Music (and other) geeks tend to make "best of" lists. When invited to write whatever I wanted about music for the local publication Common Ground, I did a sort of "channeling" of the "greatest American musical figures" list. It started as a Top Ten, then Top 12, then Top 15... and I cut it off there, difficult though that was. The original appears here -- and their June "music" issue also includes a fine interview with veteran San Francisco Chronicle music journalist Joel Selvin. But this list is my own and my own only, gleaned from a lifetime of listening.
LISTEN UP! America's Greatest Musical Figures
Without music, life would be an error. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
Greetings, Humanity!
Listen up now; I'm going to tell you a few things about myself. I am Music. I suppose I should sing this, but I'll spare you.
I've been around almost as long as you have. Sitting around the caveman campfire, your earliest ancestors found me, first by just singing, then by beating on rocks with sticks and bones.
Rhythm! What a joyous thing to discover. Some of your predecessors, in the jungle, found ways of "jamming" by slapping your palms on the surface of water; very cool. Just clapping hands worked too. ongs are as old as your species. Chants to whatever spirits you feel and messages of warning, love, harvest, and even war spilled forth. And then, instruments were created only to make musical sounds. Drums, of course, from animal skins and wood, but also horns, stringed things, wooden flutes, and much more. When you figured out how to make metals, all manner of horns and strings and more burst forth. From those humble beginnings you must admit it's astonishing the complexity and diversity of music that exists in the world. Huge symphonic orchestras. Jazz quintets. Gamelan gongs. Rastafarian reggae bands. Salsa orchestras. Funk bands. Bluegrass units. Central African soukous guitar bands. Indian ragas. Rock 'n' Roll! I could go on and on, winding up with John Cage's famous 4'33" of silence as music too.
See? I am universal. From Carnegie Hall to a Goa beach raveup, I am a primary human destination and goal. From before birth to your leaving this life, I can be there for you. Could you have a wedding without me? I entice you to worship, however you do that. I accompany you to battle. I kick off your ballgames. I am the soundtrack to your revolutionary movements. I move you to tears, laughter, lust and love. I lull you to sleep. I am in elevators and stores and commercials to help push your shopping (sorry). I get stuck in your ears and heads, and drive you nuts (ditto). Perhaps best of all, I entice you to dance.
Now, I cannot do this alone, of course. It takes you, inspired, perspiring, training for years, practicing unto perfect, to make me my best. Very few obtain the highest heights of mastery, other than all those birds. Some of those few might even be called musical avatars. Every continent has some (well, in Antarctica they may be non-human, but that counts too). Since I am in the United States right now, though, I will humbly offer my list of the top 15 I have blessed you with so far. Every one of these figures are somebody you should hear and know:
Louis Armstrong -- Satchmo, founding figure of jazz, "America's Classical Music"
Duke Ellington -- Master of jazz composition and orchestration
Hank Williams -- Country music's mysterious tragic founding figure
Woody Guthrie -- The nation's founding folkie
Robert Johnson -- Hands, voice, guitar, suffering, perhaps even the Devil - the blues
Miles Davis -- The Dark Prince, reinvented jazz at least four times
John Coltrane -- Spiritually took jazz from be-bop to new realms, still being explored
Frank Sinatra -- The Voice
James Brown -- The Godfather of Soul, not to mention Funk
Chuck Berry -- "If rock and roll had another name, it might be Chuck Berry" --John Lennon
Elvis Presley -- The King
Muddy Waters -- Electrified blues but kept the roots
Bob Dylan -- America's poet laureate, titled or not
Jimi Hendrix -- Took rock and blues to a new place from which it has never recovered.
Gil Scott-Heron -- Invented rap, mixed with jazz and funk, and was never bettered
Not a bad list -- although I recognize some potential problems here. Where are the women? What about classical music? Whereof Motown? Gospel? What about electronic dance music -- does sound that requires drugs to dig count? (For that matter, where's Jerry Garcia?) Why have so many of the best suffered so much? And of course the endless quibbles that might be targeted at any category or person here, or omitted (and I am not saying these people are necessarily the "best," but mainly the most influential in their genres).
One could add people named Holiday, Charles, Zappa, Simone, Gillespie, Parker, Cash, Gaye, Redding, Mingus, Monk, Haggard, Nelson, Cobain, Franklin, Pop, Zappa, or even Arthur Lee or Rat Scabies if you wish -- but remember you'd have to remove one already there for each, to make room (and as for Mitchell, Young, The Band, Cohen -- Canadians, sorry). Any such list could and does change, with mood or whatever. Your results may vary. I wouldn't mess with your list -- these are subjective, undefinable and indescribable matters. The best stuff in life usually is.