If you had to make a list of the ten most influential musicians of the 20th-Century, who would you put on it?
If you don’t feel knowledgeable enough about music to say, you can just put your personal favorites.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Here’s mine:
My list would have many of the same names, but I’d have to figure out which three of yours to ditch for Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page, and Eddie Van Halen.
I’m not sure Page and Van Halen had as much influence as most of the names on BooMan’s list. True, they launched about a bazillion bands, but it’s hard to argue that they were more influential, say, than Hank Williams, who basically redefined country music and in many ways made it what it is today.
Johnson . . . he’s a harder call. Before the release of King of the Blues Singers around 1960, he was pretty much unknown, even in the areas he’d lived and played in. But once that album came out, a lot of people started noticing him and being influenced by him. You’d know some of those names; Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, to name just two.
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I just responded to your mail. Executive summary: Go for it.
That’s the beauty of these lists…nothing is hard to argue 😉
I think it really boils down to the prism you look through. For musicianship, I tend to drift towards people who change the way an instrument is played, not necessarily those who changed their particular genre of music (or invented new ones). So, from BooMan’s list I’d immediately drop John Lennon and Bob Dylan, because while I consider them all time first ballot hall of fame songwriters, they had little to no influence on technique. Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen, on the other hand…well, just walk into your local guitar store sometime 🙂
Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, but let’s face it, if it wasn’t for John and Bob laying the foundation, those guitar players wouldn’t be playing like Page and Van Halen. 🙂
Man, I love arguing about this more than I do about Hillary and Barack.
I give it to John Lennon for his mastery of the studio, which isn’t an instrument, but is perhaps even more influential than any instrument.
Fair enough.
Bit of trivia : Did you know that the Beatles were recording Sgt. Peppers at the Abbey Road studio at the exact same time that Pink Floyd were recording Piper at the Gates of Dawn just down the hall? Two of my all time favorite albums, and you can certainly hear some similarities between them.
I limited myself to pretty much two guitar players: Berry and Hendrix. I can’t see putting any guitarist above them for influence.
Good list, I’d add Les Paul in terms of pure influence.
gotta include Robert Johnson
Funny you should mention Robert Johnson. I was reading up on him a couple weeks ago, just noodlin’ around with my banjo like I do sometimes, and before I knew it about 30 minutes later I had a song about selling your soul for the ability to play guitar. It’s a good song. Wish I could share it, but I still haven’t figured out how to get me and the banjo both recorded on my home computer using only one mic.
Good list. I’d find a place on there for Earl Scruggs. There aren’t all that many people that you can point to and say “He invented an entirely new genre of music,” and it’s fair to say that before Earl joined the Blue Grass Boys there was no such thing as bluegrass. But I don’t know who I’d kick off to do it.
OK, I’m probably showing my banjo bias, but I just thought of someone else who needs to be on a short list like this: Pete Seeger. Pete was not only influential in re-introducing the five-string banjo to the American public, he not only helped to kick off the mid-century folk revival, he has been a tireless advocate for peace, justice and the environment. Again, it’s hard to think of who deserves the honor more, him or one of the musicians on your list.
I’m thinking most of the names I’d add to it were more known for composing than playing. Gershwin, for example, Copeland maybe.
Here’s a poser for you. Is Lawrence Welk being unfairly overlooked?
I’m serious.
I don’t think Welk was all that influential. Popular, yeah, but you won’t hear a lot of people saying they took up the accordion because of Lawrence Welk.
I was trying to think of someone who was head and shoulders in terms of influence in defining the Big Band sound, and really couldn’t come up with anyone. Closest I could come was Benny Goodman, or maybe Paul Whiteman, and I think others on BooMan’s list have a better claim to more influence.
Elvis, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Quincy Jones.
That’s ten, and I’m not necessarily a fan of all, but they seem pretty influential to me. So many more…
Yeah – one would be hard-pressed to leave out Michael Jackson. Like him or hate him, he’s left an indelible imprint on that century.
My problems with these lists are when people add someone who doesn’t write their own music or play an instrument. Another issue is that sometimes it’s a producer like Phil Spector or Butch Vig who are more influential than the actual musicians.
Then again, I may be putting too much energy into thinking about it, so here’s a top of my head list.
Pharrel
Isaac Hayes
Sly Stone
Peggy Lee
Marvin Gaye
Ray Manzarek
Ruth Brown
Carole King
Kanye West
Butch Vig
Not that he isn’t great, but isn’t the majority of his output as either producer or artist from the 21st century?
