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Joined: October 20 2009
Location: Not Here
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Points: 1741
Posted: April 11 2013 at 00:05
Duke Ellington or the Gershwins, I guess. Still, I prefer the interpretations given after 1950-ish, when Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan emerge, and bop replaces big band swing.
Oh man, just thinking about Ella's Songbook albums of Duke Ellington and the Gershwins (and Rodgers and Hart et al) thrills me. I'll have to spin some of them tomorrow. And maybe Sarah Vaughan's album with Clifford Brown too. These are among the greatest albums of the 20th century, IMO.
Joined: September 03 2006
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 9869
Posted: April 11 2013 at 01:25
Voted for Count Basie from this list. But would have liked to vote for one of the great classical composers from this period, had they been included in the list. Also, among singers, I prefer Joseph Schmidt to Caruso (with all due respect to the latter's influence):
Joined: October 03 2008
Location: Là, sui monti.
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Points: 10837
Posted: April 11 2013 at 06:09
Robert Johnson, for its leading role in the history of Blues... And because he sold his soul to the devil, which makes him the Grandfather of all thing Metal.
Joined: October 20 2009
Location: Not Here
Status: Offline
Points: 1741
Posted: April 11 2013 at 06:29
Dean wrote:
None of the above.
Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht
I quite like Dee Dee Bridgewater's tribute album to Kurt Weill, called This Is New from 2002. Her versions of The Bilbao Song, My Ship and Speak Low are pretty definitive for me in a jazz context. I was disappointed though in her version of September Song. But Ella Fitzgerald's version on The Intimate Ella and Sarah Vaughan's rendition on the Clifford Brown album simply can't be beat.
CPicard wrote:
Robert Johnson, for its leading role in the history of Blues... And because he sold his soul to the devil, which makes him the Grandfather of all thing Metal.
Faust beat him to it - but I don't think he played the guitar
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16165
Posted: April 13 2013 at 17:10
Stool Man wrote:
These are some of the greatest artists of the pre-Rock & Roll era. There were many more than this, of course, but which is your favourite of these?
Sorry ... your list misses the mark and does not list a whole lot of European folks ... and half of that list, in my book, are minor artists and not deserving to be mentioned.
Sorry I have different opinions.
(Just noticed Dean's choice. Fully agree! If not the best, certainly one of the most important, and one that affected theater so much, and was copied in France mercilessly ... all the way up to Jacques Brel and then Ange!)
The list is missing some outstanding names in music as well, like Maria Callas, Beniamino Gigli and others that helped put opera on the landscape of music ... but you can't expect a rock'n'roller to know what opeara is, can you?
Edited by moshkito - April 13 2013 at 17:14
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
Joined: October 20 2009
Location: Not Here
Status: Offline
Points: 1741
Posted: April 13 2013 at 17:21
moshkito wrote:
Stool Man wrote:
These are some of the greatest artists of the pre-Rock & Roll era. There were many more than this, of course, but which is your favourite of these?
Sorry ... your list misses the mark and does not list a whole lot of European folks ... and half of that list, in my book, are minor artists and not deserving to be mentioned.
Sorry I have different opinions.
(Just noticed Dean's choice. Fully agree! If not the best, certainly one of the most important, and one that affected theater so much, and was copied in France mercilessly ... all the way up to Jacques Brel and then Ange!)
The list is missing some outstanding names in music as well, like Maria Callas, Beniamino Gigli and others that helped put opera on the landscape of music ... but you can't expect a rock'n'roller to know what opeara is, can you?
To be fair, one could make an alternative list, which would be interesting as well. These things are always going to subjective, and not exhaustive I think his list is good, and it at least has us talking about it
Besides, swing jazz was the most popular music prior to the 1950s, to the point where Adorno and the Frankfurt sociologists were raging against jazz and the popular culture industry as being evidence of the decline of the Enlightenment project. Jazz (and later, rock and roll) was considered to be low brow, when compared to high brow art such as classical music and opera. So his list totally makes sense from that perspective.
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16165
Posted: April 13 2013 at 17:55
jude111 wrote:
To be fair, one could make an alternative list, which would be interesting as well. These things are always going to subjective, and not exhaustive I think his list is good, and it at least has us talking about it
...
I would have divided it up between some disciplines.
The really hard part is that "popular" music did not "start" it's great integration into society and break apart the handles and controls of "music" by the upper class ... until right after WW2 when the LP was first starting ... you have to see the TOM DOWD DVD for an incredible history of American music in the 40's and 50's ... which will help understand things that came about later!
That leaves us with just a handful of popular names ... and the likes of Cab Calloway are better known strictly because of a movie, not necessarily because he was any good. We have no way to compare him to others ... because there are no records or films of any of them!
Written accounts, in various novels, even the ever graceful and fun to read Victorian Novels, are the ones that mention -- for example -- London/Paris Society at its most active from a well known actor, to a well known painter to a well known cabaret whatever ... and while some might suggest that some of this is a bit ... romanticized ... in the end, they are almost the best record we have. I mean ... depend on movies on Coco Chanell and Edith Piaf?
Both Spain and Portugal have a fairly strong artistic history in the first 50 years. So does Italy and France and Germany, considering that they lost half their history in WW1 and WW2 real quick, but, for example, Marlene Dietrich was not just famous for her legs! And we really do not know many of the names in Russia and Eastern Europe because of the wars and the separatism.
I also, on occasion, question the African culture ... there is no way that African musicians and artists and everything else "africa" can take hold later so fast, unless there already was something in there in that continent that thrived ... Brazilian history likes to state that a lot of its artistic history has more to thank the African Continent than it did the Portuguese and Spaniards that invaded it!
I kinda look at the "LP" and then later "Cassette" as what the 20th century was about ... "recording" and the "remembering" (my word for it) as FILM is the major record of all these 50 years ... and it is totally sporadic, spastic, incomplete ... and at the mercy of the arts that we have come to know. However, can you honestly say that Guernica was not the best view of the Spanish Civil War you ever saw or heard? Do you have to read Garcia Lorca to know?
So, for me, the 20th century is the first one to "record" its whole history ... way better than it had ever been done ... right down to the crumbs and dirt around it all!
Edited by moshkito - April 13 2013 at 18:00
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com
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Dean wrote:
I think his list is good, and it at least has us talking about it 
