Wed 5 Dec 2007
Who is the Kevin Bacon of music? In other words, what prolific singer,
songwriter, producer or musician can be connected to most other people in the
music industry in 7 jumps or less? For simplicity’s sake, let’s limit ourselves
to persons on record as being credited on songs, records, etc.
(Suggested by 1f2frfbf.)
Posted by Josh Millard38 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks:
-
Trackback from Phentermine.
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:05 amPhentermine….
Phentermine 37 5mg. Buy phentermine. Phentermine. Phentermine adipex. Picture of phentermine….
I’m guessing “Mike Patton”. He doesn’t deal with major folks (there are no “Mike Patton and Celine Dion” duets), but he’s dealt with so many people that, doubtlessly, some musician he’s worked with has also worked with some producer who worked with a more famous artist who’s worked with a producer who worked with Celine Dion / Elvis Presley / N’Sync / Whatever.
Especially because he’s worked with John Zorn, who also seems to have worked with an infinite number of people, and Yamatsuka Eye, who likewise has worked with everyone.
In fact, I’d guess that with Mike Patton, most things just end with 5 degrees of separation: “Mike Patton – MusicianA – ProducerB – MusicianC – ProducerD – Target Musician”.
T-Bone Burnett. Between all the artists on the “Roy Orbison: a Black and White Night”, “O Brother Where Art Thou?”, and “The Ladykillers” soundtracks (not to mention all the other albums he’s produced), he’s covered an extremely broad range of ages and genres that I would think must put him just a few jumps away from almost anybody.
Emmylou Harris has sung back up with every single other recording artist in the world.
Kevin Bacon is a musician- thus I would have to say that Kevin Bacon is the Kevin Bacon of music (technically).
I’m not sure, but I think the person needs to have been part of “We Are The World.” Lots of connections there.
Seconding T-Bone Burnett. First person I thought of; ever since I saw his name on August and Everything After when I was 12 I’ve seen it everywhere.
Honestly, my first response was Tony Bennett. He’s been around forever and is utterly shameless about duets. Plus, his rotating backing band assures him a whole slew of connections.
Thirding T-Bone. Funnily enough, the BoDeans song Lookin’ for Me Somewhere was inspired by a conversation between BoDeans frontman Kurt Neumann and T-Bone talking about Emmylou Harris.
No contest. Quincy Jones. He organized “We Are the World”, which puts him within one step of EVERYONE, plus: he’s got a career that’s spanned decades. He’s worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Puff Daddy.
[Not to make a fuss or anything, but the Preview button now appears to actually function. As you were!]
Quincy Jones or Ahmet Ertegün.
Back in the day it would’ve been Jimmy Page. The man played on probably half the albums released in Britain in the first half of the sixties
While Saffron is right on about Kevin being, well, Kevin Bacon of Music, I’m curious how Kevin Bacony he is, for all that. The Bacon Brothers (Wikipedia, band’s site) have put out four albums, but I don’t know who in the grand musician/production network they’ve encountered in the process to link them up to the chain of connections.
Anybody want to go plumbing for liners?
Brian Eno?
My first guesstimate was Willie Nelson. He’s done enough collaborations that would connect him to others.
How ’bout Daniel Lanois?
Meta question (with shades of Show Your Work): are there any great resources for tracking these connections? Is there even anything approaching, say, IMDB’s level of acting/filmography/production history for the music production world?
I feel like producers and engineers shouldn’t be counted in this, for the same reason your bacon number doesn’t include production roles. It’s easy to get some kind of credit in a movie, compared to getting screen time. Casting the guy behind the console isn’t the same thing as choosing your sidemen or collaborators.
So that leaves out a lot of the connections going through Bill Laswell, T-Bone Burnett, Steve Albini, Quincy Jones, and Mitchell Froom.
Jones was a session leader and sideman of note, so he still appears on a lot of records. Laswell’s got some kind of performance credit on nearly everything he’s produced, so they still go far. Burnett and Lanois, not so much.
Some people recorded prolifically with lots of sidemen, even if the count of their appearances on others’ recordings was fairly slim. Frank Sinatra counts in this category: He’s worked with hundreds or thousands of musicians, almost all of whom have worked for other people too. And that leads to my conclusion:
The American Music Recording nexus was one of the following:
A veteran of the CBS Orchestra from the 1950s through the 1970s, on-call for ten recording sessions a week while also gigging in house bands for radio and TV variety shows;
Or a guitar player in Nashville in a similar time frame.
The guys who worked with everybody you’ve heard of are not the guys you’ve heard of. They’re the ones in the satin tuxes on the bandstand under the colored lights.
B.B. King, because he’s older than dirt, and everyone famous has played with him at some point, when they were in their “blues phase”.
Michael Jackson.
A prime mover in “We Are The World”, plus all the other stuff and people he’s worked with: Eddie Van Halen, Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, Slash, Stevie Wonder and, most importantly, Rockwell.
