Most Influential American Musician of All Time?

If the question was " who was Americas most influential guitarist" then I would say Charlie Christian. Charlie died of TB in his 20's and had he lived I'm sure he would have been even more influential. Blues guitarists harken back to Robert Johnson. For me there are too many great ones over the last 50 years to choose just one like Albert King. Now if you asked Albert he of course would say he was the best. Thats classic Albert King. Albert once famously said of Jimi Hendrix "I can do everything he does but he can't do everything I do".(which might be true) The only time I heard him speak of another guitarist with reverence was on the Albert King/SRV live disc where he admits that SRV was more than his equal. No knocks on Charlie or Albert I just think it's a stretch to call either of them Americas most influential musician as their influences are a little too narrow for me. JMNSHO no offense intended. - Jim

"Tvad, FWIW I think your definition of 'musician' might be a bit narrow, especially in view of how it's defined in my dictionary, i.e. a composer or performer of music and as an alternative a performer esp of instrumental music."

This goes back to my question Jeffery, how do we define musician for the benefit of this thread? Does it include composers and singers or is the intent instrumentalist? If so it is an impossible question to answer and would have to be divided into categories otherwise it is nothing more than a popularity contest with no objective basis for argument.

I've decided the most influential American musician is David Cassidy. He influenced an entire generation of males to buy hair dryers.

my original post contemplated both composers and performers in the definition of "musician." frankly, i am not sure how you could separately categorize the two since, as a practical matter, so many musicians wear both hats (britney spears being a notable exception, for example).

tvad: i believe your earlier posts nominated Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan for the honor of most influential. How would you propose to categorize either/both of these as between composer and performer? To attempt to do so would diminish both by suggesting that it is not the combination of their songwriting AND performing (singing and playing and instrument) that makes them worthy of that title.

I suggested Robert Johnson, but not Bob Dylan.

At this point, I've changed my mind, and I would not distinguish musicians between performers and composers.