Rock Around the Clock
by Bill Haley & His Comets
- 178
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 82
- Danceability
- 21
- Acousticness
Bill Haley & His Comets recorded "Rock Around the Clock" in 1954, and it became an anthem for rebellious 1950s youth after it was included in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle. It spent two months at number one and became the first rock and roll record to top the pop charts in both the US and the UK. It returned to the UK Singles Chart in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2018 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.
Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers, who used the name Jimmy De Knight, wrote the song in late 1952. Its first arrangement sounded closer to an instrumental of the day, "The Syncopated Clock". Bill Haley's producer at Essex Records, Dave Miller, would not let him record it, and Haley said Miller tore up the sheet music each time he brought it in. Myers then gave it to Sonny Dae & His Knights, who recorded it on March 20, 1954.
After Haley moved to Decca, his first session there was on April 12, 1954, at the Pythian Temple in New York City. The band's ferry got stuck on a sandbar on the way. Producer Milt Gabler wanted to work on a different song, and "Rock Around the Clock" was recorded near the end of the session. In the first take Haley's vocals were drowned out. A quick second take with minimal accompaniment followed, and Decca's engineers combined the two.
Rock Around the Clock runs at 178 BPM, the tempo of drum and bass and jungle. In classical terms it sits in presto territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.35 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 337 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.