For all of the boasting that the United States can do being the birthplace of every major popular music genre since 1920, the United States cannot claim the credit for the widespread popularization of this music. That honor goes to Europe, and more specifically, the United Kingdom, who more than any other country, forced the United States to fully appreciate her musical fruits. It was the institutional racism endemic in the United States that prevented artists like Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson from having their justifiable place in American History early on. It took the "British Invasion" spoon feeding white, middle-class teenagers to introduce America properly to its music royalty.

In the early 1970s, this writer was just such a pimply-faced, Southern teenager, who upon hearing Mad Dogs and Englishmen (A&M, 1970) at his cousin's house, was introduced to the aforementioned artists without realizing it. For a generation, the "blues" was best represented by Cream, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. It took the blues revival of the 1960s and '70s to inform us where the blues really came from. The same is true for Joe Cocker. Cocker re-introduced white America to Rhythm & Blues and Soul, music that already existed but was otherwise widely disseminated. Cocker did this in a way that almost reinvented the genre without homogenization or dilution, as happened with many other similar attempts. He did the same with the rock music of the day being written and performed by his peers like the Beatles and Rolling Stones in equal measure. Cocker's place in rock history stands on his being the greatest interpreter of popular rock song. In that, he has no peer.

Born in Sheffield, May 20, 1944, John Robert "Joe" Cocker began singing early, at age 12. He began performing professionally under the name Vance Arnold, performing covers of