ percussion work, making it sound more aggressive than the
original. Play
it all by itself, outside of any context, and you can still appreciate The
Comets as one of the tightest, most energetic, most entertaining bands of its
time. But play it next to Bill’s classic recordings from the mid-1950’s and
you just might feel, like I do, that the spark is really missing. It simply
doesn’t seem as if they went into the studio, inspired by the prospect of a
brand new day and a glorious new future, thinking, «hey! we once set the world on fire with ‘Rock Around The Clock’,
today we’ll be rekindling it even higher!». They might even have been saying something like this to each
other and / or to the record executives at Warners, but were they believing in it? Listen to Bill’s
voice throughout — it sounds good, but it’s a professional kind of good, not
a wowsers-kind-of-good. Or to Franny Beecher taking those solos — they are
tight and melodic as ever, but they don’t really fly up in the air quite the
same way they used to. All
those earlier «conceptual» albums on Decca could be written off as somewhat
silly, but they all had an underlying inspirational theme — «let us take the world and rewrite it as
rock’n’roll!» Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but it gave the
band a reason to exist. What Bill Haley
And The Comets does, in comparison, is take rock’n’roll... and rewrite it
as rock’n’roll. The band isn’t trying to change its style — there’s really
nothing to change it to, unless they tried recasting themselves as
surf-rockers or something — and it’s pretty much run out of creative ideas.
And, you know, a guy like Elvis could at least take a Fats Domino song and
add a new vibe to it on the sheer power of his voice; but what is it,
exactly, that a guy like Bill Haley can add to songs like ‘Blueberry Hill’ or
‘I’m In Love Again’? Charisma? Fats already gave them charisma. Virtuosity?
The Comets are fine, but not that
fine (actually, they don’t even try all that much on either of these songs).
Country and western flavor? Ehh... you don’t really want to do that to a
bunch of New Orleanian classics. The
best I can say about these 27 minutes of music is that they do not sound
truly embarrassing. As long as he and his musicians are not battling
alcoholism or rheumatism, you can always count on Bill Haley And The Comets
to deliver a tight, professional sound; to understand the essence of the
songs they’re singing (even Bill’s merry romp through the murderous lyrics of
‘Stagger Lee’ is done with the understanding that the song has to be performed merrily for maximum
psychological effect); and to simply give you a good time without too many
layers of the subconscious. It’s all nice and listenable — but on the
symbolic side of the affair, Bill
Haley And The Comets, as much as it’s been made to look like the start of
a new life with new promise, is precisely the moment where Bill Haley And The
Comets lost their struggle for life, success, and artistic relevance. Perhaps
it deserves to be heard just because of that very reason. |
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Tracks: 1) Singing The Blues; 2) Candy
Kisses; 3) No Letter Today; 4) This Is The Thanks I Get; 5) Bouquet Of Roses;
6) There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder; 7) Cold, Cold Heart; 8) The Wild Side
Of Life; 9) Any Time; 10) Afraid; 11) I Don’t Hurt Anymore; 12) Detour. |
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Producer George Avakian wrote some really
passionate, occasionally tear-jerking liner notes for this album, eulogizing
both the covered songs and the effort that the Comets invested into making
them their own. Unfortunately, all they really do is offer us one more
reminder of that faraway age when every bit of extra promotion for your LP
was deemed as precious — and in the case of Bill Haley & The Comets going
all the way back to their roots and all but abandoning rock’n’roll for
country, only a good word from the famous George Avakian in person could save
the project from becoming a financial disaster... or so, at least, might have
thought the nice, but somewhat clueless people at Warner Bros. Records. |
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What
started out as an attempt to build himself and his band a new life in the
future quickly turned into a bizarre and rapid slide into the past. After the
first album, for which Bill had no better idea than to set out a
retrospective of his rockabilly glories, just half a year came a second one
which was oriented even deeper into the past — subtitled Songs Of The Bill Haley Generation, the record mostly carried five-to-fifteen-years
old country songs, the exact kind of material with which Bill had originally
launched his musical career. Granted, the Comets around 1960 would not and
could not sound exactly the same way as «Bill Haley And The Saddlemen» back
in 1949; and with Rudy Pompilli and Franny Beecher still in the band, the Comets’
classic rocking sound is still in evidence whenever they pick up the tempo. But
they don’t do it too often, and it is hard to understand the kind of
audiences for whom this project was intended. Retreating into the shadows of
country was one acceptable way of «maturing» for rock’n’roll pioneers — Jerry
Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Brenda Lee, etc. — but the way this particular LP is
