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1960's - Detroit (Motown)
1970's - Philadelphia PA/Ohio ( Intruders, Teddy Pendergrass, Blue Magic, The Stylistics, The Three Degrees, Dee Dee Sharp, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Zapp & Roger Troutman, Slave)
1980's - Minneapolis ( THE MPLS SOUND RULED THE 80's - Prince Morris Day and The Time, Alexander O' Neal, Cherrelle, Sheila E., Vanity 6, SOS Band, Janet Jackson(Control & Rhythm Nation Albums Produced By Jam & Lewis) NEED I SAY MORE?
1990's - NY/CHI/MPLS/VA/MD/ATL/NO (YES! ALL SEVEN CITIES HAD IT POPPIN IN THE 90's - Mariah Carey (NY), Mary J Blige (NY), LL Cool J (NY), SWV(NY), De La Soul (NY), A Tribe Called Quest (NY), Wu-Tang Clan (NY), Bad Boy(NY), Nas (NY), AZ (NY), Jay Z (NY), Mint Condition (MPLS), Next (MPLS), R.Kelly (CHI), Crucial Conflict (CHI), Twista (CHI), Public Annoucemnt (CHI), Toni Braxton (MD), Missy Elliot (VA), Ginuwine (MD), Timbaland & Magoo (VA), Master P and No Limit Records (NO), LaFace Records (ATL), Outkast (ATL), Goodie Mob (ATL), Xscape (ATL).
2000's - MUSIC IS TERRIBLE NOW!!!
Your list is focused entirely on R&B. You left out Seattle for the 90's for what particular reason? You do realize music expands beyond R&B?
IMO, After the 50's, you can really include New York as one of, if not the most influential city in every single decade. I know that's kind of cliche and boring, but blame New York not my list!
1950's= Memphis/Nashville
1960's= NYC/Detroit/SF
1970's= NYC/Detroit/LA
1980's= NYC/Boston
1990's= NYC/Seattle
2000's= Not sure. Too soon to tell which musicians and scenes are going to be all hype of the past decade (kind of like Disco or New Wave where). I think everyone knows there's a lot of crap out there that will probably be left in the 2000's. If I had to guess, the first cities to come to mind are New York and Austin. Maybe Seattle, Atlanta, and possibly Chicago.
If you are talking about country music, Nashville has dominated since the late 1940s. The only other cities since that time that have any influence on country would be Austin and Bakersfield. Austin is where alt country or Americana originated and Bakersfield was an alternative to the very easy pop country Nashville was putting out in the late 1960s. Really L.A. should replace Bakersfield since most of the Bakersfield acts (Merle Haggard, Buck Owens) recorded in Hollywood. L.A. also invented country rock which has been very influential over the last 40 years (Byrds, Eagles, Gram Parsons etc.).
In R&B, clearly the 50s would be dominated by New York with Atlantic Records, the 60s with Detroit, Memphis (Stax/Hi), Chicago and New York. The 70s with Philadelphia, Miami (TK productions, disco) and New York (disco, early rap). After the 70s, I don't think any city really dominated R & B although one could throw in Minneapolis in the 80s, New York and L.A. rap in the 80s and 90s and Atlanta which really has become an important urban music center.
In rock, Memphis in the 1950s would be the most important city. New Orleans also produced many early rock recordings and if we were discussing the entire history of American popular music, a case could be made that New Orleans is America's most important music city. Certainly, New Orleans, Nashville and Memphis are probably the 3 most important cities in the indigenous development of popular music styles.
Back to rock, the 60s and 70s belong to California. L.A. is more important than San Francisco. SF produced many iconic bands that have received much more acclaim than actual sales or influence. I would chalk this up to Rolling Stone originating in that city. Much of the canon of rock comes from Rolling Stone despite much of it being wrong. But from the Beach Boys to the Doors in the 1960s to the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s, the groups that actually sold the most records were from Southern California. This doesn't even include MOR/Pop groups like Herb Alpert, the 5th Dimension, Three Dog Night and the Carpenters which were HUGE sellers in the 1960s and 1970s and were all L.A. groups.
New York in the 1970s had the most groups that probably influenced rock like Lou Reed, Ramones, Patti Smith, not to mention Bruce Springsteen (NJ is really an extension of NYC). Detroit also had many groups that while not big sellers were big influences like Iggy and The Stooges and the MC5.
After the 1970s, when the American music business really became corporate and concentrated in L.A., NY and Nashville, it is harder to come up with important scenes in rock, but a case could be made for glam metal in L.A. in the 1980s and grunge in Seattle in the 1990s.
Since the 1990s, I don't think geography has much importance to a group's sound anymore. Death Cab For Cutie could be from anywhere as could such other indie rock faves as Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend etc.
This is so unlike the 1960s when the Beach Boys could have only come from L.A. or the Grateful Dead could have only come from SF. This was still true in the 1980s, Guns N Roses were a very L.A. band while Bon Jovi was very East Coast sounding. Even in the 1990s, Green Day sounds like a Northern California pop punk band while the Offspring sound very Southern California.
Since the 1990s, I don't think geography has much importance to a group's sound anymore. Death Cab For Cutie could be from anywhere as could such other indie rock faves as Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend etc.
This is so unlike the 1960s when the Beach Boys could have only come from L.A. or the Grateful Dead could have only come from SF. This was still true in the 1980s, Guns N Roses were a very L.A. band while Bon Jovi was very East Coast sounding. Even in the 1990s, Green Day sounds like a Northern California pop punk band while the Offspring sound very Southern California.
Great post..American music is so divided into various genres that you really can't just pick one most influential city per decade.
As the internet has become more important, regional influences have been somewhat diminished. Local rock radio is for the most part dead these days in most places--radio is dominated by the Clear Channel corporate rock and rap that's taken over the industry for the most part. While you have distinctive rap styles unique to certain areas or Latino music styles big in certain parts of the country, but for the most part influences gets spread throughout the country extremely fast. It's not like in the past where collecting rare singles and finding the newest underground music was an adventure..These days you kind find everything but the rarest of rare genres is a click way on the internet. Which is why there are so many young bands that can accurately duplicate the sounds(and tones) of past music genres. Everyone has a much larger musical frame of reference available these days. You can be a kid in Topeka, Kansas in your bedroom and you can have in instant access to either listening to the some obscure avant-garde band from Brooklyn or corporate teen pop produced by the Disney company.
It's hard to think of a big defining band or musical moment in the last decade that was really felt like a big change for music. I mean in the early 90s, Nirvana--love them or hate them-- and the rest of the Seattle bands were a big moment and change in rock music at the time--and the media was all over it. Even my baby-boomer parents knew what was going on. But now days, while you have your rap superstars and fairly popular indie or hard rock bands--I can't think of any bands in the last decade that have really become mega-popular or changed music. Sorry, Autotune doesn't count on the same level as the hip hop that came out of New York in the late 80s or other past musical developments.
I mean some of the biggest rock artists still touring today to massive crowds are bands that started in the 1960s..And country is huge but that's a whole another story.
- there wouldn't be any iggy pop or ramones without r&b music
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Not sure. Too soon to tell which musicians and scenes are going to be all hype of the past decade (kind of like Disco or New Wave where). I think everyone knows there's a lot of crap out there that will probably be left in the 2000's. If I had to guess, the first cities to come to mind are New York and Austin. Maybe Seattle, Atlanta, and possibly Chicago.
