'Shake, Rattle and Roll' by Bill Haley and His Comets

Atlantic Records co-founder Herb Abramson asked Jesse Stone to write an R&B tune for bluesman Big Joe Turner that would get people dancing. Stone, using the name Charles Calhoun, responded with a foundational song of rock, “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

“In January or February 1954, Herb Abramson said to me, ‘We got Joe Turner comin’ in to record and we need an uptempo blues for a change,’” Stone recalled in Produce Like a Pro.

“I threw a bunch of phonetic phrases together — ’shake, rattle, and roll,’ ‘flip, flop, and fly’ — and I came up with 30 or 40 verses. Then I picked over them.”

Turner recorded “Shake, Rattle and Roll” at Atlantic’s New York studio on February 15, 1954. They pushed the office furniture against the walls to make room for the top R&B session players in New York City. Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler were the producers. Turner said that the pair served as his backing singers.

“We didn’t have no singers to back me up, so we had the cats in the studio, Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and them, they was backing me up, singing.”

Turner’s original contained many sexual innuendos and euphemisms. When “Shake, Rattle and Roll” topped the R&B charts in 1954 and reached №22 on the Billboard singles chart, it got the attention of Bill Haley.

“I loved the rhythm and blues artists in those days and he is one of my dearest friends today,” Haley told Pop Chronicles in 1971.

“It formed a friendship between Joe and I that has lasted all these years. I had never met him at that time, but I liked the tune and I was singing it, and Joe had the record out. It was on the charts at that time. But I liked it and I said, ‘I’m gonna cover it.’ And of course, we did cover it.”

Haley cleaned up some of Turner’s more suggestive lyrics and recorded his version on June 7, 1954, the week Turner’s version topped the R&B charts.

Haley’s producer, Milt Gabler, said he had to “clean up” Turner’s lyrics because “I didn’t want any censor with the radio station to bar the record from being played on the air. With NBC, a lot of race records wouldn’t get played because of the lyrics. So I had to watch that closely.”

For example, Haley replaced Turner’s “You wear those dresses, the sun comes shining through. I can’t believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you” with “You wearin’ those dresses, your hair done up so nice. You look so warm, but your heart is as cold as ice.”

Haley’s version reached №7 in 1954. “It turned out later that it became a big hit for Joe and me,” said Haley.

“In later years, we became friends, and I took Joe to Australia with me. We were on tours and we used to do our dual versions of it; we used to do it together on stage.”

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Greatest 50s Rock, Pop & Doo Wop Songs, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.