Wednesday, Richard Roeper wrote that "Sweet Home Alabama" is the greatest rock song of all time.

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | March 31, 2005 | Instant Messages

[pissant]

SFreebird,
you are correct. I don't like Freebird. Though I do like most Skynyrd.

Freebird belongs in the category of melo-dramatic, too long, self absorbed, Rock & Roll excessive kitsch.

Others include Stairway to Heaven (and many other Zep songs), Come Sail Away (Styx), Won't get fooled again (Who), Taxi (Harry Chapin), Southern Man (neil Young) and countless others.

Give me any 3 minute Stones, ZZ Top, or Los Lobos song and I'll take it!

But hey, I appreciate the ping!

[weegee]

"As we all know, it was the blues and rhythm & blues songs that first morphed into rock & roll music, as perfomed by black artists. So, whatever the "best" song turns out to be, it has to be by a black musician."

What a racist concept. Just as it is asinine to assert that minorities cannot be racist "because they don't have the power structure" to make bigotry "mean" anything.

So Lieber and Stoller could never write a rock song? Better take back Hound Dog and those other songs.

Chuck Berry wrote songs for a white audience (about cars, school, and girls) and even lifted some riffs ("Promised Land" was a rewrite of "Wabash Cannonball")

From the great Atlantic Ocean
To the wide Pacific shore,
From sunny California
To ice-bound Labrador,
She's mighty tall and handsome,
She's known quite well by all,
She's the 'boes' accomodation
On the Wabash Cannonball

I left my home in norfolk virginia
California on my mind
I straddled that greyhound
And rode into raleigh
And on across caroline

Chuck Berry was even noted as a rockabilly singer on the back of his Chess albums and rockabilly was one step away from "hillbilly" (another music subgenre not ready for prime time radio's "hit parade" along with "race records").

Records sold but radio wouldn't play them. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[Chi-townChief]

Chuck himself said that a lot of whites would show up at his early perfomances, where he'd do some Hank Williams tunes, wanting to see the "black hillbilly singer."