I couldn’t find any such database cross-referencing everyone an artist has worked with. I did find a partial listing of the people Willie Nelson has worked with at CD Universe. They list this at the bottom of each artist search and you can click through, scroll down, and find more connections. But it’s really incomplete.
IMDB recently filed a trademark for a music site called SoundUnwound. Hopefully that will have similar features.
I am not a music guru nor a huge Willie Nelson fan, but it would be kind of cool to see if he has a connection to say, Beyonce.
Bob Fripp, if only because many of my favorite musicians have been in King Crimson at one point of time or another. I mean, Quincy Jones is just too easy eh?
I’d suggest Hal Blaine, one of the busiest session drummers in L.A. during the 60’s and 70’s.
Nicky Hopkins shows up all the frickin’ time too.
mmmm….bacon…
Could it be a classical composer, maybe? Or maybe a composer/conductor, someone who would have worked directly and personally with many orchestras, and influenced others through their music?
In UK, I would think about suggesting John Wetton. He’s been around for ages, in a wide variety of bands (including King Crimson and Renaissance).
Jerry Garcia is my guess. In addition to the Grateful Dead (which had many members over the years) he was part of various side projects including Old and In the Way (David Grisman, Vassar Clements, Peter Rowan, John Kahn), Legion of Mary, New Riders of the Purple Sage (John Dawson, David Nelson, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart), etc., etc. He also produced and recorded with the Jefferson Airplane. He can be heard playing pedal steel on Crosby, Stills and Nash albums, as well as on David Crosby solo albums. He recorded with Tom Fogerty, David Bromberg, Robert Hunter, Warren Zevon, Country Joe McDonald, Ken Nordine, Ornette Coleman, Bruce Hornsby, Bob Dylan, etc.
I wish I had my copy of Deadbase handy. They list hundreds of people who have played with the band.
When you consider how many people have also played with the various members of the Dead while Jerry was alive and after his death the Baconness adds up. Phil Lesh alone has played with hundreds of musicians as part of his Phil Lesh and Friends group (including Trey Anastasio of Phish, Warren Haynes (who plays with his own band, plus the Allman Brothers))
Shit. I don’t have time to do all the research now. Trust me :)
carol kane, who was the busiest l a session bassist of the mid to late 60s – her and hal blaine are on thousands of records
i was thinking of nicky hopkins too – he played with quicksliver, the stones, the airplane, ringo starr and tons of studio recordings
What about Donald “Duck” Dunn?
This guy has played with everyone from Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to Eric Clapton and Tom Petty [full list].
I’d venture to support Quincy Jones for this as well, if producers qualify. Amongst musicians I listen to a lot Steve Albini or Brian Eno would probably be closer to the center of the universe. It’s a little tricky with music because the nature of the business is so cyclical, and the social networks tend to be pretty clustery (people mix it up a lot within their own genres, but not so much outside of them, with the occasional exceptions like Willie Nelson or the like).
As far as IMDB-like music databases go, AllMusic seems to be as good as it gets currently, AFAIK.
What about Rick Rubin? He’s produced for Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys, Neil Diamond, Run-DMC and Aerosmith, the Dixie Chicks – quite a wide span.
I agree with ardgedee that producers shouldn’t count. It’s not like you are allowed in the original game to say “He was in a movie produced by Walt Disney, and Walt Disney produced a movie with James Cameron, who directed …” It’s gotta be that they performed together as musicians.
I’m liking David Bowie as an option. He’s collaborated with tons of musicians like Bing Crosby, Brian Eno, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Freddy Mercury, Trent Reznor, etc., etc.; crossing into all kinds of genres. Also he was in Band Aid, which included Bob Geldorf, who was also in We Are the World. So that’s pretty much a connection to every 70s and 80s musician. And that duet with Bing Crosby gets him connected to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack and just about every pre-70s singer.
Hell, the dude himself has a Kevin Bacon number of 2. He was in The Hunger with Susan Sarandon who was in The Film Programme with Kevin Bacon.
I am not a music guru nor a huge Willie Nelson fan, but it would be kind of cool to see if he has a connection to say, Beyonce.
I’ll do you one better. I’ll six degrees Bowie to Beyonce, stopping off through Willie Nelson:
David Bowie + Bono : Do They Know It’s Christmas
Bono + Willie Nelson : Slow Dancing
Willie Nelson + Michael Jackson : We are the World
Michael Jackson + Janet Jackson : Scream
Janet Jackson + Justin Timberlake : Superbowl XXXVIII
Justin Timberlake + Beyonce : Until the End of Time
It strikes me that, in some theoretical undirected graph of these connections, things like We Are The World and Live Aid and so forth might make for some pretty busy nodes.
No doubt. I had to work extra not to use We Are The World twice. I don’t think the game would be possible without those nodes. It’s not like in the movies where 99.9% of productions are a collaboration with someone. So I guess it should be “6 degrees of Bob Geldof” for making it all possible.
YOU ARE STILL ALL WRONG!!!!! IT’S JERRY!!!!!! hehehehe
In a similar vein, I once connected Elvis Presley to the Honky Tonk Man in six degrees.