Quote:
Originally Posted by diebitter
I can confidently say Elvis was not one of the greatest musicians of all time.
This. The thing that made Elvis so polarizing was that he was effectively a white man singing and performing black music. Up until he came along, black artists were obviously targeting the white middle-upper classes who were the predominant purchasers of music, the problem was they didn't buy these records (or, at least to the volume that they did once Elvis hit the scene) more or less because the artists were black. Once Elvis cornered this market, he began covering song after song, giving them the rockabilly swing and sound that we most associate with him. Elvis is undoubtedly one of the greatest performers of all time, and also one of the most influential because of the cultural explosion he helped fuel. I definitely would not classify him as one of the greatest musicians of all time, however, his total number of original compositions was very, very small.
This being said, I think I'm going to lock this thread (perhaps only temporarily) because I do think there are a lot of great and interesting debates and discussion that can emerge when looking at the history and evolution of music in a variety of different contexts, but I fear that the approach this thread takes is going to lump too many artists and eras together which isn't really going to accomplish anything because of what the OP said regarding the extreme subjectivity when asking a question such as "Who are the greatest musicians of all time?" I'm going to try and think of some alternatives that we can explore to get this discussion going, will post results soon.