Same with Pharrel. That means I get two more choices then.
Hmmm…how about Russell Simmons and Dr. Dre.
I can’t stand Dr. Dre, but I do have to admit that he’s had an influence over hip-hop/R&B/pop. Even if it was for evil.
Carole King, definitely. Her music has transcended her generation and has made it to the next few.
That last one should be Frank Black.
Some people may know him as Black Francis.
That’s a rough stab. I’m sure I forgot somebody more important than Wendy Carlos, but IMO Switched On Bach was hugely influential, way beyond its sales or quality. I would give that spot to Bob Moog, but we’re supposed to be listing musicians, not instrument makers. Otherwise Les Paul would be high on the list.
Les Paul is an influential musician in his own right, too, not just for inventing the solid body electric guitar as we know it, but also for developing the technique of overdubbing. And he’s a talented musician in his own right (as far as I know he still does regular gigs in NYC, even after the age of 90) but his style of playing per se would probably never have influenced many people if it hadn’t been for his technological achievements.
Chet Atkins, on the other hand . . . there’s influence, and there’s influence. Not only was he a guitar picker’s guitar picker, he was the A&R man for RCA Victor in Nashville for years and years, and helped develop a lot of the country talent of the day. So there’s another kind of influence, one we might not think about as much.
Paul McCartney
John Lennon
Elvis Presley
Cole Porter
Smokey Robinson
Michael Jackson
Frank Black/Black Francis
Robert Smith
Chuck Berry
Sugar Hill Gang (neither the first or the most important early rappers, but I believe the first to actually record a rap song)
Cole Porter! That’s who should be on my list in place of Wendy Carlos.
Or maybe Irving Berlin?
How about Richard Rogers? Every musical written in just about forever owes a debt to Rogers.
Such an embarrassment of riches. Maybe we need a Top 25.
jazz:
1. louis satchmo armstrong
2. edward kennedy duke ellington
3. miles dewey davis lll
honorable mention:
ella fitzgerald
lena horne
blues:
4. robert leroy johnson
5. mckinley morganfield: aka muddy waters
folk/activist/protest:
6. woody guthrie
7. pete seeger
8. robert zimmerman: aka bob dylan
honorable mention:
james taylor
joni mitchell
odetta
rock:
9. bill haley [and the comets]
10. beatles
honorable mention:
the stones
the who
pink floyd
csn&y
These are all musicians – you didn’t limit it to performers on musical instruments. 😉
Your list brought to mind Henry Mancini.
Yes. The score for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and so many others!
Axl Rose.
Okay, maybe not terribly influential, but still awesome.
Agreed, but he’d have been nothing without Slash 😉
Aw, no way. Screw Slash. Saw the new GN’R in Nottingham last year. Amazing show. Didn’t miss Slash and the gang at all.
I knew you’d say that!
I think the Slash / Axl split is pretty similar in nature to the Gilmour / Waters split from Pink Floyd. Some people love the band beforehand and hate it after, some love what they did after and hate before, and a small minority enjoy both. Count me in the latter camp, for both Floyd and Guns & Roses (and I like Velvet Revolver too, which is saying something since I think Scott Weiland is a jackass of the highest caliber).
Count me in the latter as well. I love everything from Appetite up to the leaks I’ve heard of Chinese Democracy (the only product in history that could make the Duke Nukem Forever team look efficient;). All great stuff, although I’d admit that the older stuff has the greater moments. The new stuff is pretty consistently solid, I think — maybe not $15m-in-recording-fees solid, but solid.
Floyd isn’t normally my thing. A little too trippy, although I definitely hear the Floyd influence is some of the newer stuff out there today (The Killers, for example), and I love it. I think the only record of theirs that I still have — most of my CDs are in a box in my folks’ attic, since I’ve long migrated to iTunes — was The Division Bell, one of my all-time favorites.
SO many examples of great, influential artists here. I am seeing so many that I had forgotten about. I’m no audiophile, but I recognize and appreciate most of the suggestions here.
Anybody listening to Randi rage on Hillary? It’s awesome. She’s exposing the lies, deceptions, and finances of the Clinton campaign, the connections of the Clintons to big international money including the Saudi’s and Dubai.
She’s going to try and destroy Billary over her cheating ways.
No doubt, the Clintons are play to win capitalist neocons.
