Rock-n-roll Hall Of Fame, why are so many artist who helped create rock-n-roll not there? first of all the rock-n-roll hall of fame should have been in memphis not cleveland. the fact that alan freed had a r&b radio program there called the midnight moon doggie show, and wanted a name for the new type of music (that we now call rock-a-billy) to differentiate between the two he named the later rock-n-roll so he would have two kinds of music to play on his program. the other being that elvis played his first show out of the south in cleveland is no reason to put the rock-n-roll hall of fame there. alan freed, now declares “rock around the clock,” “good golly miss molley,” “lawdy miss clawdy,” and other songs similar to it rock-n-roll. so rock-a-billy music became rock-n-roll, because it didn’t have a name in the beginning. actually, it was a cross mix of r&b and country then twenty years later someone suggested that country and r&b was rock-a-billy music. the two kinds of music got fused together and out pops rock-n-roll. legends die hard and once things get mixed up and stories get told, the real truth gets so thin we never know what to believe. had things been different, we might have had a new ball game so to speak, but legend has it the system went with rock-n-roll then all the records that were basically country with a jumped up beat to it and r&b was called rock-n-roll. all the dj’s nationwide picked up on it mixed up the pot and called it rock-n-roll. dale hawkins’ “susie q” got labeled rock-n-roll, even though the song probably would have been somewhere between r&b and country. buddy holly’s “that will be the day” came out rock-n-roll and most likely the song was country. the same can be said for the penguin’s “earth angel,” which was truly r&b, but it was labeled rock-n-roll. the same with carl perkins, johnny cash, jerry lee lewis, sonny james, and gene vincent. all had records that were by today’s standards either rock-a-billy or country. they were all labeled rock-n-roll. be that as it may, by 1959 all the great rock-a-billy music was gone and the dye had been cast. we were stuck with rock-n-roll, with one big exception, the music being played wasn’t rock-n-roll either. by this time, the trend had gone back to pop music. it was still referred to as rock-n-roll as dick clark was now in charge of the nationwide trend of music with his american band stand show in philadelphia. it was his belief that frankie avalon, fabian, bobby ridell, neil sedika, paul anka, del shannon and many other singers were rock-n-roll , if they were?????????? then elvis presley is still alive. from 1954 to 1958, we had the best music ever produced for teenagers in our country. that music was created by some great artists. in many cases not much older than the teens they created the music for. the independent record companies could be creative without top management telling them what to do. today all those companies are gone. sun, chess, dot, specialty, imperial, and roulette are all gone. one day in 1959 teenagers across america woke up and rock-a-billy and its artist were gone. all that is except elvis. he was in the army. he made records while in the service, but they were not the same. elvis wasn’t the same hillbilly cat who made “mystery train,” that’s alright mama,” and “heartbreak hotel.” he was a hollywood movie star now. he never came back to his rock-a-billy roots and he made mostly mundane records until he died. i am not taking anything away from elvis. he did make different types of music to fill a wide vast audience. col. tom parker made sure elvis’ product would sell no matter how it sounded. that surely took away the original sound of 1954, 55, 56 and 57. then years down the road, the rock-n-roll hall of fame opens up in l986 and as in the beginning in 1955 when rock-a-billy got labeled rock-n-roll. the rock-n-roll hall of fame people got history all mixed up again. they didn’t research “the roots of rock-n-roll” or its originality. they just used the term rock-n-roll and selected certain artist to represent the whole spectrum of a very particular type of music, never giving thought to how it was formed or the many people who helped make it an original sound. it took more than sam phillips to create rock-a-billy music and it took more artist than elvis, carl, johnny, or jerry lee to make it sound like it did in the beginning. they helped pioneer the sound, but many others were doing the same thing and they also helped spread the rock-a-billy sound to hundreds and hundreds of teenagers. some of the artist who were there in the beginning and should be in the rock-n-roll hall of fame are dale hawkins, buddy knox, sanford clark, pat boone, billy lee riley, link wray, and bobby day of “rockin robin” because, they helped lead the way to the sound that is called rock-n-roll. johnny and dorsey burnette and paul burlison also helped pioneer rock-a-billy music. it took the hall of fame twelve years to induct gene vincent. he should have gone in with elvis and the rest in l986. thanks to the efforts of bob timmers of the rockabilly hall of fame, who’s persistence finally paid off when gene was inducted twelve years late in 1998. we owe bob timmers a great deal of gratitude for founding the rockabilly hall of fame. he has set the history of rock-a-billy music straight for all of us to see also he has inducted all of the artist who were left out of the rock-n-roll hall of fame. when you think about non performers such as sam phillips and alan freed being in the hall of fame how could they have not inducted col. tom parker along with them in 1986 . there is no other manager in the history of any kind of music that did as much for their client as tom parker did for elvis presley. his management of a superstar is unequal wither you like him or hate him according to what you have read and been told about him, he should be in the the rock-n-roll hall of fame. that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

~ Widmarc Clark