{"id":1543,"date":"2008-07-07T16:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T20:00:30","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-07-07T18:56:16","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T18:56:16","slug":"rock-town-hall-determines-the-top-5-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-town-hall-determines-the-top-5-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Town Hall Determines the Top 5 Rock &#8216;n Roll Artists from the &#8217;50s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mr497wmZOq0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nLike my 11-year-old son, some of you are probably too young to have any even remotely direct experience with rock &#8216;n roll from the 1950s, but that doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t shed some light on this topic. Over the weekend we were playing an 18-song <strong>Buddy Holly Greatest Hits<\/strong> album in the car. My boys have liked this CD the couple of times they&#8217;ve heard it in the past, and it&#8217;s good summertime music, not to mention simply great music (perhaps by whatever standards we might define <em>great<\/em>). <\/p>\n<p>Our oldest boy was amazed at how many of Holly&#8217;s songs he knew from movies, commercials, and the like. &#8220;I can&#8217;t believe how many great songs he made,&#8221; he kept saying, &#8220;almost every song was a huge hit!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>He wanted to know more about Holly, eventually arriving at this core question: &#8220;I don&#8217;t get it, why is <strong>Elvis<\/strong> more famous than him? I don&#8217;t see what&#8217;s so great about Elvis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It was a tough question to handle on the spot like that. Elvis is King, right? I love Elvis, but not including the pathos of <strong>Fat Elvis<\/strong>, which was too much to explain to an 11 year old, Buddy Holly may have produced a stronger run of songs during the &#8217;50s. &#8220;Elvis&#8217; early singles are really exciting,&#8221; I told him, &#8220;plus he was more handsome and drove the kids wild.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>I handed him the Holly CD and had him look at the photos of Buddy and the Crickets. &#8220;Whoa,&#8221; he chuckled, &#8220;now I see where <strong>Elvis Costello<\/strong> got his Look!&#8221; (My wife quickly added, &#8220;You know, he was kind of handsome!&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/55wWiFi6BFo?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThis all got me thinking, <em>Who are Rock Town Hall&#8217;s Top 5 Rock &#8216;n Roll Artists from the &#8217;50s?<\/em> I ask us to discipline ourselves and refrain from throwing acknowledged blues artists (eg, Muddy Waters) and other &#8216;tweeners (eg, Louis Prima &#8211; <em>I&#8217;m looking your way, HVB!<\/em>) into the mix. Rock &#8216;n roll. This could include, as the genre is usually defined, vocal groups, such as The Platters. But no Muddy Waters, no Hank Williams, no Louis Prima, no jazz. Got it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like my 11-year-old son, some of you are probably too young to have any even remotely direct experience with rock &#8216;n roll from the 1950s, but that doesn&#8217;t mean you can&#8217;t shed some light on this topic. Over the weekend we were playing an 18-song Buddy Holly Greatest Hits album in the car. My boys <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-town-hall-determines-the-top-5-rock\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}