Personally, I felt his music was more one dimensional as well.
Holly was missing the looks and charisma, true, but when you say "his" music, it was Holly's music. He wrote it. And he was on the scene and had a period to mature of only a little more than two years before his death.
Elvis was a great singer and performer. A great singer and performer. What's your favorite among the songs that Elvis wrote? (sound of crickets? Ironic in a reply about Buddy Holly?) Or Elvis's personal iconic guitar riffs? (crickets again).
I respect your opinion, but it's a long way from "Peggy Sue" and "That'll Be the Day" to "Everyday" and "True Love Ways." And the difference is that Buddy Holly made that transition personally. It's not a case of somebody handing him different songs over a period of twenty years.
In 1964, in the midst of Beatlemania, the Beatles showed up to play on the Ed Sullivan Show. The first thing John Lennon asked was "is this the stage where Buddy Holly played?"
Elvis was the first “American Idol.”
I just noticed you put Elvis in the same category as Frankie Avalon!! I have to say that is bizarre!
Anyway, as you mentioned ‘looks’ I did not think you were talking about his songwriting abilities in the comparison to Holly, but popularity. Nobody, including him, AFAIK, ever said he was a songwriter or a guitar player. But one of the best performers ever, and a truly great singer, yes. A lot of people disagree of course, but I thought and still think he was, and I was there too.
You are entitled to your opinion that Elvis was as popular as he was because a handler fed him different songs from time to time, but frankly, it doesn’t hold up.
I enjoyed Holly’s songs and his singing, but to me I did not feel there was much variance in what I heard from him. He didn’t generate the excitement in me or my ‘gang’ like Elvis did, and it wasn’t because of his looks vs Elvis’ or the way Elvis was ‘handled’. As you know, in those days we mostly sat around someone’s record player, and we heard what we heard.