Rock Around the Clock

Rock Around the Clock (Vinyl)

And then came “Rock Around the Clock”, the record that changed the history of pop music.

It was April 1954, and Bill Hailey – a young singer from Michigan – was in the studio to record his debut album with a country band.

Expectations were low. The song was simply meant to be the B-side to “Thirteen Women”; it was a cover, and not a fresh one, either: the song had been written at least two years prior. The whole operation could hardly be described as imaginative. “Rock Around the Clock” sounded like any regular Western Swing song, and Haley – following a common practice at the time – had merely incorporated Blues and R’n’B elements.

But then the song made it onto the soundtrack of “Blackboard Jungle”, and what followed was absolute mayhem. Sales skyrocketed, and “Rock Around the Clock” climbed the charts all the way to #1.

What happened? The younger generations – white American teenagers – had heard the Black influences on the record and wholeheartedly embraced them. Confirmation came a few months later, when a young Black man from Georgia, Richard Penniman (known as Little Richard), recorded “Tutti Frutti” with a group of New Orleans musicians. It was another earth-shattering hit.

And so Rock’n’Roll was born.

Soon, the new genre swept across America and more musicians started to crop up. A tiny, Memphis-based label that specialized in blues discovered several young (white) musicians that went on to become Rock’n’Roll and Rockabilly legends, including Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.

History credits their label with another fateful discovery, too: Elvis Presley, who certainly needs no introduction and was immediately snatched away by a major record company.

A few years passed, and the gap between white and black music shrunk further with the rise of Soul, here represented by Ben E. King and his sensational “Stand By Me”.

But that’s not all: the Fabulous Fifties were a time of transition and new beginnings on more than one level. Country music, for instance, ended up incorporating elements of Rock’n’Roll, influencing vocal groups like The Diamonds, The Fleetwoods and the Everly Brothers, and famous solo artists such as Frankie Avalon, Jackie Wilson and Paul Anka.

The artists featured on this compilation paint an exceptionally vivid and fascinating image of the short period (1954–61) that still influences the music we hear today.