Greatest Musical Individual / Group of the 20th Century

Blame Rick Astley! :rofl:

:D

I know there are other choices up there that are arguably as good but I chose Dylan because I think his lyrics are unsurpassed and his body of work is so impressive - Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Hwy 61, etc etc etc

Some good choices there already though.

you should be able to choose how many catagories you want, instead of capping it at 10.

Ten choices are too many to begin with, even for a poll like this. So many polls on DU have one or two choices that have nothing to do with the poll at hand - you know, stupid attempts at humor, "Robb is a dingbat," or whatever.

I'd like to see it lowered to three, or to see polls eliminated entirely. At least a third of the polls I see are almost as annoying as copycat threads.

I would have said Debussy but since he died in 1918 not so much the 20th century guy.

Copland was magnificent, of course.

And Benny Goodman.

Woody Guthrie.

Steven Sondheim. Hank Williams.

Sorry, impossible to pick just one.

But man, I do love The Planets.

Musical taste is so subjective that everyone has their own favorites.

Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Luciano Pavoratti, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy...

Danny Elfman/Oingo Boingo
Frank Zappa
The Police
The Skatalites
Cab Calloway
The Clash
Duke Ellington
Devo

Van Morrison!! Love love love him!

Without them, the rest wouldn't have happened.

and influenced just about everyone who came after them in one way or another.

With their later stuff. The OP is asking greatest musical group/individual of the 20th century.

John Lennon only started playing guitar because he idolized Elvis Presley when he was a teenager.

But damn, it's hard to beat this......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vh3IVs4cKc

It's even less funny the second time

I still refer to him as "Rick Asshole". Never could stand him, even as a joke device.

The jig is up pal

Singing All Down The Line. Not a rick roll.

Oh, the fauxtrage!

:popcorn:

Except maybe Frank Zappa or Les Paul or, possibly, Brian Eno.

I think it's hubris to put rock musicians in the "greatest musical individual/group of the 20th century" category.

I've got Coltrane, Armstrong, and Copeland.

Certainly, there's no way to pick one - but those guys (and woman) offered a lot of change to the musical vocabulary.

And I would include Les Paul simply for his technological input - multi-track recording, and taking the electric/amplified guitar to new heights. And Moog for the same with keyboards.

And Pierre Boulez for being such a fantastic and constant champion of new music and new composers.

and I like Boulez much better as a conductor than composer, although he has an excellent ear for orchestration. That whole generation of the European avant-garde that tried to out-Webern Webern just doesn't do it for me.

Good point about Les Paul - it's pretty hard to imagine what popular music would sound like without him. Less so for Moog, synth geek that I am.

Did Nadia Boulanger have any influence beyond the pedagogical? (not to downplay that role - I just don't know much about her.)

But, truthfully, who's to know? At the top level of genius, it's all shades of closeness.

I, too, prefer Boulez as conductor - his compositions are hit and miss, and, much as I enjoy some of them, I could easily live without any of them.

Though certainly none of those guys are anything to sneeze at.

Gershwin for me-- no doubts about it.

Should all be on the list too. Frank because from a pure music point of view, was incredible. His symphonic albums, jazz albums and rock albums are all so much more advanced than his counterparts. His output was unbelievable. Ask any musician and they will all tell you he was the guy that influenced them the most.

The Dead because they played stadiums for thirty years. No band meant more to so many people than the Grateful Dead. No band had as much cultural impact as the Dead. No band evr took as many chances playing live as the Dead. no band ever influenced an entire genre of music (jambands) as the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia.

And Bruce. Still the most relevant artist thirty five years after he broke big time. Everyone of his albums is a winner. His music touched souls and was the soundtrack of my life.

No offense to the Beatles but that was less than ten years. the Stones never touched people deeply. Dylan has as many clunkers as he had great albums.

I can name acts I like better (early Rush, for example), but they weren't popular enough to be on a poll like this.

From writing Le Banquet Céleste aged 20, through the limited modes of transposition, the championing of the ondes martinot, the bird-song, Éclairs sur l'au-delà... (composed when he was over 80), to (to my mind his highest triumph) Quator pour le Fin de Temps composed in the most unpromising of circumstances (a Nazi P.o.W. camp).

The greatest band of the greatest genre. Led Zeppelin is also really tough to beat. Musician for musician the best band ever. You can count their less than great songs on one hand.

When your music causes a fucking RIOT, you know you're onto something important.

on edit: I don't think Copeland, Janis, or the Stones should even be on the list of nominees