Bill Haley & His Comets 1954 single “Rock Around The Clock” was not the first rock’n’roll record – it wasn’t even Bill Haley’s first rock’n’roll record – but it was the first to go to number 1 in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and the song that heralded the arrival of the music across the world.
If you want to point to a single moment that changed rock’n’roll, the guitar solo on “Rock Around The Clock” would fit the bill. Played not by Bill Haley, or by Franny Beecher (the lead guitarist for the Comets 1954-62) but by a little known session player called Danny Cedrone.
“What an awesome player,” said Danny Gatton. “His “Rock Around The Clock” lick was the first guitar solo that really knocked me on my ass.” Cedrone recorded the solo in seconds – in fact, it was a solo he’d already recorded on another track by Bill Haley – and re-used, either due to time pressure, or because it was his party-piece. He never lived to see the impact it would have.
Danny Cedrone was a New York guitarist who had his own band, The Esquire Boys, and would guest with Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, Haley’s pre-Comets country band, who were regulars on the South Jersey music circuit. As jump-blues merged into rock’n’roll, so the Saddlemen loosened up a little and recorded some of the earliest rock’n’roll and rockabilly records, covering Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” in 1951, and the following year, a song called “Rock The Joint”.
For “Rock The Joint”, Cedrone laid down his party piece, a solo that Haley’s piano player Johnny Grande said was his “gimmick”: jazzy, yet played at breakneck speed, it has a final run down that still slackens jaws today. Its genius was not recognized commercially – “Rock The Joint” sold modestly – but it pointed to a new direction for Haley’s band.
Fast-forward to April, 1954. The Saddlemen are now the less-country, infinitely more rock’n’roll Comets, and going into the studio for their first recording for Decca records. Legend has it that the session was fraught: the band were late, Cedrone had missed rehearsals, the producer spent too long recording the planned A-side, “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)”, and by the time they came to Rock Around The Clock, Sammy Davis Jr was waiting impatiently at the studio door for his session.
With the clock ticking, they ran through the song twice and – expediency needed – someone suggested that Cedrone lay down his “Rock The Joint” solo again.
British rockabilly guitarist Darrel Higham thinks it was reused as a ‘good luck charm’. “This solo was so groundbreaking that it was considered a ‘lucky’ solo,” he told Guitarist magazine. “I think Bill Haley was a very superstitious man and “Rock This Joint” did such a great deal to advance his career that when he came to record “Rock Around The Clock”, I think they thought, ‘Well, let’s throw in that lucky solo again…’ So Danny Cedrone played it exactly the same as he did on “Rock The Joint”. It’s an iconic solo, absolutely iconic.”
It fit perfectly. Played on a ‘46 Gibson ES-300 with a single P-90 pickup through an 18-watt Gibson BR-1 amplifier, it was shredding, 50s-style.
“It’s the best solo of all time in rock and roll,” Brian Setzer told us, “copied by everyone from metal dudes to rockabillies to blues guys. Here’s why: Guitar solos were not really even being played that often in rock and roll at that time. It was all new.
“I think Danny Cedrone had played with Lionel Hampton,” he says. “I believe he was a jazz guitarist. Here’s what I think happened, because I know how these things work: They told him, ‘None of this jazz stuff. This is a new music called rock and roll. You really have to play it wild.’ And that’s what he came up with.
“It’s this crazy new sound that has jazz influences, but it’s not jazz. It’s still one of the hardest solos to learn. Unfortunately, right after he played that solo, he had an accident and died. Terrible. I don’t think he ever got to perform it.”
He didn’t. After the session – for which he was paid $21 (about $260 in today’s money) – Cedrone went back to his regular life. “Rock Around the Clock” was released as the B-side to “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)” in May and made only a modest dent in the charts.
On 7 June, Cedrone recorded again with the Comets, playing rhythm on Shake, Rattle & Roll. Ten days later, and three days before his 34th birthday, Cedrone went out to buy sandwiches for his family, tripped on the stairs, and died of a broken neck.
He never saw his solo become legendary. Because “Rock Around the Clock” had a second life. The following year, actor Glenn Ford was making a movie about juvenile delinquency called “The Blackboard Jungle.” His son Peter was a rock’n’roll fan who had flipped “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town)” and discovered that the B-side was more exciting. When the director came around to visit, he heard “Rock Around the Clock” and put it over the opening credits to the movie.
It was electric. “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” was the first rock song ever to be used in a motion picture,” says Peter. “Teenagers — misunderstood, lonely and rebellious — had discovered a touchstone with which they could identify. Teens at that time had been islands unto themselves, unaware that thousands of others were just like them.”
“By July 5, 1955, seven months after [director] Richard Brooks first heard my 78-rpm copy of the record at my house, “Rock Around the Clock” was the top-selling single in the nation. It stayed on the charts for eight weeks, eventually selling more than 25 million copies.”
The world of guitar playing would never be the same again. Bill Haley paid tribute to Cedrone’s playing and his vision: “He, I think, recognized even before I did, that we had something going,” he said.
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