Reply #44: Yep

[ForrestGump]

Elvis, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly (himself begatten by Elvis), and a few other Southern gentlemen begat the Beatles and, directly or indirectly, pretty much everyone else. Rock 'n' roll, that became just 'rock,' etc,' was built largely on blues musical structures, as I understand it, and the blues as a musical form is endemic to the South.

Bill Haley and his Comets gave an early, midwestern take on what became rock 'n' roll, but -- to my ears -- it lacked the visceral grittiness that characterized the recordings of the first southern rock 'n' roll heroes...taking it out of the South before it was finished cooking was probably the cause of that. For that matter, until the export of their product (and of basic blues) began to boomerang back with the '60s British invasion, most of the biggest and certainly most charismatic names in rock 'n' roll, soul, and R&B (real R&B, not the whiny crap that's been sold as R&B since the '80s) were all southern, from the southeastern states and Texas: people like the Sun pioneers (Elvis, Jerry Lee, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, etc), Little Richard, Ray Charles, James Brown, Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, etc, etc.

The Yankees in Boston and whoever else wouldn't have anything to work with were it not for Memphis and Macon.