Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one.

After performing for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance in 1979, Haley made his final performances in South Africa in May and June 1980.

: See the discography section of Bill Haley & His Comets for a list of the singles and album releases made by Haley with the Saddlemen and the Comets from 1950 onwards.

After " Skinny Minnie " hit the charts in 1958, Haley found it difficult to score further successes in the United States, although a spin-off group made up of Comets musicians dubbed The Kingsmen ( no relation to the later group of " Louie, Louie " fame ) did score a hit with the instrumental, " Weekend " that same year.

In March and July 2005, the members of the 1954 – 55 group, now billed as simply The Comets after decades of controversy over the use of the name, made several high-profile concert appearances in New York City and Los Angeles organized by Martin Lewis as part of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of rock and roll, the release of Blackboard Jungle, the 50th anniversary of " Rock Around the Clock " hitting Number 1, and the 80th birthday of Bill Haley.

* Several 1946 radio recordings Haley made with the Down Homers ( Rock n ' Roll Arrives box set, Bear Family Records, 2006 );

* A large cache of country-western recordings made by Haley in the 1946 – 51 era, before the formation of the Comets ( also released on Rock ' n ' Roll Arrives );

Prior to this group's formation, another group called The Kingsmen operated in 1958 and was made up of members of Bill Haley & His Comets who were moonlighting from their regular work with Haley.

Haley was born in 1925 and " Rock Around the Clock " made the scene in 1955 and at that time he and his band were using the name the Comets.

Among those performers who made early film appearances in Vitaphone shorts filmed at the Flatbush studios include Al Jolson, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr., Sylvia Sidney, Pat O ' Brien, Ruth Etting, Mischa Elman, Betty Hutton, Burns and Allen, Giovanni Martinelli, Xavier Cugat, Bill Robinson, Lillian Roth, Joan Blondell, Ethel Merman, Abbe Lane, Eleanor Powell, Helen Morgan, The Nicholas Brothers, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Jane Froman, Jack Haley, Phil Silvers, Judy Canova, Nina Mae McKinney, Marjorie Main, Rose Marie, Joe Penner, Ethel Waters, June Allyson, Shemp Howard, Lanny Ross, Lionel Stander, and Cyd Charisse among others.

Coincidentally, Checker appeared in two musicals that took their titles from films Haley made in the 1950s: Twist Around the Clock ( after Rock Around the Clock ) and Don't Knock the Twist ( after Don't Knock the Rock ).

Oz was one of only two films Haley made for MGM ( the other was Pick a Star, a 1937 Hal Roach production distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ).

In 1972, Haley made his daughter, Gloria, the sole owner of his written memoirs.

In May 2010, Erickson wrote in the RedState blog that he would be releasing evidence that Will Folks, a South Carolina GOP political operative, had made false allegations that he had an affair with gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley and that the allegations were " initiated by a rival political campaign .".

Curry made two successful title defenses, knocking out Hidekazu Akai in seven rounds and winning a rematch with Haley by a twelve-round split decision.

In 1958, the Matys Brothers made two records for Haley's Clymax record label, one of which, " Crazy Street ," co written by Haley, later was considered a rockabilly classic.

In the early 1970s Janus also released American editions of recordings made by Bill Haley & His Comets for the European Sonet Records label.

A year later, on May 14, 2011, Haley Reinhart, of Wheeling, Illinois, also made the top 3 on American Idol.

In January 2008, Rolando Garibotti and Colin Haley made the first complete traverse of the entire massif, climbing Aguja Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger and Cerro Torre together.

In 1964, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a version for a single release on Decca Records during an unsuccessful attempt to make a comeback with the label that had made them famous with " Rock Around the Clock " ( this version was produced by Milt Gabler ); Haley and the Comets also recorded an instrumental version in 1962 for the Mexican Orfeon Records label.

In Britain, it also owned the pyrotechnics company Haley & Weller ( who made grenades ).

Haley continued to tour for the next year with a succession of new sax players, but his popularity was waning again and his 1976 performance in London was critically lambasted by music media such as Melody Maker.

Haley and his band were important in launching the music known as " Rock and Roll " to a wider, mostly white audience after a period of it being considered an underground genre.

* In 1990, Haley's eldest son, John W. Haley, along with John von Hoëlle wrote Sound and Glory, a biography focusing mostly on Haley's early life and peak career years.

3 which contains 60 versions of the song — 30 by Haley ( mostly live performances ), and 30 more by a variety of artists including Pat Boone, Chubby Checker, Eddie Cochran, John Lennon, Buddy Knox, Isley Brothers, The Platters, Carl Perkins, and Mae West.

