The Most Famous

MUSICIANS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Musicians. The pantheon dataset contains 3,175 Musicians, 1,238 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Musicians.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Musicians of all time. This list of famous American Musicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Musicians.

1. Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009)

With an HPI of 88.68, Michael Jackson is the most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 258 different languages on wikipedia.

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a four decade career, his world record music achievements and publicized personal life made him a global figure. Jackson's songs, stages and fashion proliferated visual performance for singers in pop music. His innovations changed the music video as an art form and popularized street dance moves including the moonwalk, which he named, the robot, and the anti-gravity lean. As part of the Jackson family, Michael at age six made his public debut in 1964 with his older brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5 (later known as the Jacksons). The Jackson 5 signed with Motown in 1968 and achieved worldwide success with Michael as lead singer. Jackson began his solo career in 1971 while at Motown and recorded multiple successful singles. He became a global solo star with his 1979 album Off the Wall. His music videos, including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool. He helped popularize MTV and continued to innovate with videos for his albums Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995), and Invincible (2001). Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, while Bad was the first album to produce five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. From the late 1980s, Jackson became a figure of controversy and speculation due to his changing appearance, relationships, behavior, and lifestyle. In 1993, he was accused of sexually abusing the child of a family friend. The lawsuit was settled out of civil court; Jackson was not indicted due to lack of evidence. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further child sexual abuse allegations and several other charges. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found no evidence of criminal conduct by Jackson. In 2009, while he was preparing for a series of comeback concerts, This Is It, Jackson died from an overdose of propofol administered by his personal physician, Conrad Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter for his involvement in Jackson's death. His death triggered reactions around the world, creating unprecedented surges of internet traffic and a spike in sales of his music. Jackson's televised memorial service, held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, was estimated to have been viewed by more than 2.5 billion people. Jackson is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 500 million records worldwide. He had 13 Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles (the chart's fourth-highest of any artist) and was the first artist to have a top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades. Jackson's inductions include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice), the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Dance Hall of Fame (making him the only recording artist to be inducted). His honors include 15 Grammy Awards including the Grammy Legend Award, six Brit Awards, 24 American Music Awards, a Golden Globe Award and 39 Guinness World Records, including "Youngest artist to top the Hot 100", "Longest span of number ones for a male act", and the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time", among other awards.

2. Louis Armstrong (1901 - 1971)

With an HPI of 76.26, Louis Armstrong is the 2nd most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 137 different languages.

Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong received numerous accolades including the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance for Hello, Dolly! in 1965, as well as a posthumous win for the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972. His influence crossed musical genres, with inductions into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, among others. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, he was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, Armstrong followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong earned a reputation at "cutting contests", and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Armstrong moved to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist and recording artist. By the 1950s, Armstrong was an international musical icon, appearing regularly in radio and television broadcasts and on film. Apart from his music, he also beloved as an entertainer, often joking with the audience and keeping a joyful public image at all times. Armstrong's best known songs include "What a Wonderful World", "La Vie en Rose", "Hello, Dolly!", "On the Sunny Side of the Street", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "When You're Smiling" and "When the Saints Go Marching In". He collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald, producing three records together: Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959). He also appeared in films such as A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932), Cabin in the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), Paris Blues (1961), A Man Called Adam (1966), and Hello, Dolly! (1969). With his instantly recognizable, rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser. He was also skilled at scat singing. By the end of Armstrong's life, his influence had spread to popular music. He was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over" to wide popularity with white and international audiences. Armstrong rarely publicly discussed racial issues, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He could access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for Black men.

3. Bob Dylan (b. 1941)

With an HPI of 75.83, Bob Dylan is the 3rd most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 137 different languages.

Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture. Dylan was born and raised in St. Louis County, Minnesota. Following his self-titled debut album of traditional folk songs in 1962, he made his breakthrough with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). The album featured "Girl from the North Country" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", which adapted the tunes and phrasing of older folk songs. He released the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin' and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy among folk purists when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (both 1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Dylan's move from acoustic folk and blues music to rock contributed to the development of folk rock, as his musical and lyrical output grew in complexity. His six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965) expanded commercial and creative boundaries in popular music. In July 1966, a motorcycle accident led Dylan to cease touring. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were later released as The Basement Tapes (1975). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes on John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969) and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released three albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan's Time Out of Mind (1997) marked the beginning of a career renaissance. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since, most recently Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a trilogy of albums covering the Great American Songbook, especially songs sung by Frank Sinatra, and an album smoothing his early rock material into a mellower Americana sensibility, Shadow Kingdom (2023). Dylan has toured continuously since the late 1980s on what has become known as the Never Ending Tour. Since 1994, Dylan has published nine books of paintings and drawings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. With an estimated figure of more than 125 million records sold, Dylan is one of the best-selling musicians of all-time. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

4. Jimi Hendrix (1942 - 1970)

With an HPI of 75.28, Jimi Hendrix is the 4th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 108 different languages.

