Betcha Didn’t Know Bill Haley Invented Ska!

In the late ‘60s when rock and roll criticism and the oldies circuit were both getting started, Bill Haley & His Comets got a lot more respect than they do these days.

Then he was seen as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, part of the pantheon of deities headed by “Elvis and the commandants around him; Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent.” These days not so much, at least in the US.

Why? Well, too corny, too white, too pudgy, too derivative, too dorky,. And in truth, his music doesn’t stand up as well as the others namechecked in the song lyric I just cited. (Bonus points if you can name the tune and artist.) On video, the band isn't as embarrassing to watch as, say, Sha-Na-Na at Woodstock but even second tier rockabilly acts from the same era, like Wanda Jackson or Johnny Burnette's Rock & Roll Trio, shred them.

Still, from a historical point of view Bill Haley & His Comets should get some props—“Rock Around The Clock” was one of the first r&r cuts to dominate the pop charts, 8 straight weeks in 1955. And the band sometimes sparked wild riots not only in live performances, but even in movie theaters when Blackboard Jungle (which “Rock Around The Clock” was on the soundtrack of—LOUD) played.

Haley gets a little more respect in England, Germany and especially Latin America, where The Comets were the ones to introduce the Twist and toured and recorded for years in the '60s. But as far as I know, nobody has paid much attention to this 1958 cut, “Lean Jean,” which I found in my crates a few months ago.

When I played it at DJ D’s Ragged But Right Show (all 7” vinyl 45s, all night) at Teddy’s Bar & Grill in trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn, proprietor Glen Kirby couldn’t believe it. He kept it and played it for a professional deejay with an encyclopedic knowledge of bluebeat, ska and  reggae, Phast Phreddie, and he was amazed.

So give it a listen, friends, and if you are so inclined, weigh in. Did a guy who started out during WW2 as “Silver Yodeling Bill Haley” in a band called The Four Aces Of Western Swing actually come up with ska before anybody in Jamaica?

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Revolutionary Rock In Germany

I was going to say my old friend Mike Stout is still rocking out, but that "still" does him a disservice. He's rocking harder than ever. This clip, embedded to start rectifying a recent, and uncharacteristic, dearth of music here at FotM, was recorded late last month at a big-ass festival of progressive and revolutionary German youth in the working class Ruhr Valley.

Mike has quite a following in Germany, Most years he does a stint there where he plays at big public events like this one, as well as progressive clubs, bars, demonstrations and picket lines, even on the street. His music is well enough known that, like Chuck Berry, he doesn't need to bring a band. Some locals, like this combo from Gelsenkirchen, can always be assembled for the gig.

Like it? There's more at YouTube. Or check his MySpace page here.

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How The Dutch Learned To Rock And Roll (Without Any Black People To Speak Of)

This nifty little video is the Tielman Bothers, shot in 1960, and it's a classic of a too-little known genre called Indo-Rock. I urge you to watch the whole thing, a first rate rockabilly raveup.



To really appreciate it, a little historical background is helpful. Indonesia won independence from the Netherlands in 1948, as Europe's colonial empires began to crumble. A bunch of Indonesians stayed in or chose to move to the Netherlands, despite the racism they faced.

Something funny happened when US rock and roll hit Europe in the mid-50s. There were precious few Black people in the Netherlands, and even fewer whites from the rural South of the US. Who, then, was going to make this exotic new music?

Answer: exotic young Indonesians and kids of mixed marriages. They stood out, tending to have slighter builds and darker features and hair than the chunky blond Dutch. And they came from an eclectic musical culture. Portuguese colonialists had introduced the guitar in the early 1500s and it became the main instrument centuries before it did in, say, the US. This "traditional" music, Krontjang, meant that Indonesians had been readily able to incorporate elements of country and Hawai'ian music they heard on American radio stations based in the Philippines and Australia.

Starting in 1957 with The (Real) Room Rockers, Indo-Rock groups blossomed all over the country, shaking up Dutch youth to their core. They specialized in guitar instrumentals, like the Ventures in the US and the Shadows in Britain, and were more likely to sing in English or Indonesian than Dutch. Many of them made their living playing across the border in German bars (where the hunger for rock was great and people of color were so scarce that Liverpool bands like the Silver Beatles also found it easier to make a living than on their home turf).

The Tielman Brothers, who became the best known of them all, didn't even leave the Indonesia, where they played as The Timor Rhythm Brothers, until 1957, and hit it big the next year with a fill-in gig at the "Hawai'ian Village" section of the Dutch Pavilion of the Brussels World Fair. Can you imagine the good burghers and their families leaving the grass huts of the "African Village" section of the Belgian Congo pavilion, falling by the "Hawai'an Village" and catching this?

One final note. All those reggae stars with the adopted mobster names and the gangsta rap types like Irv Gotti are just Vinny-come-latelies. Indo-Rock outfit The Alcapona's were recording in Gouda (one of them later went on to the Cheese Town Jewels--ya gotta love it) in 1960!

[Above, the Alcapona's, circa 1966.]

Meanwhile, am I alone in thinking it weird that the only way that live rock & roll could break through in the Netherlands was when performed by people of color, even ones who had nothing culturally to do with its roots?

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