#1: Tamiami by Bill Haley and His Comets

City: Fort William, ON
Radio Station: CJLX
Peak Month: March 1960
Peak Position in Fort William ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Tamiami”

Bill Haley was born in Michigan in 1925. His dad played the mandolin and banjo while his mom played the piano. In a story Haley would relate years later in a biography, he recalled as a child when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one. Sleeve notes accompanying the 1956 Decca album, Rock Around The Clock, describe Bill Haley’s early life and emerging career: “Bill got his first professional job at the age of 13, playing and entertaining at an auction for the fee of $1 a night. Very soon after this he formed a group of equally enthusiastic youngsters and managed to get quite a few local bookings for his band.”

The sleeve notes on the album further related, “When Bill Haley was fifteen he left home with his guitar and very little else and set out on the hard road to fame and fortune. The next few years, continuing this story in a fairy-tale manner, were hard and poverty-stricken, but crammed full of useful experience. Apart from learning how to exist on one meal a day and other artistic exercises, he worked at an open-air park show, sang and yodelled with any band that would have him, and worked with a traveling medicine show. Eventually he got a job with a popular group known as the “Down Homers” while they were in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after this he decided, as all successful people must decide at some time or another, to be his own boss again – and he has been that ever since.’ These notes fail to account for his early band, known as the Four Aces of Western Swing. During the 1940s Haley was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers in America as “Silver Yodeling Bill Haley.”

The sleeve notes conclude: “For six years Bill Haley was a musical director of Radio Station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania, and led his own band all through this period. It was then known as Bill Haley’s Saddlemen, indicating their definite leaning toward the tough Western style. They continued playing in clubs as well as over the radio around Philadelphia, and in 1951 made their first recordings on Ed Wilson’s Keystone Records in Philadelphia.”

After recording a number of R&B cover tunes in the early 50s, the band recorded “Crazy Man, Crazy” in 1953. This was the first rock ‘n roll record to make it into the American pop charts. It peaked at #11 on the Cashbox charts and was the first rock ‘n roll song to be seen live in television in America. The song spent three months in the Top 30 and was a sign of something new musically. Contrast the song with what was number one during this time: “Song From Moulin Rouge” by Percy Faith, “Vaya con Dios” by Les Paul and Mary Ford and “No Other Love” by Perry Como.

In June 1954 Big Joe Turner’s suggestive song, “Shake, Rattle And Roll”, made it to #1 on the American R&B charts. He had lines like “over the hill and way on underneath…/you make me roll my eyes and baby make me grit with my teeth.” Bill Haley & His Comets decided to record a less sexually explicit version passed the American censors in the music and broadcasting industry and went on to peak at #7 in August 1954 and spend six months on the Billboard Top 40 pop charts.

In 1955 Bill Haley & His Comets had the first number one rock ‘n roll hit with “Rock Around The Clock.” It would sell over 25 million records and remains in 2017 the fifth biggest selling single in over a hundred years of recorded vinyl music sales. The song got exposure in the 1954 movie about juvenile delinquency called Blackboard Jungle. The song was inducted into the Grammy Award Hall of Fame in 1974 for its “historical significance.” Haley would score seven more hits into the Top 20 in the American charts before the end of 1956. His most successful follow up was “See You Later Alligator” which peaked at #6 in February 1956.

In 1956 Haley’s band starred in two rock ‘n roll films: Rock Around the Clock, featuring “See You Later Alligator” and Don’t Knock the Rock. This gave additional exposure to singles they released that year as the films exclusively showcased “white” teenagers dancing to rock ‘n roll. African-American performers in the films were The Platters in the first movie and Little Richard in the second.

Bill Haley & His Comets appeared on The Texaco Star Theatre hosted by Milton Berle in May 1955, and The Ed Sullivan Show in August. Berle had commented that the song would go nowhere, but by August, Ed Sullivan had to have the band on his show. On June 27, 1956 Bill Haley and His Comets appeared in concert at the Kerrisdale Arena in Vancouver (BC), with Red Robinson as the master of ceremonies.

Bill Haley and His Comets also appeared twice on both of Dick Clark’s TV shows (American Bandstand and Saturday Night Beechnut Show) between 1957 and 1960.

Don’t Knock the Rock was a 1956 American musical film starring Alan Dale. Directed by Fred F. Stiles, the film also features performances by Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, The Treniers, and Dave Appell and the Applejacks. The title of the film comes from one of Haley’s hit singles of 1956. The Haley recording is played over the opening credits, but it is Alan Dale who performs the number in the film. Don’t Knock the Rock premiered in New York City on December 12, 1956.The film was an immediate follow-up to the earlier Rock Around the Clock, which had also starred Haley and Freed. (The film Rock Around the Clock had been titled after the hit single in 1955 featured originally in the film Blackboard Jungle). Although Bill Haley and the Comets were the top-billed stars of the film, their role in it was relatively minor. The film failed to duplicate the box office success of its predecessor. Today it is mostly remembered for introducing Little Richard to a mass audience. In the film Little Richard sings “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti-Frutti”. Both were hits that had done well for Little Richard earlier in 1956 on the R&B charts. The title track from the film did not chart in the USA, but it peaked at #3 on local Vancouver charts in January 1957.

