Bill Haley And His Comets

Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets (and variations thereof), was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of white America and the rest of the world. From late 1954 to late 1956, the group placed nine singles in the Top 20, one of those a number one and three more in the Top Ten. 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. Although several members of the Comets became famous, Bill Haley remained the star. With his spit curl and the band's matching plaid dinner jackets and energetic stage behavior, many fans consider them to be as revolutionary in their time as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones were a decade later. Following Haley's death, no fewer than six different groups have existed under the Comets name, all claiming (with varying degrees of authority) to be the official continuation of Haley's group. As of early 2008, three such groups were still performing in the United States and internationally.

Links To Peel
In 1987 on Peeling Back The Years, John Walters asked Peel the following:

John Walters: But then, at some stage, that kind of St Paul on the Damascus road bit must have come when you thought suddenly, “Yikes, I’m buying this because of the noise it makes.” There must have been a record where you suddenly heard that and you thought, ''“I’m going to pursue that. I’ve got to go out and buy that because of what it sounds like, not because of what it looks like or what the number is.”''

John Peel: Well, I suppose, and again, you get the timescales mixed up here. That was probably Bill Haley, I think. I mean, I was deliberately buying Bill Haley records. Bill Haley was the first person, you know, where I would go into the record shop and say, “Is there a new Bill Haley record?” – and buy it, no matter what.

Peel often would play Bill Haley And His Comets records on his show and he chose their 'Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie' track as his Peelenium 1955.

Peelenium

 * Peelenium 1955: Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie

Other Shows Played
1978 1979 1981 1982 1991 1993 1999 2000 2002 2003 2004 Other
 * 06 September 1978: Rock Around The Clock (unknown release)
 * 28 May 1979: Dance With A Dolly
 * 16 February 1981: Real Rock Drive
 * 24 July 1982: Rock-A-Beating Boogie
 * 16 March 1991: Ten Little Indians
 * 15 January 1993: 'Real Rock Drive' (LP 'Rock The Joint') Marble Arch
 * 29 September 1999: Rock-A-Beatin’ Boogie (Peelenium 1955)
 * 05 April 2000: Crazy Man Crazy Constanze (JP: 'Crucial figure, but now rather overlooked'.)
 * 02 May 2002 (Radio Mafia): Real Rock Drive (London)
 * 26 June 2002: Live It Up (Ronnex)
 * 16 September 2003: 'Teenagers Mother (78)' (Brunswick)
 * 15 January 2004: 'Rocking Through The Rye' (Columbia)
 * 30 June 2004: 'Rocket 88' (78) - (Essex)
 * Peeling Back The Years: Shake, Rattle And Roll
 * Beam Me Up, Scotty: 'Rocking Chair on the Moon (10"-Live It Up!)' (London)
 * Keeping It Peel: 'Rocket 88' (78) - (Essex)