THE TOP 25 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICAN MUSICIANS (+5) (+1 SPECIAL MENTION) TO WHOM YOU MUST LISTEN BEFORE YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH ME ABOUT MUSIC (played ca. 1870 to ca. 1970).

The only one for whom an instrument—the Sousaphone—is named.

Consider the number of unrecorded musicians—like Buddy Petit—and the number of recorded musicians—such as Bunk Johnson—and the number of bandleaders—King Oliver, for example—who were important to Louis Armstrong, a Crescent City native who would become the most exceptional figure, indisputably, in the history of American music. Through cornet and trumpet playing that established his reputation as a soloist (and established the standing of the jazz soloist in general) and his swinging, gravel-sweet voice, Satchmo would eventually influence just about every musician on this list, but calling these men and women important doesn’t mean that they were first to play their instruments or first to hold a microphone close to their mouths. It doesn’t even mean that they were greatest in their genres, or sub-genres, although many of them, posthumously and otherwise, continue to be giants. (Only a few on the list live to play.) No, these musicians excelled at absorbing rich cultural threads and transforming them into performances, recordings, and inventions that attracted the attention of other musicians, or intensive critical acclaim, or the interest of a new and durable audience; or, of course, all three. Many of the artists on this list composed groundbreaking works of their own, but the list, alas, does not contain a host of seminal American composers—Arlen, Barber, Berlin, Bernstein, Brubeck, Cage, Carmichael, Cohan, Copland, Feldman, Gershwin Bros., Glass, Hammerstein, Ives, Q. Jones, S. Joplin, Kern, Porter, Reich, Rodgers, and Strayhorn, among others—who shaped a variety of American idioms, as well as the playing, at times, of these very 25 (+5) (+1) performers. Nor does this list necessarily contain the blogger’s personal favorites, such as the soprano saxophone jazz-man, Steve Lacy, for instance, who may have been a great musician, but whose greatness may have derived from the importance (and greatness) before him, of Thelonious Monk. This gathering of artists ends circa 1970, a point by which every musician contained herein had demonstrated his or her indispensable value to American music, but leaves off, more or less, before other acts—Captain Beefheart, Sonic Youth, Michael Jackson, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, et al.—would push into, stagger, and re-ramify the vessels of music and musical commerce. The writer Michael Ondaatje fantasized about the psychological undoing of legendary (and unrecorded, hardly celebrated) New Orleans trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, in his novel, Coming Through Slaughter, but Bolden’s contribution may have been to inspire a very young Louis Armstrong, ‘round about nineteen ought seven, who may have been, himself, offering brassy announcements on his cornet, in the same streets, as part of a job riding atop a junk cart. Undoubtedly, there have been numerous other isolations and obscurities in the development of American music—Appalachian banjo pickers, coal mine protest songs, funeral marches, marches, fife and drum corps, and migrant jug bands are just a few that come to mind—but we should offer thanks for the collective energy that has led us toward these 25 (+5) (+1) important musicians, in A, B, C order:

(Top 25)

Louis Armstrong

James Brown

Johnny Cash

Ray Charles

Ornette Coleman

John Coltrane

Bing Crosby

Miles Davis

Fats Domino

Bob Dylan

Duke Ellington

Dizzy Gillespie

Woody Guthrie

Jimi Hendrix

Billie Holiday

Robert Johnson

Thelonious Monk

Muddy Waters

Charlie Parker

Elvis Presley

Frank Sinatra

Bessie Smith

John Philip Sousa

Velvet Underground

Hank Williams

(+5)

Count Basie

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers

Coleman Hawkins

Sonny Rollins

Lester Young

(+ Special Mention)

Roy Brown, for “Rockin’ at Midnight”

THREE WAYS TO REBUILD THE AMERICAN ECONOMY IN A HURRY.

Shall we avoid discrepancy & saddening silhouette.

