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PREVIEW
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to suit his country audience.
Rock The Joint
with its
prominent slap bass and blazingly hot guitar solo, is
considered by many to be one of the first rockabilly records
and although it didn’t chart, the record made plenty of noise and
brought Bill to the attention of an increasingly fiscally influential teenage audience, paving
the way for his eventual early rock ‘n’ roll dominance.
Bill’s recording also attracted the attention of Mercury Records who put pop singer
Lola Ameche into the studio with Ralph Marterie and his orchestra for a cover version of
the Haley side. Lola turns in a very lively vocal performance of
Rock The Joint,
sticking
to Haley’s Paul Jones and Virginia reel dance alterations. In many ways, her exuberant
vocal outdoes the Marterie band, which comes off as kind of tame, despite the flashy
arrangement. It makes one wonder what kind of record would have resulted if Lola had
teamed up with Bill Haley’s band.
Not long after this record was released, Lola Ameche became Lola Dee and went on to
cut several more ballad and uptempo sides for Mercury/Wing and Columbia, including a
decent-selling cover of the Platters’
Only You
in 1955. Haley, of course, went on to become
one of the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll.