Which Musician Would Have Impacted Music the Most

[Mr. Ected]

Had they not suffered an untimely death?

My choice is:



What's yours?

[Bertha Venation]

1. Buddy Holly was my second choice. Patsy Cline is my first.

Her voice would be as legend today as is Aretha Franklin's.

[Forkboy]

4. Still my mother's all time favorite.

[cemaphonic]

2. Mozart - died at age 35, leaving a huge and influential legacy.

His final set of compositions show a huge stylistic breakthrough, which if explored further, would have had a huge impact on the evolution of orchestral music.

[PassingFair]

20. +1

A TRUE genius.

His music is just as beautiful
and relevant today.

[WinkyDink]

42. NO CONTEST.

[Tikki]

3. I have often wondered what might have happened in...

Ritchie Valens'(Valenzuela) life, if only :cry:...




Tikki

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. John Lennon

...because the tragedy beneath the tragedy was that "Double Fantasy" revealed a Lennon I thought was long-gone.

His solo albums were a real mixed bag..."Plastic Ono Band" was certainly as naked as rock gets, written and recorded while he was undergoing "primal scream therapy"...and "Imagine" was more of what the Beatles' fans expected, but still with an extra edge...and "Sometime In New York" was what we generally refer to as a "piece of crap."

So here comes "Double Fantasy," and John's announcement that all future albums would be John & Yoko albums with a 50-50 split of the songs, which some people had mixed feelings about, but the Lennon songs on that album...

...the thought that he wanted to get back in the game, that he still had all of his creative powers and a renewed drive to get out there and DO IT rather than spend 100% of his time as a house dad in The Dakota...

...and then it was all gone. Again. But this time, it was gone for good.

[NightWatcher]

7. good one. I liked his solo work far more than the Beatles tunes

Watching the Wheels, Working Class Hero.....

who knows what he could have come up with

[Amerigo Vespucci]

8. It was also a matter of the people who showed an interest in working with him...

...like "Double Fantasy" producer Jack Douglas (worked with Aerosmith in their glory days, Miles Davis, The James Gang, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, and he was the engineer on The Who's Who's Next?), plus Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, who played on the album, on and on and on...

Lennon didn't need the collaborators...but the energy that began to surround him as he came out of his shell makes you wonder...as you said..."who knows what he could have come up with."

:toast:

[MineralMan]

6. Bach, maybe Mozart.

[Xipe Totec]

11. Who would argue those choices?

:shrug:

[cemaphonic]

12. I posted Mozart upthread

Bach died at 65, nearly blind, and with most of the audiences of his day thinking his style was hopelessly stuffy, outdated and formal. And he was ultimately pretty influential as it was, due to his sons, and other prominent musicians continuing to study his music privately, until he was popularized in the 19th century. So I don't think he really had room to be much more influential than he already was.

[mitchum]

9. John Smith

[GReedDiamond]

10. I've often wondered what Jimi Hendrix would have done...

...had he lived on into "old age" and continued to play? I think he'd be 66 y.o. were he still with us.

That's 39 years of "what could have been," but which we'll never know...compared to less than a decade during which he established himself as a guitar playing trailblazer and rock legend.

[semillama]

23. I remember reading some piece that was a fictional reminisence by Hendrix

I can't find it online, but one of the things that was speculated was a series of collaborations with Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, and so on.

I mean, there are few artists you can seriously classify as timeless, and Hendrix is one of the few.

[GReedDiamond]

27. That he may have collaborated w/the likes of M Jackson is an interesting supposition...

...although, on the other hand, Jimi was contemporaneous to Miles Davis, and they could have collaborated if they had wanted to, I suppose.

I'm thinking more in terms of what Jimi could have accomplished with the electric guitar technology of "today," compared to what he was able to torture (literally) out of what was available to him during his lifetime...not so much collaborations with others who might have later/or/did emerge after his "hayday," for lack of better term.

But I say that knowing that it is likely total bullshit, cuz, who really knows what woulda happened if Jimi, or anybody else, lived beyond their actual historical reality? Such are born Jesus like figures, such as I worship at the quasi-altar of Jimi Hendrix...

[mitchum]

39. Hendrix and Davis talked about collaborating, but were unable to find...

the time.

[grilled onions]

13. So Many

Bix Beiderbecke...Charlie Parker...John Lennon...Gershwin...Cole Porter--all died eons before their time and waaaay before their talent hit a wall.

[Burma Jones]

14. In addition to the many names mentioned here, you have to add Robert Johnson......

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. Gustav Mahler, Hendrix, and Schubert

[Glorfindel]

16. Franz Schubert - he was only 31 when he died

His music is amazing, powerful, and beautiful.

[mitchum]

38. Schubert is who came to mind for me also

[carpetbagger]

17. Hendrix.

Buddy Holly's a good choice. Although many of his innovations, especially in how music was made and brought forward, were followed up upon by later artists, particularly the Beatles, a Buddy Holly-dominated late 1950s and 1960s scene would have resulted in a much greater infusion of rockabilly into roch and roll. Without Holly, and with Elivs gone to Hollywood, there weren't the type of dominant musicians that could have balanced the British invasion. And when southern-oriented musicians surged in the early 1970s, it was a different southern sound, more southeastern than southwestern.

That having been said, we'll never know what Jimi Hendrix would have done in the fullness of the age of funk, what he would have done with disco, and what he would have done with rap. I think had Hendrix lived, the 70s classic rock era would have fused with black music in a way that rock didn't do until the 1980s initially and in fullness in the last 10 years.

[Iggo]

19. Wow! That was only two paragraphs?

That's a WHOLE BUNCHA stuff I never considered.

My hair was standing on end by the time I was done reading.

Good stuff.

[greendog]

18. Robert Johnson

He was born just two years earlier than Muddy Waters.

Think about Robert on an electric guitar in front of a good band.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

[abq e streeter]

22. Aren't there rumors that Johnson was experimenting

either with a full band, an electric guitar, or both at the time he was murdered?

[greendog]

30. I've never heard that (but that doesn't mean much)

At the time of his death the electric guitar was fairly rare outside of Western Swing and Hawaiian music.

Big Bill Broonzy started using one around '42. Charlie Christian played an electric when he joined Benny Goodman's Band in '39. Robert died in '38.

He probably heard the electric guitar on the radio and would certainly have been curious about it. It's pretty well known that he was influenced by the recorded music of the urban blues players of the day. We know that Lonnie Johnson was an influence. As were Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell and Blind Blake.

[abq e streeter]

32. I wish I could remember where I'd read that ( but do remember it was presented as a rumor only)

the timing is interesting though; that he died just a year before John Hammond brought Christian into the Goodman band...My guess is that you're right on the money; maybe it was something he hadn't done, but was aware of and intrigued by, and had he lived even another year or two...

[mitchum]

35. Tampa Red used an electric guitar on a 1935 recording, but he was the only...

documented bluesman using one at that time.

[mitchum]

34. Those are rumors propagated by blues mythologists...

not blues scholars.
Unfortunately, too many blues mythologists pass themseves off as blues scholars
There is no evidence of him doing that...other than wishful thinking.

[martymar64]

26. Think Robert Johnson at the Monterey Pop Festival

I think him and Jimi would've gotten along great, maybe even collaborated on some albums.

[gmoney]

21. but I don't think that's Buddy Holly, is it? Looks like an actor... (eom)

[underpants]

24. Eddie Wilson

[abq e streeter]

25. besides Holly, Hendrix, Lennon, and R. Johnson, I gotta add Jim Morrison

with his film background, and keen interest in poetry and theater, the sky would have been the limit. Sam Cooke and Selena were also still reaching for ever greater creative heights when they were cut down...And even though Marvin Gaye had reached those heights, and may or may not have already reached his peak, with his talent combined with social conscience, we'll never know what he could have still done either. Duane Allman is another one; as amazing as he already was on guitar, he was still just a kid. And finally ,Janis Joplin was still in the formative stages of redefining, or maybe just defining, what the boundaries of being a female rock star could be, and more importantly, smashing those boundaries through force of will, talent and personality.

[mitchum]

37. I recently watched a 1970 interview with Morrison...

where he said that he could see a day when artists/songwriters would function as singular units producing their music through the the use of electronics and machines.
He may have often talked a lot of nonsense in his "poetry", but he could very prescient in some of his observations.

[BlueJazz]

28. Classical composers...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

29. Blorg used to play a mean tune around the old campfire before

we would retire to the cave for the night..........

[woo me with science]

31. I had to unrec this purely because

you used "impact" as a verb.

:evilgrin:

[Mr. Ected]

33. Alas, too late to edit

But I tossed the idea of using the adjective "impactive" because I summarily reject the word.

:dunce:

[elleng]

36. Thanks for that (I guess!)

Been one of my complaints about writing since it began!

[ghostsofgiants]

40. Ian Curtis. He was only 23 and had already put out a whole lot of incredible stuff.

[enigmatic]

41. Bix Biederbecke

Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and many many others owe their career to Bix's beautiful coronet playing. If he had lived, he would have been as much of a seminal influence on early Jazz as Louis Armstrong.

http://www.redhotjazz.com/bix.html