<P> In Memphis, Stax Records produced recordings by soul pioneers Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Don Covay . Other Stax artists such as Eddie Floyd and Johnnie Taylor also made significant contributions to soul music . By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to expand upon and abstract both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms . Guralnick wrote that more "than anything else...what seems to me to have brought the era of soul to a grinding, unsettling halt was the death of Martin Luther King in April 1968". </P> <P> Among the first of the major new rock genres of the 1960s was surf, pioneered by Californian Dick Dale . Surf was largely instrumental and guitar - based rock with a distorted and twanging sound, and was associated with the Southern California surfing - based youth culture . Dale had worked with Leo Fender, developing the "Showman amplifier and...the reverberation unit that would give surf music its distinctively fuzzy sound". </P> <P> Inspired by the lyrical focus of surf, if not the musical basis, The Beach Boys began their career in 1961 with a string of hits like "Surfin' U.S.A.". Their sound was not instrumental, nor guitar - based, but was full of "rich, dense and unquestionably special" "floating vocals (with) Four Freshman - ish harmonies riding over a droned, propulsive burden". The Beach Boys' songwriter Brian Wilson grew gradually more eccentric, experimenting with new studio techniques as he became associated with the burgeoning counterculture . </P> <P> The counterculture was a youth movement that included political activism, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War, and the promotion of various hippie ideals . The hippies were associated primarily with two kinds of music: the folk - rock and country rock of people like Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons, and the psychedelic rock of bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Doors . This movement was very closely connected to the British Invasion, a wave of bands from the United Kingdom who became popular throughout much of the 1960s . The British Invasion initially included bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Zombies who were later joined by bands like the Moody Blues and The Who . The sound of these bands was hard - edged rock, with the Beatles originally known for songs that resembled classic black rock songs by Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, The Shirelles and the Isley Brothers . Later, as the counterculture developed, The Beatles began using more advanced techniques and unusual instruments, such as the sitar, as well as more original lyrics . </P>

Which of the following is considered to be an influence on american popular music