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WD_269/ 2007
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 3 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25.6 x 17.7 | | Size (mm): | 650 x 450 | | Catalog #: | WD_0269 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
The 50 greatest New York musicians of all time:Time Out New York/Issue 596: March 1–7, 2007.
New York is America’s first city when it comes to music, so drawing up a list of the 50 greatest New York musicians ever seemed like a logical thing for TONY to do. But what makes a musician great? And for that matter, what makes them a New Yorker?
Determining greatness is both easy and complex. Influence, innovation, sheer aesthetic brilliance—and the context of the times in which an artist brings those protean qualities to bear—all played a major part in our discussions, debates and arguments (oh, there were a few, but thankfully, TONY covered the hospital bills).
Deciding who is and who isn’t a bona fide New Yorker was a trickier endeavor, especially for jazz musicians, many of whom arrived in the city already armed with impressive résumés. Jazz may have been born in New Orleans, but it came of age, again and again, right here. As one general standard, we settled on a minimum five-year residence—but perception counted too. That’s why ultimately, with difficulty, we excluded Charlie Parker, who despite having his name on Avenue B, is claimed by Kansas City. The same goes for John Coltrane, who identified more as Philadelphian than New Yorker. Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie each spent quality time here, but it’s hard to think of either of them as locals; both established themselves as genuine citizens of the world. The Strokes? Come on, we’re talking great here. Billy Joel—see previous comment (plus, all his auto accidents were on Long Island). Frank Sinatra, son of Hoboken, became a star in Manhattan—yet he makes you think of Las Vegas. And so on. On the other hand, the members of Public Enemy came together at Adelphi University on Long Island, but they channeled the lightning energy of New York City as few others have.
In the end, that was the one universal trait for all the musicians on our list: Their music ripples with the unique power and attitude of New York. None of them could have been who they are anywhere else.—Mike Wolf, Music editor
The rankings: 1-20
1 The Velvet Underground
Forget, for a moment, the surly genius of Lou Reed and his songs. Forget John Cale’s experimental background. Forget that the classic Velvet Underground lineup lasted just three years. Forget that Cale and Reed were living and recording on Ludlow Street three decades before it seemed like a good idea. Forget Warhol and the Factory, forget Mo Tucker’s stand-up drumming, forget the shades and the heroin. Just play any of the first three albums. They still sound impossibly cool. The Velvets were born in the space after the Beats and before the hippies, and represented a stern, aloof rejoinder to everything California was spewing at the time. They midwifed the love child of rock and the avant-garde. They remain the ultimate NYC band.
Must-own album: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)
2 Duke Ellington
Call him the blueprint, the godfather of the 20th century. On some level, the sound, substance and style of Duke Ellington set in motion the idea of New York City as a place where nonconformity is nurtured and auspicious things are born. It all comes down to a simple phrase: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
Must-own album: The Far East Suite (1966)
3 Chic
Living and recording on erstwhile musical nexus 52nd Street, Chic turned big-band discipline, elemental funkiness and hedonistic disco aesthetics into a glorious dance machine. Led by former Black Panther Nile Rodgers on guitar, the band, which once opened a bill including Blondie and the Clash at the now-defunct Bond’s on 44th Street, embodied the mix of genres that made 1970s NYC such a creative cauldron. While nobody else has really picked up Chic’s organic-dance baton, frequently sampled tracks such as “Good Times” and “Le Freak” live on in the collective consciousness.
Must-own album: Risqué (1979)
4 Miles Davis
It’s funny: For a long time, Left Coast jazz was stamped “cool,” but in the ’40s trumpeter Miles Davis presided over the “birth of the cool” here on 52nd Street. That’s where the mystique began, and for the next 40-plus years, no one signified the city’s cutting-edge spirit with more badass bravado and panache.
Must-own album: Kind of Blue(1959)
5 Public Enemy
The best hip-hop group ever scared the shit out of mainstream America in the late ’80s—partly because the mainstream was such a huge part of PE’s fan base. Yet Chuck D & Co. were (and still are) more punk than punk itself. Courtesy of the Bomb Squad production team—whose work could never be replicated in our copyright-sensitive times—every song sounds like an emergency: As Do the Right Thing’s Radio Raheem knew, things are burning, and you have got to understand.
Must-own album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
6 Billie Holiday
They called her Lady Day, but her music seemed at one with the night. Her brutal life dragged her from one tragic identity to another: rape victim, prostitute, drug addict, prisoner. (Malcolm X remembered her hanging tough at Harlem’s Lenox Lounge during his thug days.) Transmuted into music, this pain gave a raw beauty to everything she sang. She tried to use her voice, she said, as if she were playing a horn; yet no jazz singer has sounded quite so human.
