The Rock 'n' Roll Freaks Hall

The polls are closed, the ballots have been counted, and we are proud to announce the first four members of the Rock 'n' Roll Freaks Hall class of 2019! In our preliminary round of voting, we cast ballots in two categories - Oldies, which included artists and groups who made their recording debut prior to 1954, and Sidemen, consisting of musicians who spent a significant part of their career playing behind other artists in the studio and on stage. The top vote getter in each category gains induction with the class of 2019. In the end, both ballots finished in ties for the top spot, so all four will be joining the Freaks Hall. Our regular ballot of performers will be announced in about one week. Welcome our four newest Freaks Hall inductees! In the Oldies category:  Roy Brown  Sonny Boy Williamson  And in the Sidemen category: Mickey "Guitar" Baker Nicky Hopkins

Big Jay McNeely It's Labor Day, and it's time to kick off our Rock 'n' Roll Freak Hall election season for the class of 2019! Starting this year, we're making some changes in how we select our inductees. The biggest change is going to be our primary eligibility requirement. For the first five years of the Freaks Hall, we made artists and groups eligible 35 years after their first release, basically with the idea that we were going to give the "real" Rock Hall a full decade to do the right thing by the artists before we fixed their mistakes. Well, from now on, we're dispensing with that courtesy, and we're going to the same 25-year requirement for our 2019 election, considering artists and groups that made their debut in 1993 or prior. But before we get to that, our first order of business is a couple of preliminary votes in two categories: the Oldies Ballot , which is made up of artists and groups who made their recording debut prior to 19