Still in orbit: Original Comet D’Ambrosio rocks on

Monday, July 23, 2001 | 8:21 a.m.

The clock is ticking.

Original members of Bill Haley and his Comets aren't getting any younger. Who knows how many more years the bedrock of rock can keep on blowin' and goin'?

"We're gonna rock till we drop," chimed saxophonist Joey D'Ambrosio, a Las Vegas resident since 1964 and, at 67, the youngest of the original Comets.

Members of the first Comet lineup have retired from their day jobs and since 1999 have been working steadily at concerts under the name Original Comets. Licensing issues prevent them from using Bill Haley and his Comets or Bill Haley's Comets.

Haley had four or five bands after his first one and a number of licensed groups do tribute shows under the Comets name.

But there is only one Original Comets and the group has been blowing away young audiences who seem to like them as much as members of older audiences, who were around when Elvis Presley received second-billing at a Bill Haley and his Comets concert in Memphis, Tenn., in 1953.

Jacko Buddin, 60, of London fronts the band in the Bill Haley slot.

"We're working a lot of Indian casinos," D'Ambrosio said. "We just finished a gig at the Fantasy Casino in Palm Springs (Calif.). We did the Clark County Fourth of July bash a couple of weeks ago. On Aug. 11 we play Detroit, then Seattle, then New Jersey and then the James Dean Memorial Festival in Indiana, and then we spend the whole month of October in Europe."

D'Ambrosio, whose professional name is Ambrose, recalls being with Haley from late 1953 until early 1956. Those where the years when the Comets rocked the world of music with such hits as "Rock Around the Clock," "Rock-A-Beatin' Boogie," "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "See You Later Alligator."

He and two other members of the meteoric Comets quit the band over a salary dispute when the group was at the height of its popularity.

"We went from a local band making $1,200 to $1,700 a week which we split six ways to making $40,000 to $50,000 a week," D'Ambrosio recalled. "That was some serious money, but Haley was only paying the band members about $200 a week."

After Haley bought three new Cadillacs for the band to travel in, D'Ambrosio said he and bassist Marshall Lytle and drummer Dick Richards asked for a $50 raise.

"(Haley) said he couldn't afford it," D'Ambrosio said.

The fame and the glory were nice, D'Ambrosio said, but they wouldn't feed his growing family. So he, Lytle, now 68, and Richards, 75, quit and formed a group called the Jodimars.

Guitarist Franny Beecher, 80, and pianist Johnny Grande, 71, stayed with Haley until 1962, when the Comets disbanded.

"If you listen to the records that we were on -- 'Rock Around the Clock,' 'Dim, Dim the Light,' 'Birth of Boogie,' 'Hound Dog' -- you will hear a noticeable change between the sound of the original band and the replacement band. The average person might not hear it, but we do."

Birth of rock

D'Ambrosio lives with his wife of 47 years, Mary Ann, in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in southeast Las Vegas, where they raised two daughters and a son.

The saxophonist recently reminisced about the glory years of his career.

"The Comets was a country group originally, called the Saddlemen," he said. "In 1952 they recorded 'Rock the Joint,' which made some noise and became a pop song -- it swung, even though it was country. The general public liked it."

But the group's first big hit was 1953's "Crazy, Man, Crazy." That record was cut before D'Ambrosio joined Haley.

"The way I got with the band, Haley had a record out called 'Farewell, So Long, Goodbye,' on which he used a studio saxophone player," he said. "The record was making some noise for him in and around the Philadelphia area, so he decided he needed to have a sax player with the band, and held auditions."

D'Ambrosio, a jazz musician, got the spot and Bill Haley and the Comets were born.

"I was 18 years old, right out of high school and I had my own band," he said. "They hired me on a part-time basis for $56 a week, but I was happy to get it."

Shortly after that the Decca record label signed the group to a contract.

"Our first record with Decca was 'Rock Around the Clock,' " D'Ambrosio recalled. "But it didn't do anything. Then we recorded 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' and that one became a major hit for us."

"Rock Around the Clock" was released in 1954 but didn't become a hit until it was featured in the classic 1955 movie "The Blackboard Jungle."

D'Ambrosio said he was paid $42 for recording the song.

Although money was a sore point, D'Ambrosio remembers those years with great fondness. There were lots of parties, lots of action. The group was at the threshold of rock 'n' roll.

"Chuck Berry and Little Richard didn't come 'til later," D'Ambrosio said.

Howard Kramer, with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said one of the interesting things about the Comets was that the band made the transition from country to rock 'n' roll but the group shouldn't be called the father of the genre.

