That's what my 1955-2010 Billboard Singles book has as well, Haley at #10, just above The Everlys. In the Pop Memories listing (1890-1954), it has this:

#12 Crazy, Man, Crazy
#24 Fractured
#25 Live It Up
#23 Rock Around The Clock (charted 5/29/1954)
#7 Shake, Rattle, And Roll

You're right that the Everly Brothers belong above Bill Haley, but you don't have to unfairly downplay Bill Haley's influence to make that point. Bill Haley had an enormous impact on many important sixties British rockers. Bill Haley's tour of the UK in 1957 was a huge success. Pete Townshend said hearing "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" for the first time changed his life. He said Haley was even more important to him than Elvis Presley. Graham Nash was so floored by the Bill Haley concert he saw in 1957 that he carries the ticket stub with him everywhere he goes to this day. Give the man his due.

My idea of influence is "musical" influence, where other artists take parts of your sound and incorporate them into their music. I don't hear any Haley in The Who or Graham Nash. What you describe sounds more like impact than influence. Most of Haley's records sound very dated compared to the records by the other big rock and roll acts of the 50s.

I just bought a Bill Haley and His Comets collection containing his first four albums and contemporaneous singles. It's fantastic. I actually think The Jordanaires stuff on Elvis Presley's RCA Victor material sounds more dated than Haley's stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I'm probably the biggest Bill Haley fan who posts here, but he did not really break much musical ground. His sound is essentially a country influenced update on Louis Jordan. Most of Haley's big hits were covers or remakes of older songs.

Rock Around The Clock - Sonny Dae and the Knights
Shake, Rattle and Roll - Joe Turner
See You Later, Aligator - Bobby Charles
Burn That Candle - Cues
Rip It Up - Little Richard
Rock A-Beatin' Boogie - Esquire Boys
The Saints Rock & Roll - Update on When The Saints Go Marching In

Perfect description. He really didn't have much of a voice. So much of that band's appeal is The Comets, imo. They were such a killer ensemble.

Haley's musical influence is clearly in his band's arrangements, the way in which the instruments play off one another... the massive drum rolls, the sax and guitar solos each getting a spotlight. His band was really tight and they helped solidify the standard rock arrangement, but the Everly's have more overall musical influence, from their harmony, to musical experimentation, the fact they brought straight-forward country into rock in a far different way than the wilder rockabilly (and Haley's own country influences, which were a different type of country, not the Appalachian style the Everly's specialized in), to their concept album from 1958 which was a huge influence a decade later with the roots-rock, country-rock phenomonon.

Haley though has TONS of Cultural Impact, actually rivaled by only a few in all of rock history. Breaking the color line in rock for white artists, having the first rock song to top the charts, the appearance of it in Blackboard Jungle, the British tour, the rioting in Great Britain after kids saw one of those cheap rockploitation films and were chanting his songs as they caused mayhem outside theaters. He was kind of the focale point of the whole "rock is taking over the world" paranoia in 1955 and very early '56 before Presley's ascention stole the spotlight. Haley's as high as he is because he absolutely crushes in this aspect of the criteria.

Haley's musical impact though is fairly low, because while he was admired by others for breaking rock through to a wider audience, he really had such a unique niche in rock, and being older made him seem more like an anomoly to his younger peers. He was respected, but not really celebrated by his contemporaries like you'd think someone who was so instrumental in pushing rock into a bigger market would be. His slight edge over the Everly's on the U.S. charts is bolstered by his bigger edge on the U.K. Charts, so while Commercial is pretty close, it's still a win for Haley. But the real tipping point that decided it is how the Everly's were absolutely revered by other artists. Their musical impact is utterly enormous, and that along with their influence win and only being edged out slightly in Commercial Impact, means Haley's huge cultural impact can't get him past the Everly Brothers, so they win out.

Good call on asking about it though, Neg, because Haley's reputation has fallen so low over the past thirty years that most would think he's way too high and I didn't think anyone would be wondering why he was behind someone with the exalted reputation of the Everly's. Glad to see so much talk on them both.

Yeah, I'd say that Haley's large lead in Cultural Impact balances out the Everly Brothers' large lead in Musical Impact, while the Everly's edge in Influence is larger than Haley's edge in Popularity.

You make good points...just for the record, though, on the decade lists (and the yearly lists, for that matter), isn't it all about release date? That is, wouldn't it be correct to count the success of "Let It Be Me" to the Everlies in the 50s, because that's when the recording was released, even though the success was in the 60s? Or, to take a more extreme example, wouldn't we count the success of "Got To Get You Into My Life" toward the Beatles in the sixties (and put the song in consideration for the 1966 yearly list) even though it wasn't a hit until 1976?

That's what I would do.

Man I love having these discussions with you, takes me back to 02/03.

I think someone else mentioned Wynonie Harris should be on the list a while back...would you agree?

Yeah, I left him off originally along with a few others who were on the Roots Of Rock page, since essentially what I was doing then was trying to differenciate between the earliest rockers who first appeared in the 40's and the guys whose careers were centered in the 50's rock scene. But that's kind of a moot point now as more people actually know who these people are and they can be added without confusing things here.

According to this rule you list:

Artists with two years or less of active recording during the decade are excluded, unless it was the ONLY decade in which they performed.

The following artists (I think) should not be there:

48. Link Wray
53. Dion & The Belmonts
81. Bobby Freeman
89. The Skyliners
94. Cliff Richard
104. Jimmy Clanton
117. Esquerita
130. Buster Brown
156. The Fabulous Wailers
157. The Elegants
165. The Olympics
167. Jody Reynolds
170. Johnny & The Hurricanes
171. Phil Phillips
172. Bill Black's Combo
175. The Fireballs
178. Ronnie Hawkins
179. The Mystics

That rule was eliminated during the last update a few years back. The 60's list in particular had so many questions regarding the absence of Zeppelin, CSN, Jackson Five, etc. and people were then trying to credit their sixties work in the 70's page for some reason, that it no longer made any sense (if it ever did to begin with). If the rule is still listed there it shouldn't be.

Sampson,

Something you might enjoy from Indo rocks early pioneers the Tielman Brothers this clip from 1959, as you probably know their early career started in and around 1945 in Indonesia before the family moved to the Netherlands and exploded into the 50`s around Europe ...... Take care