BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS 78 FRACTURED / PAT-A-CAKE SCARCE GOLD LONDON L 1216 V+

	£		30
	$		40

AN EXCELLENT COPY OF THIS HARD TO FIND ROCKER FROM BILL HALEY WITH HALEYS COMETS ON GOLD UK LONDON 78

The Haleys had moved to Detroit from Firebrick, Kentucky, where William Sr. found work in a nearby service station as a mechanic while his wife gave piano lessons in their home for twenty-five cents an hour. Maude Haley, a woman of strong religious convictions, had come to America with her family from Ulverston in Lancashire, England before the First World War. Later the family moved to Boothwyn, near the town of Chester, Pennsylvania. 

William Haley Sr. was a quiet man from the hills of Eastern Kentucky who had to quit school early to find work. His father had died young and his mother desperately needed his income to raise the younger children. William Sr. struggled with this burden until the last of his brothers and sisters were educated and on their own. Only then, after he was thirty years old, did he marry.  

Haley's father played the banjo and mandolin. Though he couldn't read music he had an ear for country music and was able to pick out any tune he wanted by ear.

At thirteen Haley received his first guitar. His father taught him to play the basic chords and notes by ear. It was at this time he began his dream of  becoming a singing cowboy like the ones he idolized every Saturday afternoon at the movie houses in nearby Marcus Hook or Chester. 

In June of 1940, just before his fifteenth birthday, Haley left school after finishing the eighth grade and went to work bottling water at Bethel Springs. This company sold pure spring water and fruit flavored soft drinks in a three state area. Here he worked for 35 cents an hour, filling large five gallon glass bottles with spring water.

At 18 he made his first record "Candy Kisses" and for the next four years was a guitarist and singer with country and western bands.

After time on the road with the Down Homers Haley returned to his parents' home in Booth's Corner in September of 1946. He was ill, disillusioned and so broke he had to walk from the train station in Marcus Hook four miles to Booth's Corner. His only request to his mother was not to tell anyone he was home, not even his fiancée Dorothy. Bill fell into bed and slept thirty hours. Over the next two weeks Mrs. Haley slowly nursed her itinerant son back to health.

By the age of 21, Haley felt he wasn't going to make it big as a cowboy singer and ill left the 'Downhomers', and returned to Chester to host a local radio program.. At this time he also married his childhood sweetheart Dorothy Crowe a beautiful part American Indian girl. 

Haley was hired in 1947 as musical director for radio station WPWA. Working twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week he interviewed dozens of local people, always looking for good ideas and new talent. Each Sunday he would go to Radio Park and invite celebrities to do a special half hour program where he would interview them and ask them to sing or play their latest tunes.

It was during this time that he put together a band The Four Aces of Swing that performed on the his show. In 1948 on the Cowboy label Haley recorded with The Four Aces of Western Swing. The Four Aces disbanded in mid '49 and Haley formed a new band, the Downhomers with which he recorded country music. Later he left the group to return Chester to host a local radio program. 

In the summer of 1950, through the efforts of Jimmy Myers, Bill Haley and his Saddlemen cut their first records. They were on Ed Wilson's Keystone label, a small Philadelphia independent publisher. The songs were standard western swing tunes: "Deal Me A Hand" /" Ten Gallon Stetson" and "Susan Van Dusan" /" I'm Not To Blame."  They were the first recordings of the band that would become the nucleus of the world famous Comets.

With their new, exciting sound  the name "Saddlemen" no longer seemed appropriate. According to Marshall Lytle, it was Bob Johnson, Program Director at WPWA who first suggested the name Haley's Comets.  "Ya 'know, with a name like Haley, you guys should call your group the Comets!" 

Just before the Thanksgiving holidays in 1952, Haley's band changed their name and their image for the last time. Off came the cowboy boots and the white Stetsons. With some regrets and more than a little apprehension, the four young musicians, turned their backs on their beloved country/ western music and bravely faced an unknown future using the Comets in the name of the band.

THIS WAS ONE OF THEIR FIRST ROCK-A-BILLY RELEASES ON THE ESSEX LABEL ON WHICH THEY  BILLED THEMSELVES AS 

"BILL HALEY AND HALEY'S COMETS"