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I read the entire list, and I was about 12 when these were popular.
The thing that strikes me is the big divide between the old style crooner style singers like Pat Boone and the new guys that were more hard rockin types.
Buddy was way out there, compared to Volare, or the put me to sleep stuff like Santo and Johnny.
Strong driving beat, great lyrics, and it was obvious that Buddy was going to be a hit maker.
I never liked Elvis, for a number of reasons...he didn't write his own songs, he couldn't play more than 3 chords on a guitar, and he was so " squeeky clean " until later when he got into drugs. Too pretty.
Given a choice, I would buy Jerry Lee Lewis records any day, over Elvis. Jerry Lee was a fireball, a screaming boogie wogie piano player, who didn't give a damn about what YOU thought of him.....And he knew he was GOOD, and better than most of his competitors. If only he had not married that 13 year old girl, he would have been bigger than Elvis....
Johnny Cash was the real deal, but it took a long time for the fans to look beyond the "man in black " stuff, and really LISTEN to his voice. One of the most troubled men ever to pick up a guitar.
Later on, Roy Orbison could make your hair stand up on the back of your neck.........Four octaves of vocal range, and great lyrics. Ever wonder why he all ways wore dark sun glasses ? Read about the deaths of his children and his wife.........
With the exception of a couple of do wop groups, this list is pretty much white people. Of course, if you were to listen to some of those "race radio stations ' you would have been hearing Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, BB King, Albert King, and some of the cats from Memphis.
The lone Canadian was Paul Anka, from Ottawa. He sure had staying power, as he is till around today. How many people know that he wrote the theme for the "Tonight Show " ? And lots of other screen soundtracks over the years.
Another guy who was a cult figure in that period was Dick Dale, the king of the surfers. He is also still touring. Some of you may remember the opening sounds of Pulp Fiction.........That was Dick Dale doing Miserlou......One of the most iconic riffs in all of Rock and Roll.
A final tip of the fedora to another icon.... Link Wray. The first guy to perfect the use of tremolo, and echo chamber feed back. His most atmospheric record was "Rumble " a ground breaking sound that pro guitar players listened to hundreds of times.. to figure out how he did it.
To really pin it down, my favorite music mini era was Spring '57-Summer '58. But when you say which was the best no. 1 song -- or best any song on a given list -- a person can only pick 1. On this list it would be "All Shook Up" which also happens to be in my all-time top 5. Second would be "That'll Be The Day." Recall writing my top 100 of all time sometime in the 70s and "That'll Be The Day" came in around #25 as I remember. Several others on your list made my top 100.
I voted for Tequila. Long before I understood the song's vintage, I always enjoyed the tenor saxophone melody and soft drums accompanying it, and even my middle/high school's jazz band played it one year. In terms of vocal rock/doo wop song, Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day, very ironic yet having all the standard features of an early R&R song along with the great backup from The Crickets. Of course this is my parent's generation, but thanks to listening to oldies and having a large 45 collection (I have every song listed here on 45!), this allows me to get a good perspective.
Someone mentioned about the divide between rock and non-rock, but I'd say 1957 was the first year that rock had really become a primary force the single charts, with adult pop relegated to albums (this would soon lead to the creation of the Easy Listening chart in the early '60s). Pat Boone, the most prominent figure of this era from what I've read was equally liked by adults and teens into the early '60s, mostly due to his covers of Tutti Frutti and Ain't That A Same that had made him popular in the first place before "squaring out". Even into the '90s you had softer artists who were more adult compared to the youth sound, with various degrees of frequency.
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