I remind myself on occasion of my dormant bachelor's degree in economics, one that led me to work for the now-defunct and internationally disgraced Arthur Andersen & Co. for two years before I traded that dismal firm for A Life of Adventure. As I continue, perhaps I need to offer a brief disclaimer -- being: I am not a practicing economist, currently -- or perhaps you will count that circumstance in my favor. The country requires a few serious jolts, starting with this: (1) Green Manufacturing. Let's imagine, for a minute, that the ailing economy stabilizes and improves. The unemployment rate, presumably, would drop, but what would that mean? Mitt Romney likes to promise workers in Michigan that their jobs will return, but will they? Does it feel like the American automotive industry is poised to lead a major economic resurgence, full of well-paying, secure, assembly-line positions? In fact, it feels like America is becoming a nation of warehouses and strip-malls, where wholesale and retail drive our economic fortunes -- hence, the emphasis on consumer spending. Imagine, now, a second recession, one in which some of our retail and some of our wholesale don't survive, never mind our manufacturing, which many economists characterize as being in steep decline. What then? Instead of General Motors trying to be General Motors all over again, General Motors needs to become General Motors & Solar. Not only do we need to build electric cars -- to avoid punishing our environment and reduce our dependence on oil -- but we need to consider how we will produce the electricity that will juice the cars. We need to construct solar panels, and wind turbines, and fuel cells, and biomass facilities, among other going concerns -- and the infrastructure required to store and transmit the electricity we generate. The sun is probably going to shine for much of the next several million years, and last I checked, it was free; unless, of course, Comcast gets a-hold of it, in which case, you'll probably receive the sun on pay-per-view, with dreadful customer service. But I digress. A green energy conversion in this country would lead to a slew of new jobs, both in manufacturing, management, and maintenance. We would probably still mine, burn, and sell coal, and still generate some power through nuke-u-lar, but the green conversion, in principle, and in principal, would create skilled, well-paying jobs, and would tap energy sources, otherwise, for free. (2) A Level Playing Field on Labor Practices. It now appears -- doesn't it? -- that going to college makes little sense for quite a few Americans in their late teens and early twenties. For starters, college is expensive, and must be financed through equally expensive loans, but once a young adult has graduated, and enters the labor market, what kind of job is he or she likely to find? The answer is, in many cases, a job that did not require a college degree, and will not reward the student for taking out such costly loans. But according to many economists, even those jobs have fled the country in great numbers, since they can be sourced (or out-sourced) in countries where labor costs are -- horrifically -- detrimentally -- artificially low. If, for simplicity's sake, a Gadget Job in Country B pays $0.50 per hour, and in effect reinforces a poverty-level subsistence faced by the workers who produce the Gadget, then we should apply a tariff to the Gadget, as it enters port in the U.S., that would effectively render the Gadget at such a price as to make it competitive, were it produced in Country A, as in the U.S. of A. We, at least, offer something known as a minimum wage, and while that ain't much in every case, it's a reasonable law, and we should demand that our trading partners abide by similar practices. If they don't, then we should calculate all the costs that are not being fed into the price of the Gadget, and bill that country for said amounts. Maybe our "Captains of Industry" will therefore recognize an opportunity to produce the Gadget in our fair land, creating the varieties of jobs that might offer an alternative to those young adults who feel that they must, at any cost, attend college; our economy should present those alternatives. (3) National Service. Upon graduation from high school, the vast majority of American youth should serve a two year hitch in national service -- some in the military -- but most in what I'll call "Infrastructure." I don't know what, exactly, all of them would do, except that we need to build, rebuild, and restore quite a bit of our highways, bridges, tunnels, lakes, rivers, wildlife areas, et cetera, but also we may need entry level workers in factories and other settings. (Some cheap workers for our Green Energy Conversion, see #1, above.) "Of all the preposterous things you're saying, Gutstein," someone will think, "this is the most preposterous and expensive!" True, this may be costly, and in terms of financing it, I'm only prepared to say that our big-pocket corporations (and corresponding individuals) have to manage it, and finance it, in its entirety. The results, however, should benefit the very corporations that would be tasked with handling the system. I can't imagine that better highways and cheaper energy sources would be detrimental to the bottom lines of these corporations, and in any event, our federal, state, and local government agencies are broke, strained, and incapable, and if left up to them, it just won't happen. I would also like to imagine that young Americans could begin to have a valuable, shared experience in the rebuilding of their own republic, but let me not glow too roseate in my optimistic oratory. Okay? And that's all. Sure, there are other serious issues that trouble us Americans, but these three activities, in my estimation, would set the country toward an enthusiastic course, not seen, perhaps, since the exhilaration of V-E and V-J days in the 1940s. Leadership would have to come first. Someone who could unite the legislators of both major political parties, and also convince everyday Americans that we would all be entering a period of austerity and sacrifice. "Now's the time!" shouts Martin Scorcese before his character blams away at Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) in Mean Streets, and that's about right, except for, you know, all the gunfire and violence. 

WE MUST, AS A SOCIETY REËXAMINE.

In a perfect world, it would dispense STOUT.

