does link wray belong in the rock & roll hall of fame?

I HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING a lot of at­ten­tion to Quora lately, but this ques­tion caused me to re­spond; “Will Link Wray ever make the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?” Wray had one sem­inal hit, Rumble, in 1958 that Cub Koda stated pop­u­lar­ized “pop­u­lar­ized “the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock gui­tarists.” My an­swer was short and, I be­lieve, apt:

“The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should have at least three means of entry:

• as an artist
• as an influence
• for a record

Whether or not Link be­longs in the Hall as an Artist is de­bat­able; that he was an in­flu­ence and that Rumble be­longs in the Hall as a record are not.

But that would have re­quired that the people re­spon­sible for the Hall of Fame think things through.

PS: In 2018, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in­tro­duced a new cat­e­gory for songs, which—while a step in some kind of right direction—certainly wasn’t what I sug­gested above.”

PS: Wray only ever had one more Top 40 hit, Raw-Hide. This record was re­leased in Jan­uary 1959, the same month that the tele­vi­sion se­ries Rawhide de­buted on CBS. It ran for eight sea­sons and fea­tured a young actor who would grow up to have a du­bious po­lit­ical ca­reer. Wray’s record was not con­nected to the show in any manner.

FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page ac­com­pa­nied “Today in Music His­tory: Hon­oring Link Wray” on The Cur­rent web­site (No­vember 5, 2014). That ar­ticle wrote: “Today in 2005, gui­tarist Link Wray died aged 76. Wray was cred­ited with in­venting fuzz guitar after punching a hole in a speaker giving him a dis­torted guitar sound. He was nom­i­nated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Oc­tober 2013. His song Rumble was also as­so­ci­ated with ju­ve­nile delin­quency and banned by a number of radio sta­tions during its day.”