Ed Rendell spoke about how regardless of the primary outcomes, Hillary will get the Dem nomination because he thinks the party bigs are behind her. This will destroy the Democratic party by destroying Democratic voters’ one-person, one-vote assumption as a member of the party.
Let’s hope she plays the Rendell quote again today.
Let’s hope people are listening!!!
When you brought it up, I tuned in. Randi’s on a roll! It’s been non-stop Clinton-bashing (on valid points, completely.) When Randi sets her sights on something, she makes a big impact.
It’s funny, I used to lose coming up with lists like this but I am dumbfounded. I can’t list ten musicians. All I know is Ed Rendell isn’t on the list.
That is, used to love coming up with lists.
I’m probably out of line here. But last evening I saw the most amazing jazz show. Almost everyone there was over 80. The guitar player maybe late 50s, was the kid. The jazz was so incredible…they loved what they did so much, I was amazed.
The lead was Jimmy Cavallo.
He took his sax to the Navy in WWII, and hasn’t let it go since. His friends joined him last night. (It’s a time when every sane New Yorker over 62 is in Fort Lauderdale.)
I haven’t seen anyone but Marian McPartlin who oozed music like that gang.
Bill Monroe invented bluegrass music.
Earl Scruggs changed the way the banjo is played.
Hank Williams: nuff said.
Duke Ellington made jazz into a compositional art form, and Miles Davis brought the cool.
James Brown: nuff said.
Black Sabbath: made metal evil and kept it that way.
That’s 7. the rest will be my favorites.
The Fleshtones are the best rock-n-roll band on the face of the planet. You have not lived until you’ve seen The Fleshtones.
The Bags: I cannot say enough about the sheer rocktacularness that is The Bags. I’ve driven 6 hours or more to see these Boston legends.
The same can be said about The Lyres, Boston’s garage rock heroes. I had to stop typing to dance the watusi to “Help You Ann.” I dare you to not love this band.
I disagree somewhat, as I said upthread. Bill Monroe popularized string band music, but if it hadn’t been for Earl there would be no such thing as bluegrass music today. It owes its distinctive sound to that three-finger technique Earl invented while he was still a kid.
Personal aside: I have never yet gotten the hang of three-finger picking. When I tell people I play banjo, they just assume that’s what I do. Many of them aren’t aware that there’s such a thing as clawhammer banjo, and don’t realize there’s a difference until you set them down and show them. “OK, here’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown” — “and here’s Cripple Creek.”
Omir, as a bluegrass musician, I beg to differ. Earl’s sound gave bluegrass the drive, but it was Bill Monroe who came up with the timing, and that was a few years before he hired earl.
String band music was already popular and had been for years. Bill just updated it by adding blues and the time. “Muleskinner Blues” does not feature earl and it is a straight up, hard-driving bluegrass song.
Earl was the final ingredient, the icing on the cake. But credit for bluegrass music goes to Bill Monroe.
There’s no doubt that Monroe got the ball rolling and created a unique sound, but without Earl Scruggs I don’t think bluegrass would be nearly as popular as it is today, and in fact might just be another artifact of American music, like shape-note singing or jug bands. My opinion anyway; reasonable men can differ about such things.
That, plus Seeger and Scruggs combined to rescue the five-string banjo from near oblivion and make it the cornerstone of two different musical genres (the folk revival and bluegrass). For that alone they should either go onto a Top 10 list or never spoken of again, depending on whether you think the difference between a banjo and a trampoline is that most people take their shoes off when they jump on a trampoline.
Bluegrass, huh? What do you play? I keep trying to get my right hand working properly but even simple forward rolls don’t come out sounding right for some reason. So I’ve pretty much decided to do my best to learn how to beat the banjo and leave Scruggs style to people who won’t hurt themselves trying to do it.
I’m the only person of the people I know who even knows the Fleshtones. “Hex!Break!er!er!er!” And “I Want To Help You Ann” never fails to make it to my mix CDs.
Surely, though, the best band ever to release only a four-song ep had to have been Cool It, Reba.
I just saw the felshtones last week, and got them to autograph the biography “Sweat”.
I am also proud to say that I’m in the index of said book for my WTC review.
It’s the only time I did anything right.
Boo asked for most influential.
He did not ask for it in a GOOD way.
So my list has one band, one name.
The band that killed rock and roll for ever, making them the most influential in history;
Nirvana with Cobain
I have too much brain fog to think at the moment, but Carlos Santana would be on my list.