"Rock 'n' roll did not start on specific date," Kramer said. "It was an incremental thing. I could play something from 1938 and say it was rock 'n' roll.

"But the Comets was one of the most easily marketable groups at the time. They were non-threatening, very clean cut."

That may have been a double-edged sword. The band received widespread attention because of its non-threatening demeanor, but young people quickly turned to edgier entertainers such as Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis.

"Billy Haley and the Comets were nowhere near as magnetic as Presley but they were very appealing for the media," Kramer said. "He could get a lot of television play, but the youth wanted something more cutting edge."

Toast to the Comets

In 1954 the group went on Ed Sullivan's television show, "Toast of the Town."

"It was at the Shakespearean Theatre in Connecticut," he said. "It was a very odd program. Ed had James Mason and some other guys, major actors, doing scenes from Shakespeare and in the middle of this comes Bill Haley and the Comets."

D'Ambrosio said Haley was underrated.

"His was the first band to have a major rock 'n' roll record, the first rock 'n' roll band on national television, and the first to travel to Europe," he said.

In the early days Haley was a nice guy, friendly, D'Ambrosio said, but when the money got serious he became remote.

When D'Ambrosio, Lytle and Richards decided to strike out on their own, they made their plans secretly.

"We had to or he would have fired us," he said.

When they gave their notice, they had already formed the Jodimars, a name derived from the first letters of their first names. They also had a recording contract with Capital Records and several concert dates.

"He wasn't too happy about it, but he wasn't angry," D'Ambrosio said. "He was kind of taken aback. He didn't think at that point in our career we would do that."

He said he doesn't think leaving Haley was a mistake. By 1958 the Bill Haley era was gone; Elvis was hot, and the Beatles were just a few years away.

"We did better, financially, than we would have if we had stayed with him," D'Ambrosio said, "but we should have stayed at least another year."

"We found out later he had a movie deal coming up and a European tour we didn't know about. Probably, we would have stayed around another year if we had known about all that. The ones who replaced us got credit for lot of stuff we did."

The main thing that bothers D'Ambrosio is a lack of recognition from certain peers.

"The thing that really hurts is that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland inducted Bill Haley, but they never mention us (individually), and without us, he would have been nothing."

Rocking along

After the split, D'Ambrosio never spoke to Haley again.

"He had a resurgence in his career in the early '70s," D'Ambrosio said. "He continued playing till he died in 1981. He had a drinking problem. He drank too much, a couple of fifths a day. He died from a brain tumor."

Haley's career flamed out after a relatively brief run because the man didn't have any charisma, D'Ambrosio said.

"Bill wasn't a sex symbol, not like an Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis," he said. "He just didn't have that look. He had the music, but he didn't have the charisma."

The Jodimars got a gig at Harold's casino in Reno in 1956 and from there began a lounge tour that lasted about 18 months, playing Las Vegas in the heyday of the lounge era.

"The Jodimars played the Sands opposite Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole and the Riviera opposite Shecky Greene," D'Ambrosio said. "We played the Golden Nugget, Fremont, Hacienda, all those places. We traveled from Vegas to Reno and to New Jersey."

In 1958 the group broke up and everyone went their separate ways. Lytle became a real estate broker and Richards became a teacher. D'Ambrosio returned to his hometown of Philadelphia, performing with local groups until 1964, when his brother-in-law, Nicky Ray, invited him to return to Las Vegas and join Ray's band, the Satellites.

"We were the house band at the Aladdin for three years," D'Ambrosio said. "We played at the Stardust, the Riviera, all the lounges around Vegas. We were pretty good."

But things began to change in 1972.

"Things got to be a little rough for musicians," he said. "Casinos decided to bring in the slot machines and everything, so I decided to get out of the business."

D'Ambrosio was a card dealer at Caesars Palace for seven years and was a pit boss for 18 years.

"I always played music, working on my nights off," he said.

In 1987 the original members of the Comets were asked to perform with other legends for Dick Clark when Clark was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"We hadn't seen each other since 1958," D'Ambrosio said. "We rehearsed for two days to get our music back together and we happened to be the hit of the show. People were standing up, dancing in the aisles and the television cameras happened to catch it on tape and we started getting calls."

The musicians still had their day jobs so they were limited in the number of offers they could accept, until they all found themselves retired two years ago.

Now, they're rockin' around the clock.

"I taught all my kids music," D'Ambrosio said. "Now I'm teaching my grandsons.

"Music is so important. It's the foundation for everything. The best gift you can give your children is music."

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