Wildwoods Fabulous '50s Weekend Salutes the Sixties, April 27-29, 2007, Wildwood, NJ

Wildwoods Fabulous '50s Weekend
Salutes the Sixties
April 27-29, 2007
The Wildwoods, N.J.
The second annual “Wildwoods Fabulous ‘50s Weekend Salutes the Sixties” will be a musical celebration of the 1960s. Events at the Wildwoods Convention Center: a Friday evening Record Hop with Jerry Blavat, a Street Fair with live music, contests, classic cars and vendors, and more.

The Birthplace of Rock and Roll: Wildwood, New Jersey, Stakes Its Claim
Summer, 1950. The leader of a little-known country-and-western swing band strolls across the street from his hotel into a nightclub, the Riptide. Booked for the summer is the now-legendary rhythm and blues band, The Treniers. Excited by their raucous stage show, the white, 25-year-old singer decides to take his country music career in a new direction. A few weeks later, he returns to offer the Treniers a song he’d written—"Rock-a-Beatin’ Boogie."

The song goes nowhere. But in the same town four summers later, with a few modest hits under his belt, Bill Haley and his new group, The Comets, introduce a rollicking new tune that fuses elements of country music, Western swing, and black R&B. Recorded April 12, 1954, the song, "(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" is a hit with nightclub audiences. The song would become the first Rock and Roll song to hit Number One on the Billboard charts, selling more than 40 million copies worldwide. More important, it propelled "rock and roll" as we know it onto the national scene, and inspired generations of rock musicians.

Where did Bill Haley learn to rock? Where did he first perform his groundbreaking hit for Bill Haley & The Comets, HofBrau Hotel, 1953 (From left: Marshall Lytle, Johnny Grande, Bill Haley & Billy Williamson.) audiences a half-century ago? It wasn’t Cleveland, the self-proclaimed "Birthplace of Rock and Roll." It wasn’t New York City. Nope, not Memphis. It was the southern New Jersey beach resort of Wildwood By-the-Sea.

"Bill Haley is the man, and ‘Rock Around the Clock’ is the song, that launched rock and roll into the world’s consciousness," said Andrew Cripps, spokesman for the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce, sponsors of the event. "It is the first number one hit to combine the influences that make up rock and roll. It might never have happened without the musical melting pot of Wildwood. Everything that followed built upon what Bill Haley brought together here. Whether Cleveland likes it or not, rock and roll as we know it was born in Wildwood."

HofBrau Hotel, Wildwood, NJ, circa 1960, where Bill Haley & The Comets first performed 'Rock Around the Clock" in public. Legendary singer Tony Bennett, a frequent performer in Wildwood in the 1950s, agrees. "I was into rock music myself when it first began," Bennett said, "back when Bill Haley started the whole thing in Wildwood." American Bandstand host Dick Clark called "Rock Around the Clock" "The national anthem of Rock and Roll." John Lennon of the Beatles said in a Playboy interview: "I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock and roll hit me." Interviewer: "Do you recall what specifically hit you?" Lennon: "It was "Rock Around The Clock."

A permanent historical marker will soon be erected on the site of the HofBrau Hotel, at Oak and Atlantic Avenues in Wildwood, where Haley performed each summer from 1950-55, and where he and the Comets first performed "Rock Around the Clock."

Wildwood, New Jersey: Birthplace of "The Twist"
Although its role in music history is little known, Wildwood, New Jersey, was the epicenter of Rock and Roll innovation in the 1950s and early '60s. Bill Haley and His Comets made music history in 1954 with their live debut of "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" at the HofBrau Hotel in Wildwood (see below). Then in July of 1960, 19-year-old Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans) stepped onto the stage at the Rainbow Club and put his own carefree "spin" on "The Twist," a song written and recorded by Hank Ballard two years earlier. Checker described the accompanying dance as being "like putting out a cigarette with both feet, or like coming out of the shower and wiping your [rear] with a towel." Less than a month later, on August 6, 1960, Checker performed "The Twist" on Dick Clark's nationally televised Saturday evening program, and launched a national craze. The single rocketed to number one during the autumn of 1960, remaining on the charts for four months. It hit number one again in late 1961; the only record ever to enjoy two stays at the top more than a year apart.

More information is available by phone
at 888-729-0033 and online at www.fabfifties.com, or contact us by e-mail.

The Wildwoods Fabulous ‘50s Weekends are partially funded by the New Jersey Office of Travel and Tourism - www.visitnj.org - the Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce, the City of North Wildwood Tourism Development Commission, and the Greater Wildwood Tourism Improvement and Development Authority.