Review: Bill Haley - Haley's Juke Box (1960)
Tracks: 1) Singing The Blues; 2) Candy Kisses; 3) No Letter Today; 4) This Is The Thanks I Get; 5) Bouquet Of Roses; 6) There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder; 7) Cold, Cold Heart; 8) The Wild Side Of Life; 9) Any Time; 10) Afraid; 11) I Don’t Hurt Anymore; 12) Detour.
REVIEW
Producer George Avakian wrote some really passionate, occasionally tear-jerking liner notes for this album, eulogizing both the covered songs and the effort that the Comets invested into making them their own. Unfortunately, all they really do is offer us one more reminder of that faraway age when every bit of extra promotion for your LP was deemed as precious — and in the case of Bill Haley & The Comets going all the way back to their roots and all but abandoning rock’n’roll for country, only a good word from the famous George Avakian in person could save the project from becoming a financial disaster... or so, at least, might have thought the nice, but somewhat clueless people at Warner Bros. Records.
What started out as an attempt to build himself and his band a new life in the future quickly turned into a bizarre and rapid slide into the past. After the first album, for which Bill had no better idea than to set out a retrospective of his rockabilly glories, just half a year came a second one which was oriented even deeper into the past — subtitled Songs Of The Bill Haley Generation, the record mostly carried five-to-fifteen-years old country songs, the exact kind of material with which Bill had originally launched his musical career. Granted, the Comets around 1960 would not and could not sound exactly the same way as «Bill Haley And The Saddlemen» back in 1949; and with Rudy Pompilli and Franny Beecher still in the band, the Comets’ classic rocking sound is still in evidence whenever they pick up the tempo. But they don’t do it too often, and it is hard to understand the kind of audiences for whom this project was intended. Retreating into the shadows of country was one acceptable way of «maturing» for rock’n’roll pioneers — Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Brenda Lee, etc. — but the way this particular LP is subtitled shows that Haley wasn’t really willing to switch to a different target group; rather, Bill Haley’s Jukebox was intended to introduce the classic young fans of ‘Rock Around The Clock’, now moving into their twenties, to the kind of music without which there would ultimately be no ‘Rock Around The Clock’. Whether the fans really needed such an introduction remains debatable; judging by the fact that the album flopped the same way its predecessor did, and ultimately lost Haley his contract with Warners, they probably didn’t.
That said, unless you’re deeply alergic to all forms of country, including a relatively «lively» variety of it as played by the Comets, Jukebox isn’t too bad. At the very least, I’ll definitely take it over Bill’s Warners debut — given the choice between an inferior re-recording of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and an okay take on ‘Cold, Cold Heart’, I’ll certainly prefer the latter. Bill’s charismatic voice is perfectly suited for this material, and Beecher’s and Williamson’s guitar playing is every bit as good as your average Nashville professional’s; meanwhile, Johnny Grande on piano gets some extra chances to shine, as he is typically outshadowed on the band’s rock’n’roll material. All of this is evident, for instance, on their version of ‘Candy Kisses’, basically impeccable from any point of view; you may not want to prefer it to the original crooning performance of George Morgan from 1949, but I respect how Haley succeeds in stripping the song from its cooing excesses, bringing it closer to earth while still retaining the tenderness aura.
A particular highlight is the Comets’ unexpectedly loud, bombastic romp through the old Tex Ritter chestnut ‘There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder’. It’s important to forget about the lyrics — their heartbroken ring is all but incompatible with this take, in which Haley’s triumphant intonation on "there’s a NEW moon!.." almost makes it seem as if he were starting a new life or something — but the groove, with Pompilli’s sax and Grande’s piano weaving tiny, playful rings around each other, is playful and uplifting, completely transforming the original song into something it was never intended to be, yet Haley and his boys, with their usual panache, almost succeed in convincing us that this kind of spirit was always inherently present in the song in the first place.
Likewise, you could probably predict that ‘Detour’, even with the vocals and all, would rather follow the twangy Duane Eddy version than the original Jimmy Walker performance from 1945, or the famous Patti Page cover from 1951. There’s some fabulous competition between Williamson and Beecher going on in this one — and even if it doesn’t twang quite as juicily as the Duane Eddy version, it manages to kick more ass during the instrumental section. All in all, it would be a flat-out lie to label the Comets as «tired» or «uninspired» on these recordings: nostalgia or not, they clearly had fun working on the new arrangements for these old songs.
Of course, every now and then Bill would take on the impossible or the unnecessary; it is one thing when he strips the croon away from the old crooners, but quite another when he takes the heart-tugging misery out of ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ — covering Hank Williams is a titanic challenge which you shouldn’t really take on unless you’re ready to transform the song into something completely different (at least when the Comets did ‘Move It On Over’ years earlier, they were showing the world how it works when you transform an old fast country tune into modern day rock’n’roll). He sings the song reasonably well, but with Hank, «reasonably well» is never enough for more than a late night karaoke session with friends. The addition of a «cold, cold» Christmas-ey organ part is a creative touch, but it still cannot compensate for the lack of aching desperation in Haley’s delivery. This guy couldn’t really sound miserable even when he was miserable (and as of mid-1960, he wasn’t even miserable enough, though slowly getting there).
Still, while the major and minor shortcomings of the record are fairly obvious, let us remember that this is the very last chance we get to hear the classic Comets lineup (at least in LP form), with Beecher and Pompilli both still in the band, perform something that is still relatively up their alley. As a swan song, it’s not too bad (certainly much better than if the Comets tried to fully embrace the new 1960 brand of sweetened-up teen pop, for instance), and both ‘There’s A New Moon’ and ‘Detour’ could easily squeeze themselves into any solid collection of Haley’s rock’n’roll highlights. The main problem was that this direction was a dead end — either the band would have to spend the rest of its days churning out modernized productions of old country hits, or it would have to die. The record executives at Warners decided on the latter, releasing Bill from his contract; and although the Comets, in various incarnations, would continue their ever more chaotic and unpredictable Odyssey for more than a decade, Haley’s Juke Box would arguably be the very last LP on which they made music with a fair share of confidence, clearly believing in it and subtly nudging us to believe in it, too.
Only Solitaire reviews: Bill Haley