The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced the Class of 2012 inductees. Courtesy the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Only two of the artists who earned Goldmine readers’ votes will be inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2012.

The Beastie Boys, Donovan, Guns N’ Roses, Laura Nyro, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Small Faces/The Faces will be inducted in April at a ceremony to be held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Musuem in Cleveland.

In an online poll, Goldmine readers had selected Donovan and The Small Faces/The Faces, and also voiced their support for nominees Heart, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts and Donna Summer — all of whom were selected on Goldmine’s official ballot.

Freddie King will be inducted in the Early Influence category, and Don Kirshner will be inducted in the sideman category as the Amhet Ertegun Award recipient.

A trio of behind-the-scenes experts will be inducted in the Sideman category via the Award for Musical Excellence. Recording engineer Cosimo Matassa, engineer and producer Tom Dowd and engineer and producer Glyn Johns all received the honor.

By Susan Sliwicki

It’s that time of year again: Goldmine gets to cast its official vote with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the next year’s inductees.

So who should get Goldmine’s endorsement this year? That, dear voters, is all up to you. While we can’t promise that Goldmine’s picks will be the same as the artists who make the Rock Hall’s cut for induction, we can promise that our vote will be based solely on what you, the fans, feel is right. Goldmine is one of roughly 600 final voters to receive ballots.

In a recent online poll, we asked voters to share which five of the 15 nominated acts they felt most deserved to be inducted in 2011. Now, we’re going to hold a “run-off” vote, which narrows the field to the Top 10 vote-getters from Round One. (Voters can pick up to three acts in this round of voting.)

Here are the candidates who remain in Goldmine’s vote-off: Donovan, Donna Summer, Freddie King, Guns N’ Roses, Heart, Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, Laura Nyro, The Small Faces/The Faces, The Spinners and War. Be sure to cast your vote on the poll shown on this page!

We’ll also be featuring brief biographies of all 15 of this year’s field of nominees, courtesy of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so be sure to watch for those, too.

By Rush Evans

The guys in ZZ Top have seen each other’s faces more recently than Claude Russell Bridges has seen his own. He’s hidden mysteriously behind those shades, a cowboy hat, a different name, and that long white flowing hair and beard for 40 years now. Equally mysterious is the intangible magic of the two beautiful love songs he contributed to popular culture: “Superstar” (co-written with Bonnie Bramlett) and “A Song for You.” Both songs were recorded dozens of times and both were made famous with the haunting voice of seventies pop singer Karen Carpenter.

Such memorable melodic masterpieces are reason enough to celebrate Leon Russell (born Claude Russell Bridges) of Tulsa, Okla., but they are not the reason he is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall’s “Sideman” category has been replaced this year by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Award for Recording Excellence, and there is no better candidate to fill the title as this one. In the business of music, Russell has truly done it all, as a writer, singer, performer, label owner, session musician, producer, and above all else, distinctive Southern-styled boogie-woogie piano player.

His sound is a swampy gumbo of gospel, country, and blues, but make no mistake: Leon Russell was and is a contributor to American rock and roll in its truest definition. He was already playing the clubs as a Tulsa teenager in a band called The Starlighters, which included J. J. Cale. A move to Los Angeles led the piano player to session work with recording artists like Glen Campbell, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Herb Alpert, The Byrds, and perhaps most notably, producer Phil Spector’s studio band, The Wrecking Crew. By 1964, he would appear as himself, pounding out piano-driven versions of “Roll Over Beethoven” and “High Heel Sneakers” looking like a more sophisticated Jerry Lee Lewis, but sounding even more Southern, with his trademark vocal drawl (check out the clips on YouTube.com for the only views of Russell’s clean shaven face). He wasn’t half as flashy as Jerry Lee, but that was never the point. Stardom wasn’t the goal, just music.

Russell had built his own recording studio well before penning the song, “Delta Lady,” which Joe Cocker would make his own. By the time of his association with Cocker, Russell’s influence and abilities were becoming well known. It was on Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishman tour that people began to take notice of the unusually hairy hippie with the profound understanding of the piano as a rock instrument (thanks to the documentary film of the tour).

He would soon be his own front man, releasing albums as Leon Russell while still working behind the scenes on the work of others. Appearing with George Harrison and Bob Dylan at the famous Concert for Bangladesh further boosted his career, and his own hits would soon be coming: “Tight Rope,” “Lady Blue,” “Back to the Island.” Along the way, he would continue with other side projects, by founding the Shelter record label, which would be instrumental in the career of another Hall of Famer, Tom Petty.

