Motley Fool Money - How Luck Made “Rock Around The Clock” a #1 Hit

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

“Rock Around The Clock” was a flop when Bill Haley & The Comets first released it. Derek Thompson, author of the best-selling book Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction, explains how luck helped give the song a second chance at success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Colagard. Do you know what's really scary? Not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45. The Colagard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off work, and ships right to your door. In just three simple steps, Colagard takes the scare out of colon cancer screening.

If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your health care provider about the Coligard test. Colagard is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at colagard.com slash screen. With the Motley Fool Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. The old saying, I'd rather be lucky than good, is attributed to Lefty Gomez, a pitcher for the New York Yankees back in the 1930s. Gomez was good. He's in the baseball hall of fame, but his quote does raise an interesting point.

Derek Thompson is a writer at the Atlantic, an author of the bestselling book, Hitmakers, How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction. When I talked with Derek a couple years ago, I asked him. him about the role that luck plays in determining success. Some people read my book and were frustrated because I couldn't give them a perfect formula because I take so seriously this issue of luck. And you can't have a foolproof formula if luck is a huge part of this equation. So a quick story about luck. In 1954, an artist named Bill Haley recorded a song called Rock Around the Clock.

It was the B-side to a song called 16 Women and One Man about a hydrogen bomb exploding and the world being left with just 16 women and one man. You can kind of guess where that was headed. This song completely flopped. It was not popular at all, even though Bill Haley was a relatively popular artist. It came out, people had a chance to listen to it. The label pushed it as hard as they could.

It just had no uptake. No one wanted to hear this song. One of the few thousand people who bought the vinyl record was a fifth grader named Peter Ford. And Peter Ford was the son of a Hollywood actor named Glenn Ford, who was in a movie called Blackboard. or jungle. And one day, Richard Brooks, the director of this movie, visited the Ford's house in, in, I think it was Malibu, Beverly Hills, and said, I need a jump-jive tune to kick off

this movie. It's a movie about juvenile delinquency. It's a bit like Rebel Without a Cause. And I need a song to kick off this movie. And Glenn, the father says, I only like Hawaiian folk music, so this is not going to work out for you. My son, however, is really into like this weird, new loud music. The son, Peter Ford, hands the director Richard Brooks, a stack of vinyl. One of the vinyl records in that stack had the word Bill Haley on it, and rock around the clock ended up playing at the beginning of Blackboard Jungle, in the middle of Blackboard Jungle, and at the end of Blackboard jungle in 1955. And it is only then, three weeks after the movie came out, the song became the number one song in the country, the first rock and roll song to ever hit number one on Billboard,

and the second best-selling song in American history after White Christmas by Bing Crosby, which is cheating because people just buy that for Christmas. So is rock around the clock an intrinsic hit, right? If you are an investor in some marketplace of music hits, and it's 1954 and you hear rock around the clock, is the smart move to bet on rock around the clock or to bet against it. Both. In 1954, the song was a flop. In 1955, it was the biggest hit of the century. So, yes, luck plays a role.

Timing plays a role. No world in which the biggest hit of the century, in which that song's outcome rests on the thin little shoulders of a fifth-year-old of fifth-grader boy named Peter Ford in 1955, you can only discuss that world through the lens of probabilities and likelihoods and not formulas and inevitabilities. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.