Sure, you can trail after previous influnces forever, but I'd argue that's
important intellectual work. As for the MOST influential, however, the way
to look at it, seems to me, isn't to idenitfy the influences upon an act
(in the way Oliver paved the way for Armstrong) but to find out how far,
and how broadly, into the future a person's influence reaches. In Oliver's
case it's not much further than Louis, is it? In Louis' case, though, it's
all the way through Miles and on up--and well beyond jazz into the entire
culture. Elvis' ballad singing was influenced more by Jake Hess and Dean
Martin than anyone else's, but Elvis' influence--shit, it's on virtually
everyone who has come after, and I'm not just talking about musicians either!
Armstrong gets my # 1 vote, btw, not just as a cornetist/trumpeter but as a
singer whose sense of rhythm and phrasing pretty much invented (along with
Bing's additions) the way we sing in the 20th century. --david cantwell
At 01:53 PM 4/19/99 PDT, you wrote:
>I guess I'm not quite as comfortable with cause and effect as many of you
>folks seem to be. Say, for example, I think Louis Armstrong was the single
>most influential 20th Century pop musician. Armstrong was heavily
>influenced himself by Buddy Bolden and King Oliver among many, many others.
>In fact, without Bolden and Oliver and 'the rest', you don't have Louis
>Armstrong as we know him. Bolden influences countless people, among them
>Louis Armstrong who influences countless people, among them Miles Davis who
>influences countless people, ad nauseum. As an intellectual pursuit I find
>this tiresome.
