"Rock Around the Clock" was a Last-Minute Addition to
the recording session. 

On April 12, 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets recorded
“(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” at a Decca
recording session in New York City.

If rock and roll was a social and cultural revolution,
then “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” was
its Declaration of Independence. And if Bill Haley
was not exactly the revolution’s Thomas Jefferson,
it may be fair to call him its John Hancock.

The song was chosen to play over the opening
credits of the film Blackboard Jungle, which is
how it became a pop sensation, selling a million
copies in a single month in the spring of 1955.

William (Bill) John Clifton Haley
(July 6, 1925 – February 9, 1981)

Jennings was a singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He
is considered one of the pioneers of the outlaw movement
in country music.

On February 13, 2002, Jennings died in his sleep from
complications of diabetes at his home in Chandler,
Arizona, aged 64.

Jennings worked as a performer and DJ on radio KLLL in
1958.

Waylon Jennings (left) & Buddy Holly in 1959.

Rising American rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P.
“The Big Bopper” Richardson, along with pilot Roger Peterson, 
were killed when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza plane
crashed in Iowa a few minutes after takeoff from Mason City on
a flight headed for Moorhead, Minnesota.      

Investigators blamed the crash on bad weather and pilot error.

After mechanical difficulties with the tour bus, Holly had chartered
a plane for his band to fly between stops on the Winter Dance
Party Tour. However, Richardson, who had the flu, convinced
Holly’s band member Waylon Jennings to give up his seat, and
Ritchie Valens won a coin toss for another seat on the plane.

Singer Don McLean (above) memorialized Holly, Valens and
Richardson in the 1972 No. 1 hit “American Pie,” which
refers to February 3, 1959 as “the day the music died.”

Holly’s headstone in the City of Lubbock Cemetery.

Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond has sold more than 130 million
records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians
of all time. He has written and recorded ten singles that reached
No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

(FOX NEWS) – Garth Hudson, the last surviving member of
Canadian-American rock group The Band, died in his sleep
this morning. He was 87.

His death was confirmed Tuesday by The Canadian Press,
which cited Hudson’s friend, Jan Haust. Additional details
were not immediately available. Hudson had been living in
a nursing home in Woodstock, upstate New York.

Garth Hudson made his most recent public appearance on
April 16, 2023, performing in Kingston, New York.