MARSHALL LYTLE

When Marshall was a teenager, he joined a country-western band called Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, but ended up being the bassist on one of the most iconic songs in rock history, Rock Around the Clock, when the band became Bill Haley and the Comets. He also co-wrote the band’s first hit, Crazy Man, Crazy with Haley.  Marshall grew a moustache to look older, and developed a stage routine, throwing his bass fiddle in the air and riding it like a horse.

In September,1955, Marshall, Joey Ambrose and Dick Richards left the Comets in a salary dispute and formed the Jodimars, one of the first resident rock bands in Las Vegas. After they broke up, Marshall got into real estate and interior design, until 1987, six years after Bill Haley’s death, when he was invited to join the other original Comets for a reunion show in honor of Dick Clark. The reunion lasted until 2009 and took them all over the world, with Marshall still playing the bass over his head. He was the definition of “young at heart”. During that time, the Comets recorded a song Marshall co-wrote, Viagra Rock. 

Marshall died of lung cancer in 2013, a year after the Comets’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.