>>Paul Whiteman, who is widely condemned for almost destroying jazz by turning it from black dance music into white art music...<<

BS. He turned it into white DANCE music. Don't you white people flatter yourselves that it was art. The only reason white people say "art" is because they can't dance.   I saw a clip of James Brown playing live in front of a white audience. He stopped the song halfway through pissed off that they were still sitting in their seats. You don't go to a James Brown show to sit in your seat. He made everybody get up. "Get off your ass! Get Up!!"

And what destroyed rocknroll was Elvis. Real rocknroll was Fats Domino & Dave Bartholomew, Lloyd Price, Percy Mayfield, Al Hibbler, Johnny Ace, Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, Todd Rhodes, Ruth Brown, Wynonie Harris, Arthur Crudup, Billy Ward & the Dominoes, Roy Brown, Little Richard, Amos Milburn, Paul Hucklebuck Williams, The Clovers, Roy Montrell, B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Louis Jordan, Ray Charles, LaVern Baker, Peppermint Harris, T-Bone Walker, The Ravens, Sticks McGhee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Young John Watson, Nolan Strong & the Diablos, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy, Wild Bill Moore, King Porter, Tiny Bradshaw, Jimmy & Joe Liggins, Ike Turner & His Kings of Rhythm, Red Allen, Professor Longhair, Little Junior, Hank Ballad, Little Willie Littlefield, Shifty Henry, Chuck Willis, Guitar Slim, Little Willie John, Big Mama Thornton, Billy Davis, Earl Palmer, Shirley & Lee, CLyde McPhatter, Bill Doggett, Roy Milton, Lionel Hampton, etc.

THAT was rocknroll. When Alan Freed started his Moondog Radio Show in Cleveland in 1951, it was all black R&B, boogie-woogie and jump blues. It's theme song was "Blues for the Red Boy" by Todd Rhodes. They called it rocknroll as a code phrase for R&B pedaled to white kids. The phrase, although dating back to the late 10s or early 20s, was probably taken from Billy Ward & the Dominoes' "60 Minute Man."

When white artists saw the money being spent--out they came to do the same music. Elvis was at least original. Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs were thieves. They were shameless. They were the perfect antidote to all the racial and social barriers rocknroll was smashing. Just put out the rocknroll hits redone by clean-cut white artists with all the sexuality removed (basically the same thing Paul Whiteman had done with jazz) and white kids felt safer buying those. As original and brilliant as Fat Domino was, he couldn't outsell Boone's covers of his material. Not hard to figure out when many of the white stations refused to play "race" records and would only play the white rip-off versions. Then came payola which nailed the coffin shut on rocknroll. Small labels pushing black artists--like Duke/Peacock--couldn't outpay big labels as RCA, Decca or Columbia to play their artists even though they had better artists and who mostly of not entirely black.

So you see, rocknroll is ONLY the black jump and R&B stuff and nothing else. Everything that followed called itself rocknroll but it was not. Rockabilly was country with a blues backbeat, for example. By the time the Beatles came along, it was long over.