[weegee]

If Miles Davis is going to get in (and he did play the Isle of Wight festival), then why not Sun Ra Arkestra (who played numerous times with the MC5 and other bands, and recently have played some big shows with them again).

Those guys are up in their 70s, played with all sorts of famous musicians, and helped to break ground for more avant gard rock with free jazz.

[Revolting cat!]

Thanks for the link. That's where I should have been. Billy Joe Shaver is more of a rock'n'roller than Miles Davis ever was, and for all we know Miles might have actually hated rock'n'roll, as many jazzmen do, and as another inductee, unrepentant Stalinist Woody Guthrie did. Go figure. In any case,Miles did play that mongrel genre called 'fusion' which might have been invented by Michal Urbaniak, actually, who put out one excellent album and the kinda exhausted that pool.

As for Link Wray, yeah, he influenced more musicians than he had non-musician fans, apparently. He's the guy who took what Duane Eddy started to the limit.

There is something out there called the Rockabilly Hall of Fame which isn't controlled by the record companies.

By the way, I just saw in the record store that Robert Gordon has a new album full of mostly forgotten classics. (Don Gibson's Sea of Heartbreak? Ah! Gotta hear that!) Neil Diamond too, has an album produced by boy wonder Rick Rubin, but it's Sony, so watch yourselves (they had stickers on it - I thought Sony was exchanging them?!)

[jjmcgo]

Good points but the most important point is that when those guys were playing, rock wasn't.
Folks need to read a little history about the hall -- it's has an excess of Atlantic and Stax folks because execs from those companies dominate(d) the board, along with Wenner.