Hilburn’s Hall

Few such graphic examples of Robert Hilburn’s pure tastelessness have disgraced your pages lo! these 20 years as his assessments of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions for this year (“California Dreamin’,” Sept. 13).

Let us reconsider the Animals, whom Hilburn dismissively assigns to his C list. In 1964 and ’65 they were, along with the Rolling Stones (and the much-maligned Manfred Mann), the most faithful of all the British Invasion groups to the American rhythm-and-blues tradition

Alan Price gave the full-throated organ a role in rock for the first time in years. Eric Burdon’s soulful, controlled and wholly appropriate vocals were peerless in his day; Mick Jagger couldn’t carry his throat spray. And of course, “House of the Rising Sun” was the first international smash of the Invasion era that didn’t include a chorus of “yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The Animals were a bitchin’ band.

JONATHAN F. KING

Berkeley