Crazy Man Crazy

Bill Haley & His Comets (1953). Excerpt from "The 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll"

Of course, Michigan-born Bill Haley is among the most familiar first-generation rock and rollers, largely for the immortal “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.” And we’ll get to that. But his contribution to the early evolution of rock and roll stretches back a few years before he became a household name.

Born in 1925, Haley began his career as a well-regarded country yodeler.

He fronted various Western Swing bands before ultimately forming Bill Haley and His Saddlemen. In the early ‘50s, the Saddlemen gradually began to merge elements of R&B and country-western into a hybrid called rockabilly. Though they weren’t necessary the first, their use of slap-back bass for percussion and Haley’s hip, swinging delivery made the Saddlemen early pioneers in the rockabilly genre.

Then Bill Haley heard Jackie Brenston’s Rocket 88. He launched his band headlong into rock and roll.

Their recordings were still rockabilly at heart, but as the band evolved into Bill Haley & His Comets (aka Bill Haley & the Comets), they continued to kick the momentum, electricity and intensity music into higher gear. Borrowing a popular phrase uttered by members of his own audience, Haley authored “Crazy Man, Crazy.”

“Crazy Man, Crazy” throws the drums up front, rips smoking guitar licks throughout, and blows the joint up with a chorus of hepped up shouters. The whole thing feels like a party. It was the first pop-charting rock and roll hit by a white group, hitting #12 that summer. It was nudged forward by its appearance on a CBS television special featuring an emerging James Dean. This would make it the first rock and roll song to appear on American television and it would earn the Comets their eventual invitation to record “Rock Around the Clock.”

Bill Haley would become a major force in the coming decade, carving out an enormous piece of Billboard real estate and selling over 25 million records worldwide. He lived to the age of 55, dying in 1981.

See the full list of 50 Songs that Gave Birth to Rock and Roll