Musical Mount Rushmore

This is so weird-- I was just pondering this the other day.

Actually, I was thinking that most of the music that I love best derives from a blend (usually) of the work of two or more of these four:

Hank Williams
Chuck Berry
Buddy Holly
Ray Charles

And having come up with four names, the Mount Rushmore analogy was inevitable.

For historical purposes, I don't know that I could defend the omissions of, say, Louis Armstrong or Mother Maybelle Carter, or any of several others. But that's my list and I'll stick to it.

This is tough stuff.

As far as music goes I've never been much of a country man so I would probably omit people like Hank Williams even though he is every bit as important to music as some of my choices. Mine would probably have to be...

John Lennon
Miles Davis
Chuck Berry
David Bowie

There are a lot of essentials from other genres I'm leaving off but that's about as personal/acceptable a list I can conjure.

Not a trash metal fan, but you're contradicting yourself here. Why bar one style of music or the other?

Muddy Waters
Chuck Berry
Elvis Presley
John Lennon

I know there are some who will poo-poo Elvis, but the man's impact can't be denied, or tarnished by the parody he eventually became.

EDIT: For shits and giggles, here's my personal Rushmore:

Bruce Springsteen
Roger Waters
Peter Gabriel
Sting

I don't know, I think that makes sense in that these styles of music would never exist without Rushmore style artists.

I'll take a Generational Game Changers approach

Robert Johnson
John Lennon
Jimi Hendrix
Kurt Cobain

Take 2:

Muddy Waters
Bob Dylan
Brian Wilson
Prince

Huh. I'm tempted to answer it by just listing the four Beatles. But I'll resist. Here's my Rushmore.

Robert Johnson
Bob Dylan
James Brown
Joe Strummer

My Personal Rushmore would be just a wee bit different:


John Lennon
George Clinton
David Byrne
Joe Strummer

Les Paul
George Martin
John Lydon
Dr. Dre

The funny thing is, we seem to be going strictly Rock/R&B/Country, Rath just said artists that shaped music, so:

Bach
Haydn
Mozart
Handel

I admire that you're expanding the limited scope, but all your guys are from the same region of the world and did the majority of their work in the same century... so it seems equally limited.

Actually, if we're going for European art music (i.e. "classical"), then you probably toss Handel in favor of a predecessor like Monteverdi, and I'd argue that Beethoven would have to take Haydn's place, though that is a decidedly tougher call.

The easiest pic out of all of mine was Bach, as popular musical theory is based around the rules his music created. You're right on the others, and I would probably include Beethoven over Handel.

I'll cop to not being educated on early innovators outside of Europe. And that's saying a lot, considering I was a Music Education major who took 4 different music history courses (I, II, Jazz, and Rock). The funny thing is, at least in the US, early influence from other areas aren't really recognized.

Yeah, part of the problem with something like this is deciding how far back you go: as an example, jazz can be seen as a line from Scott Joplin to Jelly Roll Morton to Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis to... do you have to to back to the ur-source? Or do you decide that, at some point on the continuum, a leap was made that transcended what came before to the degree that it becomes more "important" than its progenitors?

Goes against the rules of the game, but tell me you wouldn't love to see Mount Rushmore with these faces:

Joey
Johnny
Dee Dee
Tommy

I initially read this as "American music" due to the Rushmore connection. That makes things significantly easier, since almost all of America's great musical figures are 20th century, and you also don't have to worry about accounting for the Beatles. Jeb's list fulfills these requirements very, very well, but I'll go with some alternates for argument's sake:

Cole Porter (okay, I considered Gershwin here, as well, but Porter did music and lyrics, so in the interest of keeping it to four...)
Jimi Hendrix
Ella Fitzgerald
Bob Dylan

Dylan, Elvis, Hendrix, and Cash

Rath, what the fuck are you talking about?

Well, as I said, mine predated this thread, and was formed from a casual analyisis of sources of the music I most enjoy, but happened to fit the "four heads" Rushmore model. Let me see if I can come up with something a bit closer to the object of the exercise.

One of the things that makes the premise difficult-to-impossible, of course, is not only the question I posed above (where on the continuum does the leap to greatness occur? And is that more important than precedence?), but the number of different musical streams that make up American music (just for starters, no one's even mentioned any of the key figures in gospel music).

As to some of the other names posited:

Cole Porter ahead of Irving Berlin? Not sure about that: I prefer Porter's songs generally, but Berlin was shaping the sound of American pop music while Porter was still in school.

Ella Fitzgerald over Sinatra? Love them both dearly, but Sinatra was one of the first recording artists to grasp (help establish, really) the importance of the long-playing album as a coherent artifact, thus defining pop music for decades.

And is there enough room for one of them AND Louis Armstrong? Assuming all of them represent "jazz" to one degree or another, Satchmo has to take pride of place.

Johnny Cash? Sorry, but no. He made some great music (and a helluva lot of boring music, mostly during the 70's), and is among the great icons of country music, but if he hadn't died in public to a Trent Reznor song, I don't think we'd necessarily consider him ahead of peers like George Jones or Merle Haggard as a singer, and he certainly wasn't as influential as Hank Williams or Bill Monroe. Not suggesting, of course, that he wasn't a giant... just that he's not one of the Final Four giants.

Elvis needs consideration; he drove popular music to heights of popularity that not even Sinatra had managed. But Chuck Berry is the single most important creator of the musical style that Elvis used for most of his career. I don't know that a definitive case can be made of one versus the other.

Hendrix, I dunno... arguably a talent so great that he stands off to his own on the side. There are a number of guitarists who I believe exerted a greater direct influence over their successors than did Hendrix-- but they're all British, so maybe he needs inclusion as the American icon who stands for the growth of the electric guitar past the legacies of Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry.

Dylan I can't argue with, beyond the question: is there enough room for him AND the historical forces that shaped him?

So I guess my version would try and get at the most important figures in the creation and synthesis of the various forms of American music, and comes down to something like this:

Louis Armstrong
Irving Berlin
A.P. Carter
Rev. Thomas Dorsey

Which for no good reason at all also follows the first four letters of the alphabet; that must mean something.

Quality wins over precedence, IMO. Even Mt. Rushmore isn't exactly about precedence - Roosevelt and Lincoln aren't on there because they were "firsts," but because of their overall importance. There's about a century between the terms of the earliest and most recent presidents on there. With that in mind, your and my picks are both pretty conservative for their lack of artists from the last 40 years (Dylan notwithstanding - his 60s/early 70s work is still his most influential).

I was bucking one trend that Rath is apparently observing about the original Mt. Rushmore (and one that continues here). Consider it my Susan B. Anthony (who was at one time going to be on Rushmore) pick. And, yeah, there are other women musicians who could probably fit here, but, as a representative of American vocal performance, in general, I like Ella.

That's exactly what I was thinking. The guitar is sort of the quintessential American instrument (at least at present), and he's its greatest American innovator. As far as instrumentalists go, there's certainly an argument to be made for Davis, Coltrane, Parker, etc., but there's just something about the guitar.

I'd say yes, because the specific forces that shaped him are relatively disparate and are collectively represented by his inclusion.

1. Tony Iommi
and the for 3 un-original picks
2. Hank Williams
3. Jimi Hendrix
4. Geddy Lee

My revised: Dylan, Elvis, Hank, and Hendrix

Hendrix is the Teddy Roosevelt.

If we include a Susan B., I'd go Aretha .

If we need to include a Susan B I'd say Sister Rosetta Tharpe.