rockintheblues.net Informed by Blues, Boogie Woogie, Jazz, R&B, Hillbilly and Country music, Rock 'n' Roll, Rockabilly became the first music to aim directly at a teenage audience, and it hit. Rock 'n' Roll extended an unparalleled influence around the world.
Update Updates to Rock N Roll 04.12.2023
Bill Haley, Jack Scott ,Ricky Nelson
Bill Haley / Rock and Roll
Bill Haley
Bill Haley (William John Clifton Haley July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981) was an American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and million-selling hits such as "Rock Around the Clock", "See You Later, Alligator", "Shake, Rattle and Roll", "Rocket 88", "Skinny Minnie", and "Razzle Dazzle".
Haley has sold over 60 million records worldwide.
In 1987, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The anonymous sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album Rock Around the Clock describe Haley's early life and career: "When Bill Haley was fifteen [c. 1940] 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 yodelled 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." These notes fail to account for his early band, known as the Four Aces of Western Swing. During the 1940s Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America as "Silver Yodeling Bill Haley".
One source states that Haley started his career as "The Rambling Yodeler" in a country band, The Saddlemen.
Ricky Nelson / Rock and Roll
Ricky Nelson
Eric Hilliard Nelson (May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985) was an American musician and actor. From age eight he starred alongside his family in the radio and television series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, he began a long and successful career as a popular recording artist.
His fame as both a recording artist and television star also led to a motion picture role co-starring alongside John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Angie Dickinson in Howard Hawks's western feature film Rio Bravo (1959).
He placed 54 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and its predecessors between 1957 and 1973, including "Poor Little Fool" in 1958, which was the first number one song on Billboard magazine's then-newly created Hot 100 chart. He recorded 19 additional top ten hits and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 21, 1987.
In 1996 Nelson was ranked No. 49 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Jack Scott / Rock and Roll
Jack Scott
Rock 'n' Roll and its warped cousin Rockabilly were mostly the property of the southern states in the 1950s, with nearly all the big stars coming from states within driving distance of Memphis.
However, it makes sense that the city of Detroit spawned a real honest to goodness rock 'n' roll legend, Mr. Jack Scott of Hazel Park, Michigan.
Jack's father was a musician and played guitar for the kids (Jack was the oldest of seven children), putting a guitar in Jack's hands at the tender age of eight. Jack loved country music and would strum his guitar around the house and listen to country music on the radio, dreaming big dreams about the Grand Ole Opry and Nashville.
During his teenage years, Jack worked a number of odd jobs while continuing to play guitar. He formed a local hillbilly band called the Southern Drifters (note—interesting name for a band from Michigan!) at the age of 18.
Jack was obsessed with music from an early age. He imitated Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, and many others. His aspirations from this early age were fully formed, and in fact he changed his name from Giovanni Scafone, Jr. to Jack Scott on a suggestion from local WEXL disc jockey Jack Eirie that he might be more successful with an easier to pronounce, more anglicized name.
Like many other teenagers of the mid-1950s, when Elvis came along everything changed, and Jack realized he might have some potential with the new sound of rock 'n' roll. The Southern Drifters began working Elvis songs and Bill Haley songs into their country repertoire.
