William John Clifton Bill Haley was an American rock and roll musician. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley amp His Comets and millionselling hits such as Rock Around the Clock, See You Later, Alligator, Shake, Rattle and Roll, Rocket 88, Skinny Minnie, and Razzle Dazzle. He has sold overmillion records worldwide.
Bill Haley was born July 6, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan, as William John Clifton Haley. In 1929 the fouryearold Haley underwent an innerear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve, leaving him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. As a result of the effects of the Great Depression on the Detroit area, his father moved the family to Boothwyn, near Chester, Pennsylvania, when Bill was seven years old. Haleys father William Albert Haley was from Kentucky and played the banjo and mandolin, and his mother, Maude Green, who was originally from Ulverston in Cumbria, England, was a technically accomplished keyboardist with classical training. Haley told the story that when he made a simulated guitar out of cardboard, his parents bought him a real one.
Source: Wikipedia