February 27, 2025
Volume 55 - No. 9
The
Real King of
Rock n’ Roll
by Kent Ballard I’m an armchair historian. I love reading it and listening to it from the people who were there at the moment it happened. And not just military history, but all kinds of events. “Son of the Morning Star” taught me that George Armstrong Custer was not a wise cavalry leader in 1876, but a decade before that he was considered a genius. Custer was simply a great Civil War officer.
Put bluntly, he simply believed he was immortal. The Sioux and Cheyenne proved him wrong. I spoke personally, as a teenage kid, to the man who remembered the day they shot the last wild bear in my home county. “The Great Influenza,” a book that should be required reading in high schools, taught me the utter horror of a world-wide pandemic that medicine cannot fight.
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“A Night to Remember” taught me about human failure and helplessness in the face of disasters-that could have easily been prevented. “In Cold Blood” taught me that humans can be monsters. But I’m here now to rewrite history. And do it accurately. Elvis Presley was not the King of Rock n’ Roll. That statement will still get you a
good beating in many places. But it’s true. I maintain that Chuck Berry was-and perhaps still is--the King of Rock n’ Roll. He was cheated out of his title because he was black. Worse, he was black in 1950’s America. Elvis was a great singer, a performer without peer, and sold more records than either the Beatles or Michael Jackson if you count ALL of his rock, gospel, country, and live recordings combined.
Rock n’ Roll See Page 2