Well to be honest Deep Purple and Sabbath both arrived on the scene about the same time in the early '70s. Although Deep Purple got together in 1968 one year earlier than Sabbath. But the "metal sound" started way earlier with groups like Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, MC5 in the late 60's and going back as early as 1964 with the base sound.
Most agree that Cream was the first with the "metal sound" but even The Kinks, Alice Cooper's "The Spiders", The Who and Vanillia Fudge can be credited for "the sound", and of course this can all be traced back to the blues. If you take a listen some of Chuck Berry's stuff was pretty heavy, especially for the time.
Now if you were to base when Heavy Metal started by a artists think of Ronnie James Dio, he was playing in bands back in 1956! and still rocking today!

Either way this topic has some great stuff in it and got me digging through my record(yes as vinyl) collection to re-live past times and also listen a little closer to the music of yesterday and today, well unfortanely most of todays music you can't hear influance unless it is in "sampled form"

has anybody heard john 5 (marilyn manson guitarist) play a cover of sugarfoot rag? its absolutley amazin, he manages to combine blues, rock, metal, country all together..

Damnit! Its Buddy Holly, get it right.

I don't think that one guitarist could ever be named as the greatest, when there are so many of them.  Now If you were to ask-"Who is the greatest sitarist in the world?"-the answer is, hands down, Ravi Shankar.

Whats wrong with blues?  I though that it was blues and swing that started rock.  And you have a problem with it?  Even worse, you curse it?  Shame on you .  Learn your roots

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I've been one of Buddy Holly's greatest fans since before he was so tragically killed. I was never too sure how well he could play guitar or how much on the records was actually him. The Crickets was originally a four-piece with Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar at the time they recorded "That'll Be the Day". His replacement Tommy Allsup played lead guitar on "Heartbeat" & "It's So Easy" among others. Sonny Curtis played lead on Holly's first Decca sessions.

The same can be said for many of those old recordings. So much was done by session musicians in those days (& probably still is) that what you're hearing might not have been played by members of the band who took the credit, even with groups like the Beatles. It's not always easy to find out who was on the sessions. Jerry Allison, the Crickets drummer, did a lot of session work himself & played drums on a lot of the old hit records by other well-known  artists.
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not quite true.

I believe he is reffering to me, on the blues thing. I never cursed blues, my post was mearlyy misinterpreted. BB King is one of my heroes. I embrace and play blues and "Real country" (Not the hard rock they try to pass off as country). But the majority of my playing is metal, because I love metal the most.... I'm also a very agressive person.

yeah, I see how that could easily be misinterpreted. However, I meant that rock without the distortion would be realy aweful blues type schtuff.