Russell’s love of country music rooted in rhythm led to an alternate career under the pseudonym Hank Wilson, through which he would bring the songs of Hank Williams to the rock and roll generation. His long-standing musical relationship with fellow musical outlaw Willie Nelson has rendered the hard lines of delineation between genres unnecessary and irrelevant. Good music is good music, and sometimes it rocks to a country beat, as a listen to the Nelson/Russell collaborative effort, “One for the Road,” bears out.

A similar collaboration in Russell’s musical life happened just last year, when longtime Russell fan, Elton John, tapped Leon for a rocking piano summit, documented in their duo album, “The Union.”‘

Elton John and Leon Russell reunited for the 2010 project "The Union." Publicity photo by Universal Music.

This year, Leon Russell is still on the road, taking his music to the people as he approaches 70, just as his fellow Tulsan (and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee) Bob Wills did, night after night. Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and those other bearded guys in ZZ Top do the same thing. Like Wills before them, they have canons of work to back it up. Just like Leon Russell has. And there’s nothing more rock and roll than that.

Darlene Love has enjoyed a long and varied career.

By Gillian G. Gaar

Though you’ve heard her voice on countless records, she might still be the most unknown known rock ’n’ roll singer in the world. She’s a veteran of sessions with Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, and Sam Cooke, as well as hits like “The Shoop Shoop Song,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” and “Monster Mash,” to mention a very few. It’s her lead vocal you hear ringing out on the chart-topping “He’s A Rebel.” Her name is Darlene Love.

No, she wasn’t a member of The Crystals, the group actually credited with recording “She’s A Rebel.” Love was a member of The Blossoms, a Los Angeles-based group working as backing vocalists recording with innumerable groups before coming into Phil Spector’s orbit. In addition to serving as a “Crystal,” Love also released records under her own name, including the classics “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry,” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” Now, nearly 50 years after she first met Spector, Love was at last inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (she’d previously been nominated, but not made the final cut).

“Yeah, it’s been a lot of years!” she laughs. “But we do what we have to do and hope that one day it’ll happen.”

For Darlene Love, it finally has. In addition to her latest honor, 2011 has also seen the release of the new compilation “The Sound Of Love: The Very Best Of Darlene Love.” The recent DVD “The Concert Of Love” offers a rare solo concert performance from the singer. Love is also currently “fine tuning” a script based on her life story, a tale she first explored in her autobiography, 1998’s “My Name Is Love: The Darlene Love Story.”

Love is best known for her work during the girl group era, on songs that have remained timeless. “They’re songs you can sing,” says Love when asked about their longevity. “It had to do with the combination of the words, the singer, and the music.”

The Blossoms featured Darlene Love (lower left). Photo courtesy Reprise Records.

And maybe not so innocent as they seemed. Listen to the urgent pleas in “Not Too Young To Get Married” (which Love recorded as a member of Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans), which suggest a red hot passion burning beneath the surface. “Right! Exactly!” says Love. “We gotta hurry up and get married! All those songs, they were innocent, but they did have that underlying thing; they always had some kind of underlying ‘something’ going on.”

Darlene Love celebrates her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Goldmine photo by Carol Anne Szel.

It’s a passion Love feels is missing from today’s recordings.

“They’ve got over 100 tracks to work with today,” she explains. “It makes it more mechanical. I did a Christmas CD for Shout! Factory a couple of years ago [2007’s “It’s Christmas Of Course”], and we did everything live in the studio. And it makes such a difference. You feel it differently when you’re doing it through earphones, listening to a track that’s already been done. If it’s already done when you get it, you don’t have the opportunity to really groove with it.”

But Love didn’t make royalties on her work then, and with her biggest records not released under her name, she had a tough time when she tried to launch a solo career in the ’80s. Work dried up, and Love ended up cleaning houses and working at a dry cleaners.

“You cannot get to the point where you’re begging,” she says. I think that just keeps you where you are. And when you’re down so far, you can’t go down no further, you’ve got to start climbing out,” Love continues. “And that’s what I did. I finally realized, I have a talent that God gave me and nobody can take it away. I’m supposed to sing. I’m gonna find a way to do it. And you just say that to yourself, and the more that you say it, the more you believe it.”

In Love’s comeback, she also diversified. She appeared in the New York stage revue “The Leader Of The Pack,” based around the songs Ellie Greenwich had co-written. She portrayed Danny Glover’s wife in all four of the “Lethal Weapon” films. She made it to Broadway, in a three-year run as Motormouth Mabel in the musical “Hairspray.” And David Letterman declares Christmas hasn’t begun until Love appears on “The Late Show” to sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

The proposed film will be a testament to Love’s perseverance and determination.

“I am a survivor,” she says. “That’s what we want the movie to be about.” And though now in her 70s, there are no retirement plans yet. “I’ve been blessed,” says Love. “I did the movies. And I’ve done television, and I’ve done Broadway and I’ve recorded. So I’ve done it all. I just need to do a little more.”