Roll Call

Well, I finally sent off my entries for Norm's rock 'n' roll poll. Trouble is, this is a music genre I don't really listen to much. I ended up with a list of 4: Otis Redding, Wynonie Harris, Fats Domino and Frank Zappa. I know, where are Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, etc., etc.... Try as I may, I can't see those artists and many others as "rock 'n' roll stars". This may have something to do with my having grown up in the late 1950s and early 60s. To me, rock 'n' roll means the music that drove great jazz artists like Stuff Smith and Coleman Hawkins out of business. That said, the very greatest practitioners of R&R sneezed at musical categories, and spanned all the genres in their music - and one of the greatest among them, in my view, was Wynonie Harris, who anticipated Elvis by at least ten years, and was singing a ferocious mix of blues, gospel and R&B before the name "rock 'n' roll" had even been invented.