I know that a lot of musicians credit the Shadows as a gateway which is fair enough. But I agree with Dick, tbh, for me they were pretty lame at the time, couldn’t have imagined buying one of their records when I was saving up for jazz records. The guitars I was listening to were in the mighty hands of Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell et al. Took me a while to get into blues because jazz seemed so much more accomplished (until I saw the lineage more clearly). The Shadows always seemed on a par with other novelty records of the time. When I moved from piano to learning guitar it was similar to Dick, maybe, via people like Dave Evans, then Bert Jansch etc down at Cousins and beyond. For me, the Shadows existed on a level similar to the music hall extension that trad jazz was, except performed by younger, more wholesome lads. White bread indeed.
Point of this is it’s just my opinion, which for once agrees with Dick. What other people believe will be different - I’ve no interest in trying to tell others what to believe. I leave that to the retrodogmatics of all stripes. As for selling lots of records - so did Ken Dodd, bless him.