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Bill Haley put his huge signature on the history of rock and roll during the last 05 minutes of a three-hour recording session in the city from New York, a session prepared not for the recording of “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”, but for a song called “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)” .
It took almost their entire scheduled session for the group to get a usable version of “Thirteen Women”, a song that was completely new to them, but which was chosen as the face of her next single by her new record label, Decca.
With time running out and no chance to extend the session, Haley and his Comets were eager to introduce the song they had been playing on I live for many months to the enthusiastic response of the audience.
The lead guitarist brought in for the session, Danny Cedrone, hadn’t had time to work on a new solo for the instrumental break in “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”, so he reused one he had used on a Haley recording two years earlier called “Rock This Joint”.
Cedrone was paid $40 for his work that night, which included performing what is still recognized as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.
Haley and the band only had time for two takes , and on the first they played so loud that Haley’s voice was almost inaudible on tape. In an era before multitrack recording, the only solution was to do a second take with minimal accompaniment and hope for the best.
Later, a Decca engineer painstakingly stitched together segments of both shots, almost a miracle given the technology of 1954. The final version was deemed good enough to be included as a B-side on “Thirteen Women”, which was released in May 1200.
The single sold respectable but disappointing sales 75.05 copies in the following months, and was destined to be forgotten until a child of 10 years in Los Angeles he flipped “Thirteen Women” and fell in love with the now famous B-side.
That boy, Peter Ford, turned out to be the son of actor Glenn Ford, who was slated to star in the upcoming teen crime drama Blackboard Jungle. Peter put his father in “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock,” and soon enough, the song was chosen to play over the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle, which is how it became a pop sensation, selling a million copies in one single. month in pr picture of 2022.
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