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is widely regarded as the greatest guitarist in the history of popular music and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music." Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience (with its rhythm section consisting of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell): "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one on the US Billboard 200. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his only number one album. The world's highest-paid rock musician, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia in September 1970. Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began." Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone has ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968), in its various lists of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and it ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth-greatest artist of all time.

5. Madonna (b. 1958)

With an HPI of 74.95, Madonna is the 5th most famous American Musician. Her biography has been translated into 152 different languages.

Madonna Louise Ciccone (; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. Regarded as the "Queen of Pop", she has been recognized for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting and visual presentation. Madonna's works, which incorporate social, political, sexual, and religious themes, have generated both controversy and critical acclaim. A cultural icon spanning both the 20th and 21st centuries, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called her one of the most "well-documented figures of the modern age" in 2008. Various scholarly reviews, literature, and art works have been created about her along with an academic mini subdiscipline devoted to her called Madonna studies. Madonna moved to New York City in 1978 to pursue a career in dance. After performing as a drummer, guitarist, and vocalist in the rock bands Breakfast Club and Emmy & The Emmys, she rose to solo stardom with her 1983 eponymous debut studio album. Madonna followed it with a series of successful albums, including all-time bestsellers Like a Virgin (1984), True Blue (1986), and The Immaculate Collection (1990), the critically acclaimed Like a Prayer (1989), as well as Grammy Award winners Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). She has amassed a catalog of various high-charting songs, including "Holiday", "Like a Virgin", "La Isla Bonita", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Take a Bow", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up" and "4 Minutes". Madonna's popularity was enhanced by roles in films such as Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Dick Tracy (1990), A League of Their Own (1992) and Evita (1996). While the lattermost won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, many of her other films were not as well received. As a businesswoman, she founded the company Maverick in 1992, which included Maverick Records, one of the most successful artist-run labels in history. Madonna's other ventures include fashion brands, written works, health clubs and filmmaking. She contributes to various charities, having founded the Ray of Light Foundation in 1998 and Raising Malawi in 2006, and advocates for gender equality and LGBT rights. With sales of over 300 million records worldwide, Madonna is the best-selling female recording artist of all time. She is the most successful solo artist in the history of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and has achieved 44 number-one singles in between major global music markets. She became the first ever woman to accumulate US$1 billion in concert revenue, with six of her solo headlining tours having grossed over US$100 million each. Forbes has named her the world's highest-paid female musician a record 11 times across four separate decades (1980s–2010s). Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, her first year of eligibility. She was ranked as the greatest woman in music by VH1, and as the greatest music video artist ever by MTV and Billboard. She was also listed among Rolling Stone's greatest artists and greatest songwriters of all time.

6. Ray Charles (1930 - 2004)

With an HPI of 73.50, Ray Charles is the 6th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 85 different languages.

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential musicians in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Genius". Among friends and fellow musicians, he preferred being called "Brother Ray". Charles was blinded during childhood, possibly due to glaucoma. Charles pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining elements of blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel into his music during his time with Atlantic Records. He contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues, and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company. Charles' 1960 hit "Georgia on My Mind" was the first of his three career No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. His 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music became his first album to top the Billboard 200. Charles had multiple singles reach the Top 40 on various Billboard charts: 44 on the US R&B singles chart, 11 on the Hot 100 singles chart, and two on the Hot Country singles charts. Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by Louis Jordan and Charles Brown. He had a lifelong friendship and occasional partnership with Quincy Jones. Frank Sinatra called Ray Charles "the only true genius in show business", although Charles downplayed this notion. Billy Joel said, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley." For his musical contributions, Charles received the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, and the Polar Music Prize. He was one of the inaugural inductees at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. He has won 18 Grammy Awards (five posthumously), the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and 10 of his recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked Charles No. 10 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and No. 2 on their list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In 2022, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, as well as the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.

7. Scatman John (1942 - 1999)

With an HPI of 72.17, Scatman John is the 7th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 46 different languages.