Yes. Legendary. I’m surprised no one has mentioned him yet.
I see Carlos differently. Even though he is very influential, I see him as the consummate repository of influence. I think we might look for some Cuban artists that might crack the top 10 though. Speaking of the Caribbean, I really wanted to put Marley on my list, but had no room.
You just gotta compile a top 25. There are too many genres and influences to narrow it down further.
Oye como va! Great song (even if Santana only covered it)
He can’t even tune his guitar.
AG
Somehow I knew you’d find your way to this thread.
As a professional and as one who appreciates art, what would your list look like?
And I cannot define “influential”.
There are bad influences and good.
Less than 10?
Ravel, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis.
More that ten?
Off the top of my head, the musicians who changed music in a positive way…those who made what I might call evolutionary music…would have to include the European composers Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok. And let us not forget Charles Ives.
In America…Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Gil Evans. With a big helping of all of the great blues and country musicians as well. I am partial to Robert Johnson, Hank Williams and Earl Scruggs, myself, but there are SO many.
Great popularizers and codifiers of what those American musicians invented?
Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and on into Dinah Washington/Aretha Franklin/Ray Charles territory.
Plus a special place for James Brown and Otis Redding.
And another special place for the great NYC latin musicians. Tito Puente being the most famous, but again…there were SO many.
And another special place for the hundreds of American popular songwriters of the golden era. Cole Porter, etc. They don’t call those songs “standards” for nothing.
And the great singing poet Bob Dylan.
The Beatles, Elvis, the Stones, almost the whole pop and rock thing?
Lotsa noise, not much content. It’ll be forgotten except in a sociological sense in 50 years. Remembered as an artifact of a failing culture.
Rap?
I’m still waiting.
It needs its Louis Armstrong, its Charlie Parker, its Duke Ellington. It probably won’t get that evolutionary figure because it has already been so thoroughly bought off by corporate America.
12 tone orchestral music? Almost a total failure. Already dead.
So-called free jazz? Ditto.
That’s my list.
Ten?
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
Later…
AG
If he can play like that with an untuned guitar, that’s fine with me.
Bad played music is OK if you’re tone deaf.
Don’t worry…you’re not alone.
Most Americans can’t tell the diuference between a good singer and an elephant fart.
So it goes.
This whole culture is toast.
AG
I am hardly tone deaf.
I can tell you that 90% of all music is crap, just like 90% of everything is crap. That’s just basic Sturgeon’s Law. Ask me which 90% is crap, though, and I’m going to come up with a lot of the same choices you would, and a lot that’s different.
Which leads to the correlary that I can tell what music I like and what music I don’t like, and sometimes it’s going to agree with your choices, and sometimes it’s not, and sometimes I’m going to like something that I know is crap, just because I happen to like it. But to denigrate my choice of music because you happen to think it ranks right up there with elephant farts is snobbery, no matter what kind of face you put on it.
I was going to discuss some of your choices with you, but having been reminded that I’m a nekulturnya, I’ll just go back to my banjo now, Which, yeah, I know is crap, but it’s my crap.
If you can listen to more than three notes of ANY Santana solo without feeling literal physical pain from its overall wrongness…harmonically, rhythmically AND pitchwise…then you are INDEED tone deaf.
Sorry…just telling it liike it is.
He’s a fake.
But he’s not alone.
You done been hyped.
Later…
AG
No particular order:
Stravinsky
Woodie Guthrie
George Gershwin
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Johnny Cash
The Beatles
Duke Ellington
Glenn Gould
Billie Holiday
Just got thru watching the DVD again with McCartney in Red Square, pretty impressive.
Woody Gutherie, Pete Seeger, Stevie Wonder, Gibbs Bros, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Frank Sinatra, Stones, Bono, Janis Joplin + a whole bunch from above.
Jerry Garcia
Dmitri Shostakovich
Benjamin Britten
Jean Sibelius
Serge Prokofiev
Maurice Ravel
Michael Tippett
Aaron Copland
Leonard Bernstein
Karl Heinz Stockhausen
Pierre Boulez
You asked for musicians.
Malcolm
Except for Steven D, who threw in Stravinsky, you are the first commenter to have applied this to 20th-century classical (or “modern”) music. I think that in itself is interesting. If you mean “the most influential” (rather than just your personal favorites), I also think it’s interesting that you didn’t include Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or Webern. Jan Sibelius may or may not be a great composer, but I don’t think he has been particularly influential in the development of 20th-century classical music.
