Link Wray

Banned in New York and Boston for fear it would incite teenage gang violence, 'Rumble' (1958) caused all that trouble without a single word. The menacing instrumental was among the earliest records of its kind to use distortion and tremolo, and Wray is credited with inventing the power chord.

He grew up poor in North Carolina, and while serving in the army during the Korean War he caught tuberculosis and lost a lung; doctors predicted he would be unable to sing again. Later, tired of the corporate music machine, he wrote and recorded Link Wray (1971) in a three-track studio converted from an outbuilding where his father had raised chickens.

His style kept moving: twangy rockabilly in the 1950s, surf-flavoured garage in the '60s, swampy country early in the next decade, then hard rock from the late '70s until his death in Copenhagen in 2005.