Quote Originally Posted by BillB
Let's define rock and roll as being a group thing where guitars are prominent and there's usually a drummer and bass player involved. Sure there are exceptions but I think most fall into this loose interpretation.
That helps... for me the answer is a close tie between the 50's and 60's. The 50's because, even if the riff wasn't "new", it was new to White and MIddle America. In the 50's Giants walked the earth and traveled to your little town. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Big Joe Turner, Fat's Domino, Elvis and others were breaking new ground and teaching a whole new generation how to shake, rattle and roll.

The 60's stake their claim because after the first wave lost their way, sold out or went to jail, the kids had to find a new way to speak. The 60's gave us Dylan, Motown, The Beatles, Stones, Aretha, Jimi, James Brown, the Poet Laurate of the Civil Rights movement.. Curtis Mayfield and at the end of the decade The Jackson 5. Never in the history of man had popular music so mirrored and SHAPED the times in which we lived. Oh what a mighty time.

I hate to sound like the "old fart" but you cannot understand the impact of music in the 60's without having lived through it. I did....

The 60's get's my vote...

Da Worfster