Everyone knows about “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets, the 1954 classic that is likely regarded by the general public as the first rock and roll record.  The inclusion of the song in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle (starring a young Sidney Poitier) is what truly made it a hit.  However, Bill Haley’s rock roots actually go much deeper and much earlier than that. 

Sometime in the 1949 to 1952 period, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen were formed; this was the band that would later evolve into Bill Haley and His Comets. 

The changing nature of Bill Haley’s music made the band name “Saddlemen” increasingly incongruous, and by the fall of 1952, the band had changed its name to Bill Haley and His Comets.  The idea for “the Comets” came from the common mispronunciation of Halley’s Comet that persists to this day.  (Edmond Halley’s surname actually rhymes with “Sally”; Halley concluded that three especially bright comets that had been observed over the preceding two centuries were actually the same object that appeared every 76 years and correctly predicted the return of the comet in 1758). 

In 1953, “Crazy Man, Crazy” by Bill Haley and His Comets became the first rock and roll song to be televised nationally when it was used in the soundtrack of an episode of the CBS anthology series Omnibus called Glory in the Flower that starred James Dean.  “Rock Around the Clock” was their next record, and the band continued with a string of hits in the mid-1950’s that included “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, “See You Later, Alligator”, “Skinny Minnie”, and “Razzle Dazzle”. 

Following Bill Haley’s death in 1981, there were at least six bands using the name The Comets that claimed (with varying degrees of authority) to be the continuation of Haley’s band.  Three were still touring as late as 2008 according to Wikipedia.