[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wHG8U0fa1Q[/youtube]

Where do we stop?

So I'm not using the regular criteria but my list is taking shape with a modified version.

I'm just using three criteria which for now I'm calling "Musical Legacy," "Commercial Legacy" and "Cultural Legacy". The most significant difference is that peer recognition/"musical impact" is reduced.

1. Elvis Presley
2. The Beatles
3. James Brown
4. The Rolling Stones
5. Madonna
6. Bob Dylan
7. Chuck Berry
8. Stevie Wonder
9. Michael Jackson
10. Run-DMC
11. Ray Charles
12. Led Zeppelin
13. The Beach Boys
14. Aretha Franklin
15. Fats Domino
16. The Supremes
17. Little Richard
18. Pink Floyd

At a minimum, that feels like a pretty succinct history of rock from 1955-1995. Numbers 10-18 will still probably move around a little bit. There's some obvious winners and losers in reducing peer recognition, but I think the results are better than when I try to include it as a full criterion.

Since I posted a top 7-8 or whatever it was, the artist I most extensively changed my evaluation of was Michael Jackson. I had him fourth or fifth and that didn't really add up, with or without peer recognition as a full quarter of the criteria.

Vaguely ordered 19-37:

U2
Marvin Gaye
Bruce Springsteen
Sam Cooke
Jimi Hendrix
Bill Haley & His Comets
Jay-Z
The Who
Prince
Black Sabbath
Eminem
Nirvana
2Pac
Elton John
Queen
The Temptations
Public Enemy
Buddy Holly/The "Chirping" Crickets
Beastie Boys

Those 37 I'm pretty confident will end up in the top 50.

How do you justify such a lofty position for Chuck Berry when he does not do all that well in two of your three criteria ("Commercial Legacy" and "Cultural Legacy") ?

Also, are your three criteria all equal?

Also, since the Beatles now slightly beat Elvis in commercial legacy, how do you justify him being ranked ahead of them. IMO they beat him in the other two categories also.

Well MJ beats everybody but the Beatles and Elvis in commercial legacy.

He beats most artists in cultural legacy. The only ones on your list who beat him for sure on that are Elvis, Beatles and Madonna. The ones that are debatable are Dylan and Run-DMC. So in order for him not to be in the top 5 you have to have him ranked pretty low in "musical legacy."

I think we should first have Eric explain what "musical legacy" means exactly...

Elvis at #1 is not unreasonable at all.

So... how do you justify ranking Pink Floyd ahead of The Who? The Who easily takes Musical Legacy and Cultural Legacy. Even Pink Floyd's Commercial Legacy win is significantly mitigated by The Who's substantial lead in singles.

Yeah.

But, let's see MJ vs. Madonna:

Musical Legacy: MJ (Despite having a good score on this criteria, Madonna hardly top 20 here. While I see MJ in a top 10)

Commercial Legacy: MJ (Actually MJ, Elvis and Beatles can be tied in this regard. This year, it was reported that MJ also passed the milestone of 1 billion in album sales. Anyway, he's top3 here)

Cultural Legacy: Tie (The hardest one, I see both in top 4 along with Elvis and Beatles.)

I would put MJ ahead of Madonna in both criteria(Brian and Eric). But I can see her in top 10.

In Commercial Legacy I'm also considering an element of commercial influence, so that saves Berry from being totally shut out in that category. However, looking at it again, he didn't have as many hits in '55/'56 as I thought he did, so I probably overrated him in that regard. "Maybellene" does fantastic in that regard, though.

I'm also curious why you say he does poorly in Cultural Legacy? He's not a top 10 artist in Cultural, but he does much better in that regard than most of the top 100. He was a part of rock's breakthrough years and gets his fair share of credit for that, along with his particular role in creating the imagery and cultural status of the rock guitarist.

I'm also trying to let the exponential differences in a single area get proper weight. Musical Legacy is based mostly on influence (using Sampson's primary/secondary model) and Berry is obviously a towering figure in that regard. Peer recognition is considered to a lesser extent, mostly as a balance to let artists with deeper catalogs get some credit for it. That counterbalance totally settles the argument in whether Berry could beat JB, the Beatles, Elvis or Dylan in Musical Legacy, but Berry still towers over pretty much everyone else.

Someone like Stevie is balanced across all areas. He does not have towering status to that degree in any area, but is a top 25 artist in all three areas.

I did initially have Chuck at #9 and I might end up sliding him back down there, but mostly I want to clean up the next section of the list which currently runs from #19-37.

