Post by erik on Jul 23, 2022 12:32:36 GMT -5
Just prior to "Rock Around The Clock", Bill Haley and the Comets injected a bit of a Cuban dance form into this newfangled thing called Rock and Roll, in the form of the 1955 of theirs in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight.
MAMBO ROCK (Bill Haley and the Comets; Decca; 1955)—Originally having come from a Western Swing background, Bill Haley quickly switched to this newfangled mashing of Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues, with his 1952 rockabilly recording of Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm’s “Rocket 88” with the group that became The Comets. His 1954 recording “Rock Around The Clock” was initially a chart failure; but once it found its way onto the soundtrack of the 1955 film The Blackboard Jungle, a classic about mid-1950’s juvenile delinquency, it quickly stormed its way to #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart, kicking off the rock and roll genre in the biggest way, staying at the top for eight weeks that summer. For much of 1955 and on into 1956, until he was overtaken by Elvis Presley and Little Richard, Haley and his group were the ones who really brought rock and roll to the fore. Just prior to that breakthrough, however, they were paving the way for some more interesting iterations of rock and roll to come. One of them, the B-side of their Top 20 hit “The Birth Of The Boogie”, was “Mambo Rock”, which was inspired by the dance form that came from the Caribbean island of Cuba and which was hugely popular with Anglo and Latinx audiences on the East Coast. Though obviously far more obscure than “Rock And Roll Around The Clock”, or even the group’s bowdlerized version of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle, And Roll”, “Mambo Rock” was to achieve significant success all the same, peaking at #18 in mid-April 1955. The song also contributed to the furtherance in the popularity of the Mambo in the U.S., spawned by, among other records, “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White” and “Patricia” by bandleader Perez Prado. And in 1957, Leonard Bernstein integrated his own take on the dance form via the “Mambo” section of the Dance At The Gym segment for his mega-classic Broadway musical West Side Story.
MAMBO ROCK (Bill Haley and the Comets; Decca; 1955)—Originally having come from a Western Swing background, Bill Haley quickly switched to this newfangled mashing of Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues, with his 1952 rockabilly recording of Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm’s “Rocket 88” with the group that became The Comets. His 1954 recording “Rock Around The Clock” was initially a chart failure; but once it found its way onto the soundtrack of the 1955 film The Blackboard Jungle, a classic about mid-1950’s juvenile delinquency, it quickly stormed its way to #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart, kicking off the rock and roll genre in the biggest way, staying at the top for eight weeks that summer. For much of 1955 and on into 1956, until he was overtaken by Elvis Presley and Little Richard, Haley and his group were the ones who really brought rock and roll to the fore. Just prior to that breakthrough, however, they were paving the way for some more interesting iterations of rock and roll to come. One of them, the B-side of their Top 20 hit “The Birth Of The Boogie”, was “Mambo Rock”, which was inspired by the dance form that came from the Caribbean island of Cuba and which was hugely popular with Anglo and Latinx audiences on the East Coast. Though obviously far more obscure than “Rock And Roll Around The Clock”, or even the group’s bowdlerized version of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle, And Roll”, “Mambo Rock” was to achieve significant success all the same, peaking at #18 in mid-April 1955. The song also contributed to the furtherance in the popularity of the Mambo in the U.S., spawned by, among other records, “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White” and “Patricia” by bandleader Perez Prado. And in 1957, Leonard Bernstein integrated his own take on the dance form via the “Mambo” section of the Dance At The Gym segment for his mega-classic Broadway musical West Side Story.