Bob Dylan

ROCK AND ROLL POET
It is impossible to conceive of rock and roll’s maturation from teenage recreation
into intellectually expressive music without Bob Dylan. Comparable
only to the Beatles in infl uence, Dylan brought poetry to rock. More impressive,
though, is the massive body of music Dylan has written, performed, and
recorded over his unparalleled half-century career.
Often called “the voice of his generation,” Dylan’s actual voice was instantly
identifi able for its nasal qualities. With it, he created and shed a half-dozen
musical identities, each a phase in a relentless artistic development. Dylan was
a hard-core folkie who imitated Woody Guthrie and learned songs from ancient
records, a protest singer who sang against injustice, a confessional songwriter
who poured his heart out onstage, a confrontational rock icon in dark sunglasses
who played stinging blues, a country crooner, a mysterious fi gure in
white makeup, a born-again Christian who testifi ed for Jesus, and an old-time
bandleader in a suit and cowboy hat. In nearly every capacity, Dylan broke
new ground. Rock and roll, in a sense, transformed around him, and Dylan’s
sometimes confounding actions gained praise and acceptance years later.

The Beatles

THE FOUR AND ONLY
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the magnitude of the Beatles’ infl uence—
not just on music, but upon virtually every aspect of popular culture in the
years since the band’s worldwide breakthrough in 1964. In their initial incarnation
as cheerful, wisecracking moptops, the Fab Four revolutionized the
sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll’s doors
to a tidal wave of British rock acts.

James Brown

THE LAST SHOW
On the morning of December 28, 2006, dawn in Harlem broke cold and
damp under cloudy skies. But the bleak weather had not kept hundreds of
people from lining up, beginning shortly after midnight, at the entrance to the
historic Apollo Theater on West 125th Street. They were mostly black, mostly between the ages of thirty and sixty.

The Beach Boys

AN AMERICAN FAMILY
The Beach Boys’ long and turbulent saga is a uniquely American epic, encompassing
triumph and tragedy, innovation and excess, massive success and
crushing disappointment, the highest highs of artistic transcendence and the
lowest lows of showbiz mediocrity—as well as family dysfunction, fi nancial
chicanery, mental illness, drug abuse, unfulfi lled potential, and unexpected
redemption.

Buddy Holly

THE ROCK AND ROLL STAR NEXT DOOR
Buddy Holly was one of the key innovators of rock and roll’s early years, and a
crucial link between the music’s 1950s roots and the more electric direction
that it would take in the Beatles era. In his brief but incredibly productive career,
the Texas-bred singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer created a remarkable body of
work that permanently altered the face of contemporary music, leaving behind
the tantalizing potential of what else he might have achieved if he had not
died in at the age of twenty-two.

Chuck Berry

BROWN-EYED HANDSOME GENIUS
Attempting to credit one person with the invention of rock and roll is a misgui
ded and pointless pursuit. But no early rocker played a bigger role in creating
the basic template for guitar-driven electric rock and roll than Chuck
Berry, and no artist of his era did a more effective job of merging an original
musical vision with a cohesive and distinctive songwriting persona.

Ray Charles

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING
The weather in Atlanta, Georgia, is damp and breezy on the night of May 29,
1959. Despite intermittent rainfall, a crowd of 9,000 people has fi lled the stands
of a minor league ballpark called Herndon Stadium for a long evening of live
rhythm and blues. The Drifters, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Reed, Roy Hamilton,
and B.B. King all have performed to an enthusiastic response; now the crowd is enraptured by the show’s headline attraction, whose set has reached a peak
of controlled frenzy.

Elvis Presley

THE BOY WHO INVENTED ROCK AND ROLL
Actually, no one person can claim to have invented rock and roll. The fundamentally
mongrel genre arose from a long-simmering cross-pollination of
black and white musical styles, an evolution that was fueled by the increasing
pervasiveness of music radio broadcasting in America beginning in the 1930s.
The cross-pollination of black and white music had already begun long before the term “rock and roll” (originally African American slang for sexual intercourse)
was ever applied to music, with blues and jazz elements turning up
frequently in white country music, and vice versa.