Our third week of voting has concluded, and sadly the next ballot will not know Diddley. Congratulations to our newest inductees: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Beach Boys. The Supremes and Marvin Gaye survived the cut and will remain on the ballot. Several more highly qualified acts enter the ballot this year, having released their debut recordings in 1964.
Vote for your THREE top choices.
The Stones and Stevie Wonder were easy votes for me. The third was tough but I went with the Supremes. Did you know that the core members of the Supremes and the Temptations all lived in the same Detroit housing project and met in junior high? Crazy!
Ditto here. I was torn between Marvin and Otis, but Marvin had the longer career (although no less tragically cut short.)
Maybe we should just put all the Motown artists together to ensure they get into our Hall somehow..
I’m happily surprised not to be the only Dion vote. His Doowop was among the best and his later folk-rock included the wonderful
Also, title and OP updated with link to 4th year poll.
This is the week when it really starts to become obvious how loaded those first three ballots were. Clearly the Stones and Stevie deserve induction, but I would put many of the folks that have fallen off the ballot in ahead of the Supremes: Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Roy Orbison, Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson.
I’ll just keep voting to try to keep as many of the folks I think are worthy of being in a 120-act hall on the ballot.
And to the surprise of few, this week we induct The Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder. The Supremes narrowly take the final spot, with Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and The Temptations carrying over to the next ballot.
Without further ado, here is the 1990 ballot. Vote for no more than three.
This is another tough one, not so much because there are too many obviously deserving artists, but because there are several that kind-of are but not clearly deserving.
I have to go with Marvin Gaye in my quixotic quest to get him over the top. The guy was amazing with a huge range: classic Motown in “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” social commentary in “What’s Going On,” sexy love songs like “Let’s Get It On,” a disco parody better than any real disco in “Got To Give It Up”, and so much more that you probably haven’t heard.
Simon & Garfunkel is my second vote. I’ll fight anyone who dismisses them as a folk act. After the brief discussion earlier, I revisited some of their catalog, and it’s even more rock than I remembered. The number of rock bands who have covered their songs speaks to their influence.
It’s tougher after those. The Who seems obvious, but I’ll let others vote for them. I’m a big fan of the Kinks, but are they really that unique, influential, or great? Convince me.
Hank Ballard I haven’t heard of. I think of Bobby Darin as more a novelty act, even though I know he wasn’t. I can’t tolerate The Four Seasons (Frankie Valli’s voice specifically). The Four Tops, The Platters, and The Temptations all kind of blend together for me - good bands, but not really top-three worthy. Otis was good but again not quite important enough for this.
I’ll hold off on my third vote for now.
Bobby Darin isn’t going to get my vote, or probably many others, but he was a fascinating guy and had one of the most interesting career arcs in rock history.
He’s best known for his novelty hits of the Fifties like “Splish Splash” (my favorite song when I was about five) and “Mack the Knife”. He also dabbled in movies in the late Fifties and early Sixties, winning a Golden Globe and being nominated for an Oscar. He was an aide to RFK’s Presidential campaign, and witnessed his assassination. As the Sixties went on, he switched genres and began performing exclusively Folk Songs of Protest, which pretty much blew up his music career. But then he reinvented himself yet again and became a popular network TV variety show host. He was also a great lover of chess, promoting the game on his TV show and organizing elite-level tournaments. He died at 39 of a congenital heart ailment.
I largely agree with TroutMan, particularly about the insufferability of Frankie Valli. This is the first ballot I haven’t felt absolutely compelled to vote for anyone. The Who will clearly get in, and they should, but I don’t feel the need to add my vote to their stack. I would actually argue that the Kinks were the third-best British Invasion group, so I’ll certainly vote for them. I won’t argue that S & G weren’t rock, or influential, but I find most of their work cloying and pretentious, so nah.
I actually did brief research on the Motown groups, the Temptations, Platters, and Four Tops. I was slightly surprised to see that all three of these bands are still touring, and the Temptations even have one original member left!
The Temptations and the Platters each had 4 #1 hits, the Tops had 2. So yeah, not a lot of space between them objectively.
The Temptations did “My Girl”, “Just My Imagination”, and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”.
The Platters did “The Great Pretender” and a bunch of songs I’ve never heard of.
The Tops did “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” and “Ain’t No Woman (like the one I got)”
IMO the Temptations songs were better.
So I guess I’ll go with Gaye, Kinks, and Temptations. Not just because it sounds like the name of an erotic boutique, though that’s certainly a plus.
It has been brought to my attention we need tiebreaker rules.
All tied acts will be carried over to the next week. The act within that group which earns the most votes the following week will be automatically inducted, and will not count as one of the three inductees for that year, meaning that a total of four acts will be inducted that year.
The Temptations did “Ball of Confusion.” Of the three they’d be my favorite pick:
His best song was probably Beyond the Sea.
He was great, but not really a strong candidate for the Rock & Roll HoF.
My votes were for The Who of course, inner circle HoF if there ever was one. Simon & Garfunkel who were rock, maybe folk rock, but rock. They were also among the greatest song writers in R&R history.
I gave my third vote to Marvin Gaye who I think is better than The Kinks or Temptations. I hope he eeks out the third spot this round.
These songs sum up a big part of the reason why Gaye should be in:
So true then, so true now. Still probably the 2 biggest issues we face.
So far I’m the only Four Tops supporter. To me, they’d get in on the strength of “Baby, I Need Your Loving” alone.
Another big fan here, an easy vote for me.
The “legacy” entry in their wikipedia article says it better than I could.
The Kinks are regarded as one of the most influential rock acts of the 1960s and early 1970s.Stephen Thomas (All Music) called them “one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion”… Artists influenced by the Kinks include punk rock groups such as the Ramones the Clash, Blondie, and the Jam; heavy metal acts including Van Halen; and Britpop groups such as Oasis and Blur…Pete Townshend, guitarist with the Kinks’ contemporaries the Who, credited Ray Davies with inventing “a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning”…
