The top ten male solo artists EVER

5/02/10 | Phil.K

[Jakarta ex-pat]

OK. So which male artists NOT associated with duo, group etc would make your top 10. Here's mine..in no particular order..Non opera please!

[ßuddaßudd]

Chick Corea

Bob Marley

BB King

[dmz]

Bruce Cockburn
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Good for you.

Richard Thompson in my top 10, along with Bruce.

[PzLdr]

Dion, Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Rick Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Joe Cocker, Luciano Paverotti.

[Clemenza]

Francis Albert Sinatra. No other 9 come close. Remember folks, it’s STILL Mr. Sinatra’s world, and we are just lucky to be here.

[houeto]

Gotta throw this guy in there...

Conway Twitty

[Clemenza]

Conway actually sounded better as he got older, but he never could find a good hairdresser. Methinks the Gay Mafia were offended by something he said one day, and resolved never to allow him to get a decent haircut again.

[dfwgator]

"I got chunks of guys like you in my stool!"

[goat granny]

I was into Rhythm and Blues and not so much rock and roll. Also Fats Domino has been on a lot of lists...Several black singers made it over to popular music...But many good black singers songs were covered by white singers to make it acceptable to people...But when you mention Peggy Sue, I do remember hearing that at some time...There was a black radio station in Detroit that only played R & B. But its been so many years ago, my old brain cannot remember them all..

The other songs by B. HOlly that you mentions I never heard..

[dfwgator]

Enrico Palazzo.

[Quix]

Thanks thanks.

[Non-Sequitur]

Any list without Bob Seger on it is incomplete. And just from a storytelling-standpoint add Gordon Lightfoot.

[BluesDuke]

Got all of those...I played harp a little bit when I was a kid...and I think he was as good a white harp player as Jerry Portnoy, Charlie Musselwhite or William Clarke...right until the end...well, until the FIRST Better Days album...saw him once at the Ash grove (before the first fires) so f’d up he couldn’t make the second set and he was STILL great.

William Clarke to me is a very badly underrated harmonica player and songwriter. (I had the chance to play "Pawnshop Blues" on my radio show recently; I do a radio comedy show but I mix in blues and jazz playing the blues on the show.) And if you're talking about the great white harmonica players, Magic Dick (the J. Geils Band) should be up there as Butterfield and Clarke's equal. Come to think of it, John Mayall was a hell of a harmonica player in his own right . . .

[sportutegrl]

In honor of New Orleans going to the Super Bowl for the FIRST TIME EVAH, I nominate Harry Connick, Jr.

[dfwgator]

Although he is best known of course for The Who, I think Pete Townshend’s solo work over the past 30 years has blown away anything the Who did post-Quadrophenia.

[houeto]

Conway actually sounded better as he got older, but he never could find a good hairdresser.

I have to agree.

[safeasthebanks]

Enrico was a little heavier last time I saw him. Hmmmmmm...

[houeto]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAA_LUCb0QE

[Let's Roll]

Elvis and Roy Orbison

[safeasthebanks]

Yep. Still the best SBowl halftime show ever, for my money (in the pouring rain, no less); and I predict he still will be after this sunday too!

[aruanan]

Cockburn was OK until his songs went full-on marxist.

He was pretty much that since In the Falling Dark back in 1978 (that's when I read about it in Time). I look at his politics as a sad derangement that doesn't necessarily detract from the worth of his music and other lyrics. He's got the right attitude toward injustice (as in If I Had a Rocket Launcher) and human lostness (as in Broken Wheel), but he's focussing on the wrong group as the perpetrator of that injustice. We must pray for his healing.