You got me going now Jerry :-)
I found this article very interesting about Bill Haley

BILL HALEY

1. WKNE WAS QUITE THE COUNTRY MUSIC STATION back in the 1940s and the 1950s. And I recall that bluegrass singer/mandolinist Joe Val performed on that station for a while in the early 1960s.

This editorial is a bit vague about the origins of the Down Homers, and it's too bad. To the best of my knowledge, this was a Brattleboro, Vermont, Keene, New Hampshire, and Greenfield, Massachusetts, band. All the members were from this area as far as I know. My friend, the late John McLay (an amazing country guitarist), knew them and used to wax eloquent on their local origins.

We have nothing remotely close to a definitive roster of members of the Down Homers. On one of their releases--Kenny Roberts' first recording, we believe--the members included Guy Campbell, Shorty Cook, Lloyd Cornell, Bob Mason, and Kenny Roberts.

When it comes to Kenny Roberts' records, we favor two. We think Roberts' best album may very well be his Tribute to Elton Britt (LP, Palomino, n.d.). (We took the title from a photo of the cover. Our own is a pre-release copy with a solid-white cover and no details on the label.) The other is the "Then" side of Then and Now (LP, Longhorn, 1981).


2. At various times, Haley performed solo as the Ramblin' Yodeler.


3. Bill Haley said in interviews that he patterned the Saddlemen (which, with a shuffled lineup, ultimately became the Comets) after the Down Homers. Before drifting into rock and roll, Haley's style might best be called Eastern Swing, an East Coast variant of Western Swing.

Bill Haley was with the Down Homers evidently for only part of 1946, though some sources report that he served in the group from 1944 to 1946. (If true that Haley was with the Down Homers for going on two years--which seems unlikely--he would have been in and out of the band, a possibility we can't totally rule out. On the other hand, Kenny Roberts would have been serving in the United States Navy around age 15, which we really doubt.) During Haley's tenure with the Down Homers, the group broadcast over stations WOWO at Fort Wayne, Indiana, and WTIC out of Hartford, Connecticut; and it was heard over the New England Regional Network.

In October 1946, Haley signed on as a disk jockey at country-music radio station WKNE in Keene, New Hampshire. It seems to have been at about the same time that he revived one of his old bands, the Range Drifters. On Wednesday, December 11, 1946, Bill Haley married Dorothy "Dottie" Crowe in Brattleboro, Vermont (which happens to be right where we are). They had two children and divorced in 1951.

According to available evidence, Bill Haley and the Range Drifters left Keene in 1947. Going entirely on memory, it seems to me that WKNE ceased to be a country-music outlet sometime in the 1960s, though we understand that the great bluegrass singer-mandolinist, Joe Val, broadcast over the station around 1962.

Our main source of information regarding the timing of Bill Haley's residence in New England was "Chris Gardner's Bill Haley Gallery: The Early Years 1945-1950," http://thegardnerfamily.org/haley/gallery/early.htm . It's a very interesting page and well worth checking out.


4. "Cowboy, Jive, Popular, Hillbilly: The Most Versatile Band in the Land"--That's how the group, the Saddlemen, was billed. It seems to me Haley's band just before the Saddlemen was called the Four Aces of Western Swing.


5. Dave Miller, who owned Philadelphia's Essex Records, is said to have convinced Haley to record his first rock number, a cover of Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88." And manager "Lord Jim" Ferguson is sometimes credited as a major force behind Haley's switch to rock and roll, though I've seen no evidence that much of anyone gave him particularly high marks for his actual management skills.


6. Though Haley, himself, was quite Caucasian, Mercury Records released a "white cover" of "Crazy Man Crazy" by Ralph Marterie, and other record labels did the same. Only in America could R&B artists be ripped off without regard to race.

Crazy, man, crazy!