subtitled shows that Haley wasn’t really willing to switch to a different
target group; rather, Bill Haley’s Jukebox
was intended to introduce the classic young fans of ‘Rock Around The Clock’,
now moving into their twenties, to the kind of music without which there
would ultimately be no ‘Rock Around The Clock’. Whether the fans really
needed such an introduction remains debatable; judging by the fact that the
album flopped the same way its predecessor did, and ultimately lost Haley his
contract with Warners, they probably didn’t. That
said, unless you’re deeply alergic to all forms of country, including a relatively
«lively» variety of it as played by the Comets, Jukebox isn’t too bad. At the very least, I’ll definitely take it
over Bill’s Warners debut — given the choice between an inferior re-recording
of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and an okay take on ‘Cold, Cold Heart’, I’ll
certainly prefer the latter. Bill’s charismatic voice is perfectly suited for
this material, and Beecher’s and Williamson’s guitar playing is every bit as
good as your average Nashville professional’s; meanwhile, Johnny Grande on
piano gets some extra chances to shine, as he is typically outshadowed on the
band’s rock’n’roll material. All of this is evident, for instance, on their
version of ‘Candy Kisses’, basically impeccable from any point of view; you
may not want to prefer it to the original crooning performance of George Morgan
from 1949, but I respect how Haley succeeds in stripping the song from its cooing
excesses, bringing it closer to earth while still retaining the tenderness
aura. A
particular highlight is the Comets’ unexpectedly loud, bombastic romp through
the old Tex Ritter chestnut ‘There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder’. It’s
important to forget about the lyrics — their heartbroken ring is all but
incompatible with this take, in which Haley’s triumphant intonation on "there’s a NEW moon!.." almost
makes it seem as if he were starting a new life or something — but the
groove, with Pompilli’s sax and Grande’s piano weaving tiny, playful rings
around each other, is playful and uplifting, completely transforming the
original song into something it was never intended to be, yet Haley and his
boys, with their usual panache, almost succeed in convincing us that this
kind of spirit was always inherently present in the song in the first place. Likewise,
you could probably predict that ‘Detour’, even with the vocals and all, would
rather follow the twangy Duane Eddy version than the original Jimmy Walker
performance from 1945, or the famous Patti Page cover from 1951. There’s some
fabulous competition between Williamson and Beecher going on in this one —
and even if it doesn’t twang quite
as juicily as the Duane Eddy version, it manages to kick more ass during the
instrumental section. All in all, it would be a flat-out lie to label the Comets
as «tired» or «uninspired» on these recordings: nostalgia or not, they
clearly had fun working on the new arrangements for these old songs. Of
course, every now and then Bill would take on the impossible or the
unnecessary; it is one thing when he strips the croon away from the old
crooners, but quite another when he takes the heart-tugging misery out of ‘Cold,
Cold Heart’ — covering Hank Williams is a titanic challenge which you shouldn’t
really take on unless you’re ready to transform the song into something
completely different (at least when the Comets did ‘Move It On Over’ years
earlier, they were showing the world how it works when you transform an old
fast country tune into modern day rock’n’roll). He sings the song reasonably
well, but with Hank, «reasonably well» is never enough for more than a late
night karaoke session with friends. The addition of a «cold, cold» Christmas-ey
organ part is a creative touch, but it still cannot compensate for the lack
of aching desperation in Haley’s delivery. This guy couldn’t really sound
miserable even when he was
miserable (and as of mid-1960, he wasn’t even miserable enough, though slowly
getting there). Still,
while the major and minor shortcomings of the record are fairly obvious, let
us remember that this is the very last chance we get to hear the classic Comets
lineup (at least in LP form), with Beecher and Pompilli both still in the
band, perform something that is still relatively up their alley. As a swan
song, it’s not too bad (certainly much better than if the Comets tried to fully
embrace the new 1960 brand of sweetened-up teen pop, for instance), and both ‘There’s
A New Moon’ and ‘Detour’ could easily squeeze themselves into any solid
collection of Haley’s rock’n’roll highlights. The main problem was that this
direction was a dead end — either the band would have to spend the rest of
its days churning out modernized productions of old country hits, or it would
have to die. The record executives at Warners decided on the latter,
releasing Bill from his contract; and although the Comets, in various
incarnations, would continue their ever more chaotic and unpredictable Odyssey
for more than a decade, Haley’s Juke Box
would arguably be the very last LP on which they made music with a fair share
of confidence, clearly believing in it and subtly nudging us to believe in
it, too. |
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