I thought you said it was The Who.
I thought I understood your point from the first quote until I got to your second quote. Are you saying Lewis is in the top 6 of the first two nominating years? I haven’t looked at the nominations for the second year – are they all weak?
Congratulations to our inaugural class: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Buddy Holly!
Qualifying to remain on this week’s ballot were James Brown, Ray Charles, and Little Richard.
Here is this week’s ballot, representing the class of 1987.
- James Brown
- Ray Charles
- The Coasters
- Eddie Cochrane
- Bo Diddley
- Marvin Gaye
- Bill Haley
- BB King
- Little Richard
- Clyde McPhatter
- Ricky Nelson
- Roy Orbison
- Carl Perkins
- Smokey Robinson
- Big Joe Turner
- Muddy Waters
- Jackie Wilson
- Aretha Franklin
0
voters
I voted for James Brown, Ray Charles, and Marvin Gaye.
Great choices, I voted for Richard, BB king & Bo Diddley
I, of course, wrote a whole essay explaining my votes. 
This is the “participation trophy” ballot for acts that didn’t make it into the inaugural class. In my opinion, this class has great musicians and rock musicians, but no great rock musicians.
For my ballot, I think my two failed candidates from last round, James Brown and Little Richard, are still the most qualified acts on the ballot. For the third vote…
Big Joe Turner and Clyde McPhatter are people I have literally never heard of.
The rockers here are all second-tier acts and one-hit wonders (Haley, Perkins, Cochrane, Nelson, Orbison). I would put Little Richard, Bo Diddley, or for that matter, Jerry Lee Lewis, in ahead of any of them.
Then there are a bunch of Black pop/soul vocalists from the fifties (Coasters, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson). This is just not a genre I’m familiar with; if there are good cases for any of these acts, someone else is going to have make them.
Bo Diddley is a personal favorite of mine, tremendously influential, and unquestionably rock and roll. He’s a legitimate choice here, but I feel like his body of work is just too skimpy to make him a no-brainer selection.
That leaves us with three giants of American musical history who are overwhelmingly qualified, but only rock-adjacent. I have absolutely no argument against voting for Muddy Waters or BB King, but I’m going to go with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, as being the biggest star and biggest talent of the three..
An SDMB Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without the Pipkins and the Cowsills is no Hall of Fame at all!
Oh shit, I forgot to put Aretha Franklin on the ballot and it’s too late to edit.
So:
removed as Aretha added to actual poll.
It will make the vote counting slightly awkward, but hopefully not too bad.
This won’t work, just put her on the next ballot instead.
It’s not ideal, but I feel this is fairest to Franklin, since the competition on the next ballot gets MUCH stiffer.
Or could I ask a Mod to edit the poll to add her as an option?
We can’t either without erasing votes but we could start it over with her added.
Yeah, can we do that? It’s only been twenty minutes.
OK, done, and I changed one of my votes from Little Richard to Aretha.
Also Title updated to let participants know a new poll was added.
Thanks, and thanks for editing the title, that’s a good idea.
PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU WERE ONE OF THE FIRST FEW VOTERS, YOUR VOTES HAVE BEEN ERASED AND YOU WILL NEED TO VOTE AGAIN. THE MANAGEMENT APOLOGIZES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
what is your problem, Discourse?
I have to know, is your avatar Elwood Blues or something from an Anime?
It’s Elwood.
Cool.
I believe they consider that a feature and not a bug.
Aretha is an obvious first-ballot Hall of Famer, and I gave my other two votes to Ray Charles and Marvin Gaye. Gaye is currently at 14%.
I voted for the two obvious choices: Aretha Franklin and James Brown.
For my third choice, I went with Bill Haley. He wasn’t as prolific as some of the others, but “Rock Around the Clock” in a sense created rock music as a major genre.