David Bowie may have sung that he was "afraid of Americans" in 1997's Earthling, but the United States became his country of choice. He spent the last two decades of his life in the US, until his death on January 10, 2016, surrounded by his family in New York.

Like many British youngsters in the late 1950s, Bowie was fascinated and influenced by American rock 'n' roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. But unlike many teenagers of ...