Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Quatro
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There is a rule in the HOF bylaws that an inductee can not be eligible until 25 years after the release of their first recording; Linda wasn't eligible until 1992. The main reason for the 25 year rule is to avoid someone being inducted as a sort of 'flavor of the month' artist, inducted more based on popularity than actual contributory or influential talent, a situation you see in awards like the Grammys where some artist is awarded and then never heard from again. When the R&R HOF was first established, R&R was a little over 30 years old and there was a very large pool of candidates for induction; the situation was akin the dilemma faced by the Baseball HOF in there first inductions: who do you include in the first batch and who do you set aside for later induction?; it's not an easy choice, but if you look at the R&R HOF first class, the choices were pretty obvious...
Regarding Linda, she was basically just a singer: she was not an instrumentalist and only a very marginal songwriter; IIRC, she has only two songwriting credits in her career and those were collaborations; this puts her in a very large pool of similar artists, who, while popular, aren't really innovators or major influences. I like Linda, but the truth is she was one of many singers of her time and not really in the same creative league as, say, Leslie Gore, Joanie Mitchell, Loretta Lynn, Laura Nyro, or Dolly Parton, etc. If you really want to put a fine point on the issue, and I am probably going to offend some people saying this, Elvis was really just a singer and performer: he only has about 9 or 10 songwriting credits, of which only 2 or 3 were hits; he was a passable guitar player, but is hardly an influence in the field (his sideman, Scottie Moore, was way, way more influential); compared to Chuck Berry or Jimmie Rodgers, Elvis was a mediocre talent, but he did establish the visual style and attitude for early popular R&R; it just doesn't make him a great, influential musician...
I will now await the torch-bearing onslaught of Elvis disciples...
Bottom line, though, Fats Domino was well deserving of being in the freshman class of the R&R HOF and, if it seems he was forgotten by the popular music world, he was and is revered by those who know what real talent was and is; again, he made his decision to keep a low key life and, even flying below the radar, he made a huge impact on what is now Rock & roll; if those who play R&R are, as Bob Seeger put it, "all Chuck's children", then Fats Domino was our kindly uncle with a warm smile and the ability to spread joy to his nephews and nieces...
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