I didn’t include Stravinsky because he was the only classical [?] composer already to get a mention, and I acquiesce that Schoenberg might have been a stronger influence in mid-European music than Sibelius. I could also have included John Adams, and one of my real favourites, Webern, but ten is ten and I’ve already overstepped the mark. And how did I leave out John Lennon? Time to shut up.
Malcolm
Ravel – all-time favorite composer ever. Piano Concerto in G’s middle movement is more beautiful and haunting than Barber’s Adagio for Strings!
I only want to comment on one genre Rock and Roll
DeeDee Ramone (The Ramones) changed everything in rock from 1976 through 1985
Black Francis (The Pixies) changed everything you ever heard in Rock from 1985 on. Without the Pixies grunge would have been something else, Cobain would have been a hack, and Radiohead and Oasis would never hove struggled with angst. IMHO
Ray Charles
Elvis Presley
John Bonham
Les Paul
Jimi Hendrix
Nina Simone
Sly Stone
Woody Guthrie
Malcolm McLaren (not a musician)
Bob Marley
How I forget about Nina Simone??? Yikes! She was and forever will be stellar.
OK, I’ve included singers. Gershwin. Billie Holliday. Ella Fiztgerald. Duke Ellington. Quincy Jones. Michael Jackson. James Brown. Frank Sinatra. Miles Davis. Coltrane. Aretha Franklin. Prince. Stevie Wonder. Johnny Cash. Monk. Bessie Smith. Nancy Wilson. Loretta Lynn. Louis Armstrong. Mahalia Jackson.
is census data safe from being discovered under the Patriot Act??
In no particular order:
George Gershwin
Brian Wilson
Les Paul
Pete Seeger
Judy Collins
Mahalia Jackson
Jimmy Rodgers
Louis Armstrong
Neil Young
The Outlaws (Cash, Kristoferson, Jennings & Nelson)
So many great musicians have already been named. I just want to add one – The Clash.
Charlie Parker. No one had a bigger influence on jazz.
Bird Lives.
Of COURSE!! B/W he and Nina Simone…can’t believe I left them off my list!!
I’d go with Satchmo over Bird just because without Louis Armstrong, there would have been no Charlie Parker.
I’m beginning to think a top 25 isn’t enough. Maybe a Top 50 would be, especially when you start looking away from American popular music and exploring other genres (Schoenberg and Stravinsky from classical, for instance, or Bob Marley).
I like these:
Buddy Holly
Elvis Presley
Bob Dylan
Johnny Cash
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
Ray Charles
Cole Porter
George Gershwin
… and The Beatles (whose music I don’t particularly like but whose influence I have to recognize.)
weighted heavily towards post 1945 musicans:
10.Gladys Knight
In no particular order and with extremely painful omissions:
Bird
Les Paul
Miles
Jerry
Hendrix
Shoenberg
Dylan
Kraftwerk
Ike Turner (sorry ladies, but he did record the very first rock n roll song, “Rocket 88”, and was therefore more than a little influential)
Brian Eno + David Bowie
No, I understand. Within the realm of music, he was great. Personally, he was a bastard. Lots of folks come to mind, like Miles Davis–that man was a true genius…and a complete bastard batterer. I know I was crushed when I learned about it. It’s hard to listen to his music and then watch Cicely Tyson.
But unlike “men of his day,” Turner’s influence was overshadowed by Tina Turner’s ascendancy, and a public that largely no longer venerates batterers. So he died a batterer instead of a legend, his only kind words outside of his family from Phil Spector, who blamed women for what Ike refused to control–himself. I don’t feel sorry for him, not even in death.
Eno- without this man everything would be an endless repeat of Mtv’s unplugged
The Velvet Underground- responsible for all that is not filthy hippy music
and, on the other side of the coin, as much as it pains me to say it- The Grateful Dead
Eric Satie- the man who introduced SYFPH to modern music
Carl Orff- John Bonham, Kieth Moon and every dead drummer out there got nothing on the god of percussion
The man in black- a rorsach test, to I mean Mr. Cash or Mr. Orbison?
Brian Wilson- like Lennon, only better.
Buddy Holly and the Crickets- duh!
AC/DC- kept rock alive during the nuclear winter of the seventies and early eighties.. without stupid party tricks!
Beck- affirmative action for the Scientology crowd.
William Hung.