Must-own album: Lady Day—The Best of Billie Holiday
7 Tito Puente
The mambo was Cuba’s gift to the world, so it’s no small feat that Puente, a Nuyorican, ended up wearing the title of Mambo King. His bands ruled the Latino music mecca the Palladium in the ’50s, but his reputation was assured once Santana covered Puente’s classic “Oye Como Va.”
Must-own album: Dance Mania, Volume 1 (1958)
8 Run-D.M.C.
Straight out of Hollis, Queens, Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl McDaniels (backed by Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell) turned the entire world on its ear with their literate rhymes, hard-edged delivery and social consciousness, paving the way for Public Enemy, N.W.A and everything that followed. The group’s signature sound—booming beats hitched to heavy-metal guitars—ignited hip-hop’s explosive chart domination.
Must-own album: Raising Hell (1986)
9 Al Jolson
Al Jolson was the first pop-music superstar. His Broadway career lasted 30 years (1911–1940), but he also shook the nascent movie industry—in 1927’s The Jazz Singer, he kicked off the age of the talking picture with his catchphrase “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” Jolson turned his every musical production into a solo concert of his greatest hits; his emphasis on personality instead of mere technique helped revolutionize the way music was written and sung. Jolson is largely forgotten today—or derided for performing in blackface—but we haven’t stopped hearing him yet.
Must-own album: The Golden Years of Al Jolson
10 Ella Fitzgerald
At 17 she won an amateur-night competition at the Apollo Theater, and for the next six decades Fitzgerald was the voice of American jazz—first as a swing goddess, then as a bebop scat queen and finally as the smoothest interpreter of gold standards. Her classic albums devoted to such tunesmiths as George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Harold Arlen prove that the Great American Songbook is still required reading: Listening has never been easier.
Must-own album: The Best of the Songbooks
11 The Ramones
Gabba, gabba, we accept you!
Must-own album: Rocket to Russia (1977)
12 Barbra Streisand
Before the hair and the politics and the fingernails, there was the brash, goofy, endearing Brooklyn girl who wowed the world in Funny Girl. The ugly duckling opened her mouth to sing, and bam! A swan was born.
Must-own album:Greatest Hits
13 Ornette Coleman
A maverick alto saxophonist from Fort Worth by way of Los Angeles, Coleman introduced the concept of free jazz during a lengthy run at Manhattan’s Five Spot in 1959. His freewheeling music polarized audiences then; now, it sounds like the inevitable offspring of country- blues it always was.
Must-own album:The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
14 Blondie
Blondie often gets lumped with the blank generation, but the band—sexy, tough and aloof—always had broader ambitions. When it turned to disco and hip-hop in the late ’70s, Blondie maintained its cred while helping these styles jump from NYC’s arty-gritty underground onto the broader American stage.
Must-own album:Parallel Lines (1978)
15 Grandmaster Flash
One of the architects of rap music, Grandmaster Flash was also its first master technician. Alongside his posse of MCs, the Furious Five, the Bronx native refined the art of deejaying at the Harlem World Disco and the occasional midtown ballroom—thus making the next generation of NYC rap stars want to copy and improve his blueprint.
Must-own album: The Message (1982)
16 Thelonious Monk
There are standards and then there are Monk tunes—some of the most vibrant, nuanced and witty compositions ever produced in the jazz idiom. Though the pianist had a hand in the Harlem bebop revolution, he’s rightly best remembered for his dogged originality.
Must-own album: Brilliant Corners (1957)
17 Sonic Youth
These four shaggy bohemians mixed postpunk dynamics, art-school leanings and a taste for bubblegum pop into one of rock’s most influential sounds, becoming underground demigods—and dragging Nirvana into the spotlight.
Must-own album: Daydream Nation (1988)
18 Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie’s stage antics sometimes obscuredhis genius: He was the prime mover in two huge revolutions happening in 1940s NYC—bebop, which nailed shut the coffin of the swing era, and its cousin Cubop, which invited Cuba’s Chano Pozo and other Latinos to the party.
Must-own album: Something Old, Something New (1963)
19 Talking Heads
Though they formed in Rhode Island, Talking Heads quickly moved to NYC, landing at the junction between punk and new wave. The brainy quartet discovered a holy ground where art, rock and commercial pop met, and was among the first local combos to incorporate African polyrhythms. No wonder indie kids continue to revere Mr. Byrne & Co.
Must-own album: Fear of Music (1979)
20 Afrika Bambaataa
That a black kid from the Bronx in the late ’70s held Germany’s Kraftwerk as his favorite band isn’t even the most surprising thing about Afrika Bambaataa—though it did lead to 1982’s “Planet Rock,” which birthed electro. Bambaataa’s more important social contribution to NYC came when he transformed his street gang into the Zulu Nation, an urban collective dedicated to peaceful empowerment and a bastion of hip-hop wisdom even today.
Must-own album: Looking for the Perfect Beat: 1980–1985
The rankings: 21-50? Visit to - www.timeout.com/
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