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.
Actually, I believe it was PzLdr who made that comparison. I don't see any comparison at all between Frankie Avalon except maybe that they both appeared in movies and sang. In my opinion, that virtually sums up Frankie Avalon and is a tiny, tiny part of Elvis.
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 never intended to suggest that Elvis' popularity was based on the songs he was given to record (at his peak, Elvis could have sung the phone book and made at least #3 on the Billboard charts). Elvis had one of the greatest white voices in popular music.
What I meant is it's much easier to show variation in your music over a two+ year period when you're recording what Sam Phillips is handing you from a stable of accomplished songwriters than it is when you're recording your own music. I still realize that Elvis had to be a great artist for those recordings to become hits.