It is something of a modern cliché that Bill Haley was the first true rock'n'roller, but rhythm and blues (R&B) had been around a while before Haley heard it, and he wasn't the best white rocker of the 1950s. He was, perhaps the first white musician to understand fully the appeal of R&B's gritty sound. And that made him rock'n'roll's first real star.
Born on , William John Clifton Haley's...