Who, in your opinion...

Who, in your opinion, is the most important black musician of all time in terms of their contributions to the music industry as a whole?

Louis Armstrong.

Music != the music industry.

If you mean, "which black musician made the music industry the most money", Louis Armstrong. Now I think of it, he's probably the most important musician artistically as well.

Alright then let me rephrase for future answers: which black musician provided the most important contributions to music?

OK, Louis Armstrong.

im not the guy your replying to, but I still think Louis Armstrong. Swing is the best thing to happen to jazz.

Three-way tie between Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, and Robert Johnson.

Hopsin. He provided the sucky sucky.

I'd say it's a four-way tie between those three and James Brown, if only because James Brown's influence goes beyond what he did and into what was sampled from his songs.

Unironically Kanye
or Chuck Berry

>ctrl+f
>No Prince

Yeah, but Brown's responsibility for the sound of his music was pretty much nil, he was just the ultimate clueless asshole lead singer. He's worshipped by unmusical guys who know that they could only ever become musicians by being credit thieves.

Yea i'd have to say Robert Johnson too.
He practically popularized ''Black music''.

Ornette Coleman

Top 5 off the top of my head:

Louis Armstrong - basically invented jazz as we know it
Duke Ellington - wrote like every jazz standard
Robert Johnson obviously
George Clinton - basically invented funk as we know it
Chuck Berry is worth a mention purely for the 1+5-1+6 "Chuck Berry Riff"

Fair enough, though IIRC he was a band leader so do with that what you will.

Not saying that your opinion is wrong, but I have to say that I don't think Kanye's contributions can be anywhere near as influential as those of people like Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, and James Brown, because his music has been around for less than 20 years. In the coming years his influence will be noteworthy, but at this moment he just can't be held to that level because he/his music simply isn't old enough.

No he didn't. Not in any way, shape or form. Please educate yourself. Black influences had dominated pop since the 1920s.

>a band leader

What do you think that means?

...

That he probably had a vision of how he wanted his music to sound, besides being the asshole singer in front?

>ctrl+f
>no King

All asshole lead singers have "a vision". They communicate it at length. Then the musicians turn it into something that can actually exist.

It's true. He's the original guy who "wrote" songs because it was his name on the studio booking. People who admire him are invariably non-musicians or very bad musicians who nurture Napoleonic fantasies.

>ctrl+f
>no roadman shaq

He'd be the winner of "Most Frequently Referenced and Least Listened-to Musician".

It’s hard to pin it to one person...I guess, as someone with a shallow knowledge of music history, I’d say a Louis Armstrong and Jimi Hendrix had some great contributions to music in genral.

No, you got it right - Louis Armstrong invented jazz as we know it and singing into a microphone, so he wins. Nothing we listen to would exist without him.

Eh, fair point. If we're talking soul/funk from a musician perspective George Clinton would probably win, but James Brown is probably more from a cultural perspective.

I'm actually genuinely impressed it took this long for Hendrix to show up, that's a fair bit surprising.

What about Hendrix? Sure he didn’t have as much of a contribution as Armstrong but he practically invented psychedelic rock all forms of metal that came after.

I think we should just say Clyde Stubblefield, because most of Brown's part in hip-hop etc. is a sample of Stubblefield soloing. "Cultural" just means "people Bono gets paid to lie about in documentaries", doesn't it?

I’m a bit surprised too, thought maybe I was alone on that.

Yeah, but psychedelic rock became niche by 1970, most people doing it didn't sound like Hendrix because they couldn't, and metal had stopped sounding at all blue/black by the mid-seventies. Meanwhile, we still don't think singing into a mic near our mouths is a weird misuse of technology, so Armstrong is still influencing us.

Well, I’m not saying it sounds the same today, but it certainly wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the innovation or at least in the same way or time. I say Hendrix is still affecting music today as well since that whole portion of rock still exists pretty alive and well.