Kendra Steiner Editions (Bill Shute)

  BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS–Crazy Man, Crazy (Bear Family), 10” LP  

10” LP’s are a special format–longer than an EP, shorter than an LP, but with packaging large enough to be attractive and worthy of display, and with the shorter length providing a focus and (one would hope) a higher batting average than a full album. Most record collectors keep their 10” releases separate from albums and singles, and those copies of Janis & Elvis or Black Market Clash or the Beatles boot From Us To You are treasures we would not want to go without.

     Bear Family understands this and has been reissuing rare 10” LP’s from around the world, as they feature prime rocking material from the artists but often lesser-known tracks or interesting combinations of tracks…so while the artist may be well-known, the particular collection of tracks is fresh, and in a beautiful exact reissue of a rare 10”, it’s something quite tempting come payday.

     Crazy Man, Crazy features 10 songs from Bill Haley’s pre-Decca years on the local Philadelphia labels Holiday and Essex, from 1951-1954.

     As a disc-jockey (to support himself when music-making wasn’t fully paying the bills), Haley heard a wide variety of records and was a man with eclectic tastes, so in 1951, he was well-qualified to combine the elements he heard in country boogie and western swing with the elements he heard in rhythm and blues to create a new kind of music, which eventually was tagged rock and roll.

     The 1951-1954 sessions here are among Haley’s most important, and most freewheeling, because the formula was being worked out but was not yet set in stone. Rocket 88, from 1951 and often considered the first rock and roll record by those who label such things (it’s far more complex than that, and many earlier records would qualify), was a cover of a Jackie Brenston song, but most of the rest of this album consists of Haley and group originals, and as they continued on in ’52 and ’53, the elements we all know and love came together–the surreal nursery-rhyme style lyrics, the celebration of rock and roll as the songs’ core content, the whip-crack solos, the powerful beat anchored in the slap-bass but supple and slithering along like a snake with the unexpected steel guitar bursts, the jazz-inspired guitar solos, and Bill’s enthusiastic vocals. Haley also learned that his target market would be teenagers, not the rowdy beer-drinking older audiences at the country bars where he’d been paying his dues for a decade.

     One could argue that the tracks here–including Crazy Man Crazy, Real Rock Drive, Rockin’ Chair On The Moon, Rocket 88, Green Tree Boogie, and Farewell, So Long, Goodbye–are among Haley’s purest recordings, and although The Father of Rock and Roll never stopped rocking until the day he died, these tracks have a small label-rawness and vitality that make them essential.

     For those who do not own any Haley vinyl, this might be THE one to get.

Bill Shute, originally published in Ugly Things magazine in 2017