Pop music is full of secret histories. It's not just about the canon, the critically approved history that takes us from Elvis to the Beatles and the Stones, through the supposedly barren years of the early 70s, into punk and beyond, with diversions for soul and funk and hip-hop and house. Pop feeds off itself in strange and unexpected ways, and its story isn't as straightforward as the canonical telling suggests.
In this week's Film&Music we've tried to touch on that by taking 10 artists (well, strictly nine artists and one record company employee) and looking at the way each of them helped shaped pop. Some, like Earth Wind & Fire, are superstars who seemed only to be regarded as radio-friendly unit-shifters, even though that ubiquity gave them huge influence over generations of musicians. Others, such as Mick Green of the Pirates, mastered one specific thing that filtered through music to the extent that his descendants probably don't even realise the debt they owe. One, Ralph Peer, is a non-musician who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to inadvertently kickstart commercial country music. If it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else, but that doesn't negate his importance.
But we only had room for 10, though the original discussions among the writers produced dozens of names who could have been included. Ours isn't a top 10; there's no particular logic to the selections, they're just people we felt have been underappreciated. So we want you to expand our list. Who are music's other unsung heroes? And what did they do that echoed down the years? Make your cases here: we're all ears.