Finally, yes, my three criteria are equal, but there's a reason for that. I wanted to balance the criteria on the element of sales. The one thing that unites all pop artists across all eras is that they're trying to sell records. On one side of that sales relationship you have the artists and the form of the music, on the other side you have the public and the function of the music, and both the artist/public and form/function relationship hang on the element of sales. So I have Musical Legacy on one side, Cultural Legacy on the other, and Commercial Legacy in the middle.

The whole thing sounds like a bunch of double talk to me, and Chuck Berry does not have much cultural anything. People were not trying to look like him or dress like him or anything outside of what he is already credited for as part of his musical legacy. He was a 30+ year old guy playing music for teenagers. The kids loved the records, but he was no teen idol or anything like that.

I suggest if you are not familar enough with Chuck Berry's hits to know how big they were without looking them up, that you should leave the rankings here to those of us who have done that research decades ago.

No, I don't have him that high in any regard. I think his sheer fame ended up exceeding his rightful status, which is still as a top 10 artist. I majorly re-evaluated him in Commercial and Cultural and came to the conclusion that his actual accomplishments and importance don't quite match up to the level of his sheer fame.

I would love to. But a rather poor version of the list hasn't been updated in almost 7 years with you guys doing it your way. If you just want to say "No. Wrong." and then spend another seven years fixing it, have fun with that, but I'll keep trying to work it out for myself.

For some reason I thought Chuck had a big hit in '56, and maybe a couple more minor ones, but it was just "Maybellene" #5 8/55 and then "Beethoven" #29 6/56.

#7. MJ, #8. Stevie, #9. Chuck might make more sense than the reverse.

How about checking the R&B chart.

Cuuck had several huge R&B chart hits in 1955-56, which is much more reflective, at that time, of what was big among rock and roll fans.

Rock and roll did not become fully mainstream until mid-1957. Before that there were huge rock and roll hits that did not even make the Billboard pop charts, like "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley in 1955.

Because we were discussing commercial influence, in which case breaking through to the broader, whiter pop audience would be the important fact especially for '55 and '56.

Here's what you don't understand.

A record, like "Bo Diddley," could break through in a big way with a white audience without ever making Billboard's pop chart. In order to make Billboard's pop chart a record had to have been being played a lot on radio stations that were considered "pop" stations by Billboard. It didn't matter if a record was a million seller, like "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price in 1952....unless it was being played a lot on "pop" stations it would NEVER show up on Billboard's "pop" chart.

There's also the HUGE factor that Billboard's pop chart was only a top 30 until November of 1955, when they went to a top 100. Before that, a record could have been in the pop Top 40, but never chart, because the chart was only a top 30.

Another magazine, Record Vendor, which later became Record World, did their charts based strictly on sales and jukebox play, with no regard at all to radio play. This would be more reflective of "commercial legacy" since it only tracked when people were PAYING to own or listen to the record, as opposed to being at the whim of some program director taking payola, or just at thew whim of the program director's personal taste.

In Record Vendor, "Bo Diddley" peaked at #29 in a 10 week run on their pop chart in 1955.

Joel Whitburn has a new book coming out that gives all the chart positions from Record Vendor. It should be out in September, and includes thousands of new chart items that never made Billboard's pop chart. There are numerous new pop chart items that are R&B versions of songs that were pop hits in 1954 and 1955 by people like Pat Boone and the Fontane Sisters, etc...apparently if you ignore radio nand just looks at sales and jukebox play, the R&B versions were much bigger than you would think from just taking Billboard as the ultimate measurement.

http://www.recordresearch.com/pop/hit_r ... 4-1982.php

Expand your knowledge of pop music with Joel’s up and coming new book, Hit Records 1954-1982. Here you will find thousands of new artists and songs (not seen in any other Record Research book) that appeared on the Music Vendor and Record World pop singles charts.

The Music Vendor trade magazine began publication in 1947 and furnished charts based on surveys of record performances in juke boxes nationwide. On October 4, 1954, it introduced a weekly “Popular Programming Guide” chart which featured 80 titles, far surpassing the number of songs on other charts of the time. Reporting solely on jukebox plays and record sales, the chart was a clear indication of what was being played in the hamburger joints and purchased at record shops. As radio airplay was not a factor, there was a great deal of R&B on the Music Vendor chart; teens were buying original rock ‘n’ roll (Fats Domino vs. Pat Boone) long before it was embraced by radio. Evidence for this is clearly seen in Hit Records with the hundreds of rock ‘n’ roll songs that hit nationally but do not appear in any of our other books!