...and we've been rocking ever since

Happy birthday to rock ’n’ roll.

Billy Haley’s seminal single Rock Around the Clock was recorded on this day in 1954.

The biggest of Haley’s hits in the early 1950s, Rock Around the Clock brought the exciting new style into the mainstream, made a star of Haley and his band The Comets, and gave a generation of bored teenagers its clarion call.

The song, written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers, was originally used as a b-side, but its use in the soundtrack of the film Blackboard Jungle the following year propelled it into the world’s consciousness.

All together now: One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock, rock!