[Simon Hunt]

Thanks for this post, Mark. I think you've nailed it, and I don't have all that much to add. CB was certainly a genius and one of the true originators of the music that has been the soundtrack of much of western culture for the last 60+ years. Besides inventing rock n roll guitar and the singer/songwriter role, he was also as you note the most verbally dexterous of his generation of rock artists. "Promised Land" is a good choice to show this, but you could have gone instead with "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" or "Too Much Monkey Business" (without which, as Dylan allows, no "Subterannean Homesick Blues") or, of course, "Johnny B. Goode." I'll add that I still get a charge out of the word "motorvatin'" at the start of "Maybellene" and that I think "Roll over Beethoven" is a perfect phrase--made even more perfect by the follow-up line, "Tell Tchaikovsky the news!" The crispness of his diction--in both the physiological and the linguistic senses--made his lyrics really matter. And he was a hell of a rhymer, too--mostly snappy full rhymes but occasionally deft slants. Ha--I said I wouldn't add much but keep thinking of more I want to say...

By my count, the living giants of that first generation of rock n roll artists now are only Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard--all in their 80s. Although she didn't achieve the same level of fame, Wanda Jackson is up there in my book, too, and she's a little younger and still touring. Am I forgetting any biggies?

Thought of another... Don Everly just turned 80; his younger brother Phil died a few years ago...

And another: Dion DiMucci...

Duane Eddy? Lloyd Price? Do they count?