Musicians

The composers, singers, and players who built America's popular music, from the blues and jazz of the segregated South to the soul, rock, and folk of the twentieth century.

Aretha Franklin

The voice that carried the church into American popular music, 1942-2018

Bessie Smith

The Empress of the Blues and the highest-paid Black entertainer of the 1920s, 1894-1937

Bob Dylan

The folk singer who broke folk music, born 1941

Duke Ellington

The composer who wrote for an orchestra of specific human beings, 1899-1974

Elvis Presley

The Memphis truck driver who carried Black Southern music into white America, 1935-1977

Louis Armstrong

The trumpeter who turned a collective folk music into an art of the individual voice, 1901-1971