Elvis Presley, Sammy Davies Jr, Muhammed Ali, Michael Jackson, the list goes on, pick and choose from color TV or You Tube clips, the larger than life talents of the New World, are they now exctinct?
No, not at all. The extremely talented American artists are just not getting the airplay or attention that those people you list did. All the ones you mentioned, and so many more, came “of age” at a time when the choices for entertainment were more limited, and it was easier for cream to rise to the top. Plus, the recording artists had massive record companies to sink money into backing them with loads of publicity and tours. Of course I speak as someone who knows of artists who should be as or nearly as famous as those icons, but will never be well-known.
Well I think that Elvis and Michael Jackson are more a product of packaging than actual talent. Both of them could sing and dance, and Elvis was handsome and Micheal Jackson was cute (till the plastic surgery started).
There were a LOT of entertainers better than Elvis, but none were packaged so well nor in the right place at the right time. Elvis really declined too. Even with his comeback in the early 70s, he wasn’t all that. His death re-invented him. Same with Jackson. His last major hit was in 1995. That’s 15 years ago.
MTV was being critisized for not playing enough R&B videos. This was around the same time Hall & Oats were being critized for trying to SOUND black. MTV basically picked the whitest R&B artist they could find which was Jackson and he coincidentally had an album coming out. This was a classic example of being at the right place at the right time.
This is not to belittle the music, other artists too have been in the right place at the right time. Carpenters are another example of this. There easy soft style was right at home as that was the biggest style of pop music in the early 70s.
Records also became much more slickly styled in the 80s. Producers used to have a vision for a song and the artists sang it. With digital techniques coming in, it became common for artists to record 100 or more takes of one song and then the producer splices which parts he feels are best. That is trial and error not art.
Another huge thing in the 80s artists and writers started to outprice themselves. Look at Bette Davis, if you read her biographies you see she was not at all pleased with the movies she made. But she made them and did a darn good job at it. Had she made movies after the studio system broke down, she would’ve said “I’m not doing it. I have lots of money to live on. I don’t need to.” Many of her classic movies she wouldn’t have done.
Singing and dancing are not limited fields. There are a LOT of people who can sing well and dance well. It’s just cheaper to only field those on TV that will do it for nothing.
George Burns said Vaudeville was the best place to learn how to be in show biz, 'cause you could fail and IF you were willing to learn from it, you could use that. He also said, “too many people are willing to fail, but not learn from it.” Indeed if you failed in Vaudeville so what, you moved to the next town and no one knew. Now if you fail you do so globally and on top of that, you can take an entire production down with you.
John David Carson - now broke and living on the streets of Las Vegas. Enough said.
I suspect that the rise of the internet, and especially the fragmentation of interests that it allows, is part of the cause. Before the internet, media was largely of the ‘push’ variety, meaning it happened, and you watched/listened or didn’t, but you couldn’t easily go find something different. Now, if I don’t like what’s playing on the radio, I can go listen to some French Celtic Rap, or maybe some fictional Japanese band. When options are limited, you get bigger pluralities, so you get really, really famous artists, but fewer of them. Now, we’ve sort of evened out the bell curve, and at the same time given it higher resolution, so that there’s a much smoother curve between the unknown and the top of the heap.
Muhammad Ali was an “artist”? How?
If he is, can’t I say that Peyton Manning, LeBron James, Alex Rodriguez and Lance Armstrong are “artists” every bit as great as Ali?
The OP falls into the classic trap, i.e. Popular = extremely talented.
You truly are obsessed with this man, aren’t you? How many times, and in how many thread, have you mentioned him?
As for the OP, my answer would be Justin Timberlake. Now, I’m not a fan and I’m certainly not in his demographic, but the man is clearly very talented.
Pretty much exactly what I came in here to say.