They certainly did but none of them did it like Presley. The swagger, the sex and the voice. They just didn’t have that which is why Presley was so huge.
The only thing the New York Dolls influenced was the choice of the bartender as to who to sleep with that night. Totally meaningless, in every sense of the word. Punk was a movement only so much as my morning dump was. Anti-music isn’t an so much an influence, as it is a retarding force. I suppose a negative can be as valid an influence as a posituve, on a basic level.
By your logic someone could just as easily argue that blues, folk, and rock were retarding forces against real, validly artistic (classical) musical compositions.
There aren’t enough :rolleyes:
You know what, on second thought, I think you’re onto something. Music really has gone downhill since Beethoven.
Charlie Patton was probably the most influential blues performer. If you trace the influences of any major blues musician it always leads back to Patton.
Louis Armstrong was the most influential early jazz musician. He had a lot to do with changing jazz from a type of ensemble dance music to a soloist’s art. He introduced swing. His playing and singing influenced many to follow, including Billie Holiday and Bing Crosby. Musicians used to buy his Hot Five and Hot Seven records just to catch up with his innovations.
Janis Joplin- like her or not- was influential in a way.
You could also argue that Carol Bayer-Sager was as well with her writings and capacity to hook up with other artists. As was Neil Sedaka.
I’d still go for Carole King.
I came to mention Wilson
The records he made, the sheer sound of them, is still amazing today. His records set the standard for everyone else to follow - a rising tide of excellence which floated all ships.
Oh, and Chuck Berry because he showed kids a small, self contained groups could make rock and roll.
and James Brown. Geez. That guy wrote the book.
mm
I take it you never owned a “DISCO SUCKS!” T-shirt. 
(You do realize disco sucks, though? Right?..Right?..)
You are wrong about punk and its influence. So. Very. Wrong.
Dick Dale - Without him, you would never have had heavy or death metal, most likely (and he still rocks)
Howlin Wolf - Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepellin, etc. all started by playing songs from the Wolf
Moderator interjects: woodstockbirdybird, back up in Post #39, the level of personal insult is more than we tolerate here in Cafe Society. It is possible for people to have different views on music, and to discuss those differences, without the need for words like “ignorance” or “tunnel vision” to come into the discussion.
You’ve sort of softened it with conditionals, so I’m not going to record this as an Official Warning, more of a friendly admonition… but, you’ve been around long enough to know better. Please, more polite in future.
Another vote for wrong. They may have styled themselves as “anti music”, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t actually a musical style, however bad or good an given individual may consider it. Certainly over here, an enormous number of bands are still very influenced by punk, which makes the New York Dolls “influential” by any token.
Kris Kristopherson brought a lot of good rhyming to lyrics. Ditto with Leonard Cohen, but he is Canadian.
Well, so did Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin, for that matter.
You don’t have to be very successful to influence the right people.
With that in mind. Would the Eagles be trumped by The Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons and they were doing the country rock thing well before the Eagles and certainly influenced that very popular genre?
Duke Ellington (Sir Duke as noted by stevie Wonder)
Ella Fitzgerald
My apologies. I was indeed trying to keep it within forum rules, but I can see how what I wrote may have overstepped them.
Sorry, but once again you’re wrong on all counts. I could say “folk was a movement only so much as my morning dump was”, and it would be as meaningless. None of these artists were “anti-music” - they were anti-prog/bloated classic rock/white blues, which is not the same thing at all. If the New York Dolls were anti-music, so were the Rolling Stones, early Beatles, and about a million garaqe bands from the 60s, all of whom had a similarly rough, basic rocking musical style. The Ramones were basically updating the pop singles of the 60s (especially Phil Spector’s stuff - he even produced one of their albums) with their own limited instrumental arsenal - 2 and-a-half-minute pop songs played loud on electric guitar rather than more ornate orchestration. The Velvet Underground had a bona fide classically-trained musician in John Cale. A small list of artists who cited one or more of these groups as an influence: U2, R.E.M., Talking Heads, The Smiths/Morrissey, New Order, Big Star, Elvis Costello, The Feelies, Violent Femmes, Yo La Tengo, XTC, Beastie Boys, The B-52s, The Cure, The Divine Comedy, Belle & Sebastian… Are they all anti-music? Because almost none of them would have existed without punk. For that matter, are The Clash “anti-music”? They were one of the class of '77 themselves, and I’d love to hear someone claim “London Calling” didn’t fit into the rock pantheon. If your criteria is musical ability, Dylan would be out - the guy couldn’t play guitar, sing, or play harmonica worth a damn. But it would be foolish to leave him out, just as it would be foolish to overlook the contributions the VU, Ramones, et al. have made to the form. Doesn’t mean you have to like it. But when you dismiss them so casually you’re doing exactly what the older generations did when Elvis and The Beatles came along - damning them as fads, claiming they didn’t influence anything of “quality”, and all but blaming them for the decline of everything good about culture. It’s old-fogey-ism, and has nothing to do with critical thinking or love of music.
The OP said “most influential.” If fifty guitarist set out to play like Johnny Thunders, but 1,000 guitarists set out to play like Joe Perry, well, then, it’s hard to argue Thunders was more influential, ain’t it? Even if Perry copied Thunders or womever, it’s still PERRY who the fans are hearing, and he’s the one they’re emulating, without much thought for where his style came from.
Aerosmith sold millions of albums in the 70s alone, while the NY Dolls never even had a gold record during their career. If they couldn’t get played on the radio outside New York, how much “influence” could they really have on anyone?
Just influencing other musicians doesn’t mean that much. If you’re a member of a band, really having an impact means getting your OWN music heard by the masses. (Who outside Washington gave a shit about Nirvana until they were on MTV?) Otherwise teenagers everywhere are copying the bands who copied you and actually were successful, as opposed to copying you directly. The band that figured out how to actually succeed deserves the credit for that, because given how few successful bands there are compared to the total number of them, being successful is the hardest part.
Speaking as a Brit heres my list and I’m being totally non partisan here as some of these I cordially loathe.
There are some bands omitted that I love to death but that I think are derivative(like Nirvana)
Bill Haley and the Comets,made Rock 'n Roll a major Phenonomen (I hate R&R personally)
Elvis was massive but I dont think he made any innovations.
Bo Diddley.
Buddy Holly and the Crickets,apparently a major inspiration to the Beatles and thats why they named themselves the Beatles.
Bob Dylan
Jimi Hendrix,god on earth .none like him before ,since or ever.
Leonard Cohen,not a great fan.
Joan Baez,couldnt stand her myself.
The Byrds
The Eagles
Bruce Springsteen
The Four tops ,not my sort of music.
Er …I was going to say the Village people but I dont want to be beaten up
I didn’t say I liked them for chrissakes!