Bill Haley & His Comets would have one more song in the Top 30 in the USA called “Skinnie Minnie” in the beginning of 1958. His last single to crack the Billboard Hot 100 was in 1959 with “Skokiaan”. The next single release by the band was “Tamiami”.

“Tamiami” was cowritten by Mort Garson and Earl Shuman. It was an instrumental which didn’t appear on any album. The single featured a saxophone, which was a popular choice in pop singles at the time.

Garson was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He also wrote “Our Day Will Come” for Ruby & The Romantics in 1963. He went on to prominently arrange for other artists including the Sandpipers on their 1966 hit, “Guantanamera”, and Glen Campbell’s 1968 hit, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix”. In 1974, he won a Grammy Award for his composition of “The Little Prince,” which accompanied Richard Burton’s narration of the children’s book. He composed the score for the West End of London musical, Marilyn, in 1983.

Earl Shuman was born in 1923 in Boston. A graduate of Yale University, where he played catcher on the baseball team, Earl served in the Marines in World War II and the Korean War. Shuman teamed up with Garson on minor hits for Patti Page and the Belmonts. Shuman had a number one British hit, “Starry Eyed”, for Michael Holliday in 1960. In 1953, Georgia Gibbs recorded “Seven Lonely Days” which peaked at #5. Cliff Richard’s “Theme For A Dream” peaked at #3 in the UK in 1961. In 1962, Brook Benton’s “Hotel Happiness” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Shuman also wrote songs recorded by Teresa Brewer, Steve Lawrence, Tony Bennet, Mindy Carson, Margie Rayburn, Rosemary Clooney, The Playmates, Kitty Kallen, Robin Luke, Fabian, Tommy Sands, Bill Haley and His Comets, Brian Hyland, The Pony-Tails,  The McGuire Sisters, Little Peggy March, The Times, Freddie Scott, Martha & the Vandellas, Paul & Paula, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vinton, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Nina Simone, Lenny Welch, Pat Boone, Nat “King” Cole, Perry Como, and others. In 1963, Shuman wrote “Hey There Lonely Boy” for Ruby and the Romantics. It peaked at #27 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was covered as “Hey There Lonely Girl” by Eddie Holman in 1969 and peaked at #2 on the Hot 100. Between 1953 and 1990, 37 of Shuman’s songs charted on the Billboard Hot 100. He died in 2019 at the age of 95.

“Tamiami” peaked at #1 in Fort William (ON), #6 in Wheaton (MD), #10 in Toppenish (WA) and #20 in Denver.

Bill Haley’s band fell off the radar except for rock ‘n roll revival shows that kept them touring until Haley died in 1981. They issued 18 new releases between 1960 and 1981. However, none of these cracked the Hot 100. Though Bill Haley & His Comets were pioneers in bringing rock ‘n roll to mainstream pop music starting in 1953, their Top 30 presence was a relatively brief five year span ending in early 1958.

By 1958 Bill Haley was 33 years old. As teenagers tastes shifted to their peer group they were buying songs like “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” by 14 year old Laurie London, “Just A Dream” by 19 year old Jimmy Clanton, “Do You Wanna Dance” by 17 year old Bobby Freeman and 16 year old Robin Luke’s hit “Susie Darlin’”. By 1958 “Rock Around The Clock” and the juvenile delinquent movie, Blackboard Jungle, were four years old. A whole cohort of teens could hardly remember way back then or care much about Bill Haley, a hit maker of an “oldie but a goodie.”

In Canada, Bill Haley and His Comets have played in concert in Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton (ON), Kingston (ON), Lethbridge (AB), London (ON), Montreal, Pembroke (ON), Quebec City, Ridgetown (ON), Sault Ste. Marie (ON), Toronto, Trois Rivieres (PQ), Vancouver and Winnipeg. A changing line up of Bill Haley and His Comets over the decades has included over one hundred musicians. Other original members of The Comets continued to perform with other musicians into the 21st Century.

December 30, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Bill Haley Biography ~ Radio Swiss Jazz.ch
Liner notes, Rock Around The Clock, Bill Haley and His Comets, Decca Records, 1955
Blackboard Jungle ~ opening sequence in film with “Rock Around The Clock“, MGM, 1955
Don’t Knock The Rock, Columbia Pictures, 1956.
Rock Around The Clock, Columbia Pictures, 1956.
“Earl Shuman Obituary,” New York Times, February 18, 2019.
“Mort Garson,” discogs.com.

CJLX 800-AM, Fort William (ON), March 19, 1960