We must, as a society, reëxamine “Prophecy” if it should prefigure, No. 1, chronic wandering, and if, No. 2, to alleviate chronic wandering, the wanderer must arrive to the interior of a land where no man salts his meat, for there is such a land, and that land is Hypertension, but instead, what if the wanderer, owing to Prophecy, must drift about, oar slung across the sinew, and knot, and leather of his dorsum, until he discovers a land where no man beats his meat? Now that would be a journey. Should a street tough assault you with a dark red legume then he would be giving you “the beet down.” Did Beethoven compose “Fur Elise” during a confusing period of rental instability, and really meant to entitle his movement “Fur Lease”—or maybe he meant to offer pelts and foxpieces on layaway or through other creative financing? Whale = Whale, agreed, whereas Whales = Welsh, am I right? What the hell is the state jackrabbit, again? In the fourth book of the bible, Numbers, god administers to the Israelites a series of mathematics examinations, and it’s no wonder they dwelt in the house of the desert for forty years; you didn’t fail, exactly, but were smitten (with dyspepsia) (with Pepsi) (with Pepcid) (with pep rallies). I will dress for All Hollows Eve as a Hollows. I will dress for All Hollows Eve as a Guile Bladder or a Blind Boulder Test. The Eskimos, on the other hand, have 100 names for the Federal Debt, and for Obesity, and for Little Debbie Snack Cakes, as well. We may begin to suffer double dip influenza on account of double dip recession. One man, one half of a murderous duo, opted to don tights in prison, and so the esteemed duo were later known as Leotard & Loeb, even Neotard & Loeb after one in the duo adhered to progressive politics. Different haircuts will nowadays necessitate different shampoos; we will require pumice and petroleum shale to cleanse a mohawk. If we are serious about reducing the size of government, then we should send it, at long last, to a shrink.

THEY DON'T LET YOU LIVE (ALT. TAKE)

Rare footage has been discovered in the basement of my iPhone

Previously unreleased rendition, in which Pops holds forth on many of the same issues that squander his peace of mind. Rated PG (Parents Strongly Cautioned.) He would probably like to occupy the going concerns & people who don't let you live. 

FULLER & ROBINSON @ MICA WRITING STUDIO, WEDS., NOVEMBER 16TH, 5:00 p.m., in BALTIMORE

Join us Wednesday, November 16th, at 5:00 p.m., for LitLive at Maryland Institute College of Art, featuring poetry readings by Heather Fuller and Adam Robinson.

Heather Fuller is the author of perhaps this is a rescue fantasy, Dovecote, Startle Response, and other collections. Click here for more on Heather.

Adam Robinson is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems, founder of Publishing Genius Press, and a member of one or more bands. Click here for more on Adam.

LitLive is a new literary reading series at MICA, with events held in the Writing Studio, Bunting Center, 1401 Mt. Royal Avenue, 4th Floor, Room 452. The series spotlights Baltimore & Washington, D.C. writers and is hosted by Dan Gutstein. All readings are free and open to the public.

Basic Directions / Parking: The Bunting Center can be found at the corner of West Lafayette Avenue and West Mt. Royal Avenue in Baltimore, and is one of three buildings at the center of MICA's campus. Exits 5, 6, or 7A from I-83. Light Rail to University of Baltimore/Mt. Royal (walk north on Mt. Royal). MARC Rail to Penn Station (Take W. Oliver St. to Mt. Royal, turn right). Garage parking at The Fitzgerald on Oliver Street between Maryland and Mt. Royal. Street parking on or around Mt. Royal.

We hope to see you at the Writing Studio.

KIMBALL & SIROIS @ MICA WRITING STUDIO, OCT. 13TH, 5:00 p.m., in BALTIMORE

Join us Thursday, October 13th, at 5:00 p.m., for LitLive at Maryland Institute College of Art, featuring fiction readings by Michael Kimball and Justin Sirois.

Michael Kimball is the author of four books, including Dear Everybody and Us. His work has been on NPR’s All Things Considered, and has appeared in The Guardian, Bomb, and New York Tyrant. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard), a couple of documentaries, and the 510 Readings. His novel Big Ray will be published in Fall 2012.

Justin Sirois is the author of Secondary Sound and MLKNG SCKLS; Falcons on the Floor (written with Haneen Alshujairy) is forthcoming in 2012. He also runs the Understanding Campaign with Haneen and co-directs Narrow House. Justin received individual Maryland State Art Council grants in 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2011 and a Baker "b" grant in 2010.

LitLive is a new literary reading series at MICA, with events held in the Writing Studio, Bunting Center, 1401 Mt. Royal Avenue, 4th Floor, Room 452. The series spotlights Baltimore & Washington, D.C. writers and is hosted by Dan Gutstein. All readings are free and open to the public.

Basic Directions / Parking: The Bunting Center can be found at the corner of West Lafayette Avenue and West Mt. Royal Avenue in Baltimore, and is one of three buildings at the center of MICA's campus. Exits 5, 6, or 7A from I-83. Light Rail to University of Baltimore/Mt. Royal (walk north on Mt. Royal). MARC Rail to Penn Station (Take W. Oliver St. to Mt. Royal, turn right). Garage parking at The Fitzgerald on Oliver Street between Maryland and Mt. Royal. Street parking on or around Mt. Royal.

We hope to see you at the Writing Studio. 

THEY DON'T LET YOU LIVE.

A little Q & A with my Pop.

As my dad is recovering once again from surgery (and doing well) I thought it might be fitting to post this short clip of him responding (pre-operation) to a typical list of stressors. His refrain works out to be the "cri de coeur" of the retiree, as all the man seeks is a little peace and quiet. But no -- that's not possible -- and I'll let my pop explain why.