I know the Beatles vs Elvis has been beaten to death, but what artists made American pop music what it is today?
My votes:
1). Hank Williams Sr. He was the first to sing about alcoholism, suicide, and divorce.
2). Elvis Presley. He took the new found Rock & Roll and made white America listen.
3). Ramones. The punk movement owes it’s life to them
4). New York Dolls. Glam Rock at it’s inception. There would be no Bon Jovi without the Dolls.
What are your picks?
SSG Schwartz
Dylan. Period.
The first bands that spring to my mind were Creedence Clearwater Revival and Tom Petty and the Heatbreakers. Both excelled at creating catchy singles with almost instantly recognizable hooks – pretty much the definition of modern pop, though not so much specific to American Pop.
The Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead were able to fuse the exploratory elements of blues & jazz with rock and a little bit of country and take it to the mainstream. You still see that in bands like Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Robert Randolph, Widespread Panic. As far as I know, you really don’t see that in popular music from any other country.
At the top of the list, by a huge margin:
Bob Dylan
Ray Charles
After that, in no order at all:
Jimi Hendrix
Aretha Franklin
Johnny Cash
Carole King
Stevie Wonder
Neil Young
Michael Jackson
Bruce Springsteen
Garth Brooks
The Byrds
The Eagles
The Ramones
Nirvana
Notorious B.I.G.
Jay Z.
Chuck Berry
I will accept all as previously posted, but I would like to see why you think this artist influenced modern pop music.
SSG Schwartz
Presley by a wide margin. Fused blues and rockabilly/country to create rock and roll. What Haley was doing was no where near what Presley did.
In no particular order and with no reference to genre Dylan, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, James Taylor, B.B. King, James Brown, Van Morrisson, the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Damned, Run DMC.
Four not mentioned:
Velvet Underground - all 1000 people who bought the first album started a band
The Stooges - No Stooges, no Ramones, no Sex Pistols
R.E.M - alternative goes mainstream
Pixies - no Pixies, no Nirvana
Oh please. I’m so sick of hearing about The Ramones. First of all, punk itself was far less significant of a style/movement in the U.S. than in Britain, period. This means any bands associated with it in this country have a more limited constituency too.
Secondly, being popular with the writers of Rolling Stone and other music geeks does not make a band important to the nation at large, and The Ramones are a good example. Along with the NY Dolls, they were a band popular in the upper East Coast that had no major impact across a broad spectrum nationwide, whatever their impact on Punk might’ve been. When it comes to the music that local bands in the Midwest during the 80s and 90s tended to emulate, The Eagles and Nirvana were far bigger than either of these groups.
A person could argue that the former two groups were stylistic leaders in punk and glam, but so what? They didn’t have the appeal to take their acts nationwide, which limited their reach. Sure, kids in Missouri might’ve looked up the NY Dolls, but only after getting introduced to glam rock by Aerosmith.
None good.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
And I completely agree with Lizard on his previous.
If I understand your point correctly (and Lizard’s), then you are both correct in that it does take a while (possibly decades) for new musical styles to propagate to the countryside. Pretty much like all new social trends it takes a while to be accepted. I reckon that the internet is making the world a lot smaller though, music wise.
He’s Irish.
Elvis as a singer, BB King as a guitarist, Dylan as a songwriter.
All the others are secondary.
Bill Monroe
Jimmie Rodgers
The Carter Family
Actually, what we are saying (correct me if I am wrong, Lizard) is that new musical styles aren’t necessarily influential, just because you and your friends listen to them. The impact of, say, the New York Dolls is virtually non-existant in the rest of the world. Their acolytes will proclaim them to be ground-breaking, but other people were doing it better elsewhere, or they didn’t have any influence at all outside a very limited sub-genre of music. Contrast that to Ray Charles or Bob Dylan, who not only influenced the development of rock music through their own works, but molded and shaped generations of musicians as well. The only person I would consider more influential than Dylan would be Les Paul, and for different reasons.
The Velvet Underground. Created the look, mentality, approach, and career template that the vast majority of bands still emulate to this day.
Mod, please feel free to lock this thread now. 
But that is the case of putting the cart before the horse. An influential band doesn’t have to have world wide acceptance. It only has to be the basis for those that do. That would be like saying Marshall Mathers is a bigger influence on pop music than Elvis because he will sell more albums over his career. If it wasn’t for Elvis, some kid in Montana would not have heard of Eminem. If it wasn’t for the New York Dolls, Aerosmith wouldn’t be heard outside of New England.
I will concede that VU should have made my initial list however.
SSG Schwartz
I agree with the majority of artists mentioned so far.
How about one that has yet to be mentioned? - Paul Revere and the Raiders
They are considered to be the ultimate garage rock band.
As far as I know they were the first band to “put on a show” so to speak, when performing. Other groups at the time just stood there whereas the Raiders would dance, swing guitars over each others heads, do comedy, etc.
Did the first anti-drug song - “Kicks” - from 1966.
They actually played and sang everything that was on their albums. (Not true for some groups, most notably the Beach Boys and most notoriously, the Monkees).
Made the bass guitar an integral part of the band’s sound. The bass did more than just the typical “one five” pattern. Their song “Hungry” utilizes a distorted bass. (Probably the first song to do so).
Heck, they influenced me to play the guitar. I’ve now been playing guitar for 40 years … and boy are my arms tired. 
I agree with SSG Schwartz. Just because the Ramones aren’t universally popular (or known) in the US doesn’t mean they’re not influential. Ask today’s musicians who their influences are, and 90% of them will list the Ramones (and the Clash, but they don’t count). Just like there are a lot of kids today who couldn’t name a Hank Williams Sr. song, but I don’t see his influence being disputed.
Also, I’m a big fan of the Damned, but aren’t they an English band?
No, no, no, no no.
The only thing that influences pop music (American or otherwise) is the marketplace. “It’s only money.” Like it or not, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Jay-Z and N’Sync, etc. have had a LOT of influence on what gets airplay and what gets sold.
“Modern American pop music” is rap, country and maybe a little bit of (scr)emo. I don’t like it and maybe you don’t like it, either, but there it is. It’s about what sells, and that has always been and shall always be the lowest common denominater.
Now I’m not saying that all pop music sucks (although personally I think at least 95% of it does), just that the major influences are not the musical ones. Producers and engineers and <shudder> record company execs <shudder> have more to do with the way modern pop music sounds than the musical “previous tenants”.
All that having been said, there is still (thank god) a lot of great music being produced outside of the “pop” arena. (And I think that is what we are all talking about anyway.) For that discussion I would add a few not-so-obvious names. Lots of guitarists cite Lowell George of Little Feat as a big influence. Other names not already mentioned that come up are Frank Zappa, Johnny Winter and Miles Davis (and not just by jazz people, either).
Every country artist now claims they grew up listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and every woman grew up listening to Heart.
Three Dog Night and Grand Funk Railroad and ZZTop opened the doors to stadiums by showing promoters that they could make money on arena shows. That gave a lot of bands an opportunity to be heard by a lot of people before they were big enough to be headliners.
Feel free to insert smilies wherever appropriate. I just wanted to make the point that “pop” does not necessarily mean “what people really like”.