Rock Around The Clock - Slow Road To Classic Hit Status

Slow Road To Classic Hit Status

As Gabler intended, "Rock Around the Clock" was first issued in the spring of 1954 as a B-side to "Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)." While the song did make the American Billboard 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 was listening to, and the elder Ford borrowed several records from his son's collection, one of which was Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and this was the song chosen.

On July 9, 1955, "Rock Around the Clock" became the first rock and roll recording to hit the top of Billboard's Pop charts, a feat it repeated on charts around the world. The song stayed at this place for eight weeks. The record was also no.1 for seven weeks on the Cashbox pop singles chart in 1955. The Bill Haley version also hit number three on the R&B charts.

In the UK, Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" reached number 17 on the pop charts in January 1955, four months before it first entered the US pop charts. (Coincidentally, it reached the same position as was reached by The Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do", in 1962). The song re-entered the UK charts to reach number one in November 1955, and after a three-week break returned there for a further three weeks in January 1956. It re-entered the charts again in September 1956, reaching number 5. The song was re-issued in 1968, when it made number 20, and again in 1974, when it reached number 12.

On the heels of the song breaking into the Top 20 in the UK in 1968, Decca began plugging the single in the US, where it briefly re-entered the Billboard charts in June 1968, peaking at #118.

"Rock Around the Clock" became wildly popular with teenagers around the world. The single, released by independent label Festival Records in Australia, was the biggest-selling recording in the country at the time. Columbia Pictures cashed in on the new craze by hiring Haley and his band to star in two quickie movies, Rock Around the Clock (1956) and Don't Knock the Rock (1957). In 1957, Haley toured Europe, bringing rock 'n' roll to that continent for the first time.

'It's very hard to tell what made me first decide to play the guitar. Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley came out when I was ten, and that probably had something to do with it.' — David Gilmour, from Pink Floyd,

In 1964, Bill Haley and His Comets recorded a sequel song entitled "Dance Around the Clock". Haley actually recorded this song on five occasions (a Spanish language version for Orfeón of Mexico City and an English version for the US label Newtown Records (both in 1964), two live versions for Buddah Records recorded in New York in 1969 (neither of which were released for 25 years), and once more in Nashville, Tennessee for the Swedish Sonet Records label in 1970). Despite these efforts, the song was not a commercial success.

Haley would re-record "Rock Around the Clock" many times over the years (even scoring a substantial hit with a version recorded for Sonet Records in 1968), but never recaptured the magic. In 1974, the original version of the song returned to the American charts when it was used as the theme for the movie American Graffiti and a re-recorded version by Haley was used as the opening theme for the TV series Happy Days during its first two seasons. The original version was also featured in the 1978 film Superman, heard playing on a car radio just prior to Glenn Ford's final scene in the film; Ford, as noted earlier, had starred in Blackboard Jungle.

During the 1970s Haley shortened his performances of "Rock Around the Clock", dropping one verse and the second instrumental break from most performances. However, his last known recorded performance of the song, at a November 1979 command performance for Queen Elizabeth II, was a complete version.

Following Haley's death in February 1981, a number of major tributes involving "Rock Around the Clock" occurred. That fall, a TV special marking the 30th anniversary of American Bandstand saw an all-star "supergroup" perform the song (accompanied by 1950s-era footage of Haley and the Comets). In 1982, Haley's original recording was given the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. An excerpt from the recording was included in "Haley's Golden Medley", a hastily-compiled single in the "Stars on 45" mold which made the UK record charts in 1982, reaching number 50. In 1989, Haley's original Decca recording was incorporated into the "dance mix" single "Swing The Mood", credited to Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, but legal considerations forced the album version to substitute a patchwork of re-recordings from the 1950s and 1960s (in Haley's case, a 1968 version of "Rock Around the Clock" recorded for Sonet Records). Since "Swing the Mood" was still on the sales charts going into 1990, it meant that Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", in one way or another, appeared on UK or US sales charts in five consecutive decades.

"Rock Around the Clock" is often cited as the biggest-selling vinyl rock and roll single of all time. The exact number of copies sold has never been audited; however, a figure of at least 25 million was cited by the Guinness Book of World Records in its category "Phonograph records: Biggest Sellers" from the early 1970s until the 1990s, when the advent of compact discs led to Guinness discontinuing the category. Guinness consistently listed "Rock Around the Clock" as having the highest claim of any pop music recording, coming second in sales only to Bing Crosby's 1942 recording of "White Christmas", which was also listed as having sold 25 million copies with a further estimated 100 million copies sold in other versions. Sales figures as high as 35 to 40 million have been cited in various reference books and by media, as have lower numbers in the 15–22 million range, whilst a "more than 30 million copies" figure was quoted by Star, as early as 1983, on back cover page of Swenson's book. A frequently used piece of promotion regarding the song is that it is said to be playing somewhere in the world every minute of the day.