John Paul Larkin (March 13, 1942 – December 3, 1999), known professionally under the alias Scatman John, was an American musician. A prolific jazz pianist and vocalist for several decades, he rose to prominence during the 1990s through his fusion of scat singing and dance music. He recorded five albums, which were released between 1986 and 2002. In the United States and Europe, Larkin is recognized for his 1995 singles "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" and "Scatman's World". He achieved his greatest success in Japan, where his album Scatman's World (1995) sold over a million copies. Outside of his musical activities, he had deepened exchanges with stuttering organizations and established the Scatland Foundation in 1996 with the purpose of furthering research of and educating the public on stuttering. Larkin was a recipient of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association's Annie Glenn Award for outstanding service to the stuttering community and a posthumous inductee to the National Stuttering Association Hall of Fame.

8. Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)

With an HPI of 70.54, Frank Zappa is the 8th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 77 different languages.

Frank Vincent Zappa ( ZAP-ə; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His work is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while simultaneously playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical but seemingly conventional rock and roll songs with extended sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach throughout his career. Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation. Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth. He had greater commercial success outside the US, particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

9. Brian Wilson (b. 1942)

With an HPI of 70.08, Brian Wilson is the 9th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American retired musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude, and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the 20th century. His best-known work is distinguished for its high production values, complex harmonies and orchestrations, layered vocals, and introspective or ingenuous themes. Wilson is also known for his formerly high-ranged singing and lifelong struggles with mental illness. Raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson's formative influences included George Gershwin, the Four Freshmen, Phil Spector, and Burt Bacharach. In 1961, he began his professional career as a member of the Beach Boys, serving as the band's songwriter, producer, co-lead vocalist, bassist, keyboardist, and de facto leader. After signing with Capitol Records in 1962, he became the first pop artist credited for writing, arranging, producing, and performing his own material. He also produced other acts, most notably the Honeys and American Spring. By the mid-1960s he had written or co-written more than two dozen U.S. Top 40 hits, including the number-ones "Surf City" (1963), "I Get Around" (1964), "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965), and "Good Vibrations" (1966). He is considered among the first music producer auteurs and the first rock producers to apply the studio as an instrument. In 1964, Wilson had a nervous breakdown and resigned from regular concert touring to focus on songwriting and production, leading to works such as the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and his first credited solo release, "Caroline, No" (both 1966), as well as the unfinished album Smile. As he declined professionally and psychologically in the late 1960s, his contributions to the band diminished, and legends grew around his lifestyle of seclusion, overeating, and drug abuse. His first comeback, divisive among fans, yielded the would-be solo effort The Beach Boys Love You (1977). In the 1980s, he formed a controversial creative and business partnership with his psychologist, Eugene Landy, and relaunched his solo career with the self-titled album Brian Wilson (1988). Wilson disassociated from Landy in 1991 and went on to tour regularly as a solo artist from 1999 to 2022. Heralding popular music's recognition as an art form, Wilson's accomplishments as a producer helped initiate an era of unprecedented creative autonomy for label-signed acts. The youth culture of the 1960s is commonly associated with his early songs, and he is regarded as an important figure to many music genres and movements, including the California sound, art pop, psychedelia, chamber pop, progressive music, punk, outsider, and sunshine pop. Since the 1980s, his influence has extended to styles such as post-punk, indie rock, emo, dream pop, Shibuya-kei, and chillwave. Wilson's accolades include numerous industry awards, inductions into multiple music halls of fame, and entries on several "greatest of all time" critics' rankings.

10. Chuck Berry (1926 - 2017)

With an HPI of 69.99, Chuck Berry is the 10th most famous American Musician. His biography has been translated into 83 different languages.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music. Born into a middle-class black family in St. Louis, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student, he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for the purpose of having sexual intercourse. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more successful songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". However, these did not achieve the same success or lasting impact of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgia performer, playing his past material with local backup bands of variable quality. In 1972, he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion. Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and 2nd greatest guitarist of all time in 2023. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.

People

Pantheon has 1,342 people classified as American musicians born between 1829 and 2004. Of these 1,342, 792 (59.02%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American musicians include Bob Dylan, Madonna, and Brian Wilson. The most famous deceased American musicians include Michael Jackson, Louis Armstrong, and Jimi Hendrix. As of April 2024, 104 new American musicians have been added to Pantheon including Stephen Kovacevich, Alec John Such, and Rosalyn Tureck.