The band initially formed as Bill Haley and the Saddlemen c. 1949 – 1952, and performed mostly country and western songs, though occasionally with a bluesy feel.

An almost completely new group of musicians, mostly British-including Pete Thomas ( saxophonist )-were assembled to perform as The Comets, and Haley appeared on many television shows as well as in the movie Blue Suede Shoes, filmed at one of his London concerts in March 1979.

Throughout the 1960s, Haley was responsible for some of the magazine's most notable interviews, including an interview with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, who agreed to meet with Haley only after Haley, in a phone conversation, assured him that he was not Jewish.

Dave ( Dennis Christopher ), Mike ( Dennis Quaid ), Cyril ( Daniel Stern ) and Moocher ( Jackie Earle Haley ) are four working-class friends, living in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana.

Allen often mentioned his show-business friends on the air (" Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts " was Allen's way of saying hello to his pal Jack Haley ), and on the Canin broadcast Allen knew Benny would be listening.

One of his closest friends was fellow vaudeville alumnus Fred Allen, who would frequently mention " Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts " on the air.

By 1955 he encountered the rock ' n ' roll of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley ; after leaving school in 1956, aged 15, Merritt formed The Meteors with friends Ross Clancy ( sax ), Peter Patonai ( piano ), Ian Glass ( bass ) and Pete Sowden ( drums ).

Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives — including his Grandmother Cynthia, whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865 — Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to " the African ," Kunta Kinte, captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767.

Initially, it was relatively unsuccessful, staying at the charts for only one week, but Haley soon scored a major worldwide hit with a cover version of Big Joe Turner's " Shake, Rattle and Roll ", which went on to sell a million copies and became the first ever rock ' n ' roll song to enter British singles charts in December 1954 and became a Gold Record.

Media reports immediately following his death indicated Haley displayed deranged and erratic behavior in his final weeks, although beyond a biography of Haley by John Swenson, released a year later, which described Haley painting the windows of his home black, there is little information extant about Haley's final days.

Prior to the formation of Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, which later became The Comets, Haley released several singles with other groups.

A number of previously unreleased Haley country-western recordings from the 1946-1950 period began to emerge near the end of Haley's life, some of which were released by the Arzee label, with titles such as " Yodel Your Blues Away " and " Rose of My Heart.

In some groups, the slap bass was utilized as band percussion in lieu of a drummer ; such was the case with Bill Haley & His Saddlemen ( the forerunner group to the Comets ), which did not use drummers on recordings and live performances until late 1952 ; prior to this the slap bass was relied on for percussion, including on recordings such as Haley's versions of Rock the Joint and Rocket 88.

Authors such as Studs Terkel, Alex Haley, and Oscar Lewis have employed oral history in their books, many of which are largely based on interviews.

Contenders for the title of " first rock and roll record " include Goree Carter's " Rock Awhile " ( 1949 ); Jimmy Preston's " Rock the Joint " ( 1949 ), which was later covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952 ; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats ( actually an alias for Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in March 1951.

Both movies contained the Bill Haley & His Comets hit " Rock Around the Clock ", which first entered the British charts in early 1955 – four months before it reached the US pop charts – topped the British charts later that year and again in 1956, and helped identify rock and roll with teenage delinquency.

Davis had purchased the firearms used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Haley, which had been purchased two days prior and sawed off.

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 ).

The most notable of these compilations was the 1955 Decca Records album Rock Around the Clock ( Decca DL 8225 ) which contained most of the tracks Haley recorded as singles for the label in 1954 and 1955.

Bandleader Bill Haley had previously been a country music performer ; after recording a country and western-styled version of " Rocket 88 ", a rhythm and blues song, he changed musical direction to a new sound which came to be called rock and roll.

Late in 1954, Haley also recorded another hit, " Dim, Dim The Lights ", which was one of the first R & B songs recorded by a white group to cross over to the R & B charts.

Overseas, however, Haley and his band continued to be popular, touring the United Kingdom in February 1957, during which Haley and his crew were mobbed by thousands of fans at Waterloo Station in London at an incident which the media dubbed the Second Battle of Waterloo.

Members of The Comets were commissioned to work as session musicians on many of these recordings, many of which were written or co-written by Haley and / or members of The Comets.

There was also some experimentation with Haley's style during this time ; one single for Orfeon was a folk ballad, " Jimmy Martinez ", which Haley recorded without the Comets.

During this year, Haley — without the Comets — recorded a pair of demos in Phoenix, Arizona: a country-western song called " Jealous Heart " for which he was backed by a local mariachi band ( and similar in style to the earlier " Jimmy Martinez ", and late-60s-style rocker called " Rock on Baby " backed by a group called Superfine Dandelion.