Glad you replied. I hope you realize I wasn't trying to drive you away, I actually do want you to stick around. But in response to your response about having more hits. They don't. They aren't even close in fact when looking at the larger overall market. To start with Status Quo on the U.S. Singles charts have just TWO Top 100 entries, one of which topped out at 70. The Stones by comparison have 60 hits, almost all of which hit higher than 70 on those charts. Status Quo does much better in the U.K., which I assume is what you are referring to. They have (as of 2004, the U.K. Chart book I'm looking at) 58 hits, which is indeed ten more than the Stones had at that same juncture. So that makes up some of the gap.

But here's the problem. We put everything into context based on a variety of simple factors. We're not trying manipulate anything to benefit one artist or style over another, but instead just trying to get an accurate picture of the entire scope of rock. The fact is Great Britain has nowhere near the market share as the United States. True it's the second biggest of all that we take into account, but we use roughly a 5-1 ratio (US to UK) when determining things. Furthermore, since both artists you're talking about are British it's not as if you could say that Status Quo were huge to the audience they were most trying to reach and thus that should matter more. The Stones were from the same place and they succeeded pretty much equally with SQ in the U.K., but had FAR more success in a much bigger (and more important, IE., more competitive) U.S. market than SQ. Thus, even though SQ does well in one of the four criteria we use (Commercial Impact, the others being Musical Impact, Influence and Cultural Impact, all weighed equally) overall they still pale in comparison to the Stones, who do better in everything else, AND do much better in Commercial Impact worldwide on the basis of their huge lead in America and elsewhere.

As for SQ making the list at all somewhere in the Top 100, you need to do the same type of analysis for every one and when you do I'm afraid you're going to find there are easily a hundred or more artists who do far better across the board than they do. Doing great in 1/5th (the U.K. charts) of just a quarter of the overall criteria (Commercial Impact) is still somewhat meager when it comes to the full assessment of every artist's qualifications over nearly seventy years of music. I'm not saying SQ don't also score in some of the other areas of the criteria as well, they do, but just not to the extent of those who beat them out.

The most important thing to remember is that it isn't a knock on someone if they don't make the Top 100. The Top 100 is HARD to make. We're talking tens of thousands of artists over rock's history who had a sustained career to speak of being whittled down to just a hundred. To miss out on the Top 100 and "only" make the Top 200, or 300 or even Top 500 for all of that history is a monumental achievement, not a criticism of their careers at all if they don't crack the upper pantheon. It's just that when everything is added up the Top 100 are the absolute elite and the arguments for those artists are going to overwhelm the arguments for someone like Status Quo.

Like I said though, stick around and keep posting.

Can't wait until this list is finally updated.

don't you think that Electric Light Orchestra has more of a claim to the list than Ricky Nelson?

Rick Nelson was in the top 100 of the old list, but isn't in the current one. I have now deleted the old list from the first post and replaced it with the current list.

Nelson is currently ahead of ELO in the 101-300 list, which is in a different thread. I'd give Nelson the advantage in popularity, and don't see where ELO would make up that ground.

they wouldn't make up the ground but I'm surprised that you'd give Nelson popularity, i think ELO's album sales are pretty good

i also imagine that ELO innovated some stuff in the studio

ELO does have pretty good album sales, but popularity is judged here within the context of each artist's era. Nelson was popular during a singles-oriented era, so his popularity is judged mostly by the popularity of his singles. ELO's album success, while good, is surpassed by that of quite a few other artists from their era.

Brian how do you think Fats Domino vs Aretha Franklin comparasion goes like?

Tim, Fats was the #2 rock artist of the '50s in commercial impact, but with Aretha being both a huge singles artist and a big seller of albums plus a very long period of popularity, I'd give her a slight edge here. And I consider her huge in musical impact, so I think she wins that criterion somewhat comfortably, although Fats does well here too. I'd give Fats influence, but not by all that much, so before cultural impact is considered, I think she has a slight lead over him. For cultural impact, should Aretha be credited for contributing to feminism? I have heard that claimed, and if so, then I think she wins the overall match up - I think Fats has to win cultural impact by more than a nose to beat her overall. But I believe Sampson will credit Fats with lots of cultural impact, so I could see that match up going either way.

I would have guessed that the Platters were the second most popular 50s artist. Or maybe Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

In the US in the '50s, Holly had 3 top 10 hits and 8 top 40 hits. The Platters had 6 top 10 hits and 15 top 40 hits. Fats had 10 top 10 hits and 21 top 40 hits. And that's just the pop charts; Domino had several R&B hits before rock crossed over to the pop charts.

I did not know that. THanks for enlightening me.

The book "Blue Monday" makes a good case for Fats being the most significant factor in the ending of segregated live shows as both whites and blacks loved his music.

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Monday-Fats- ... 0306815311

Is it not unfair to credit an artist with undue weight for something like that, as it was really a whole social movement at work? I mean, honestly, how is anyone new supposed to crack the top 20 or 30?

There's a PBS show on Fats and this subject next week, on American Masters. It's on Friday at 10 PM in NYC on channel 13.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters ... roll/6230/

Sounds interesting Bruce. I'll try to make a point of watching that.



Since you said "undue", it's hard to argue with your first question. Depending partly on what you mean by "new", it generally is harder for a new artist to make the top 30, because they haven't had as much time as older artists to acquire credentials. But that's not just true of cultural impact - culture does continue to change - it's true of all the criteria.