Duke Ellington
Jelly Roll Morton
Cole Porter
Scott Joplin
Irving Berlin
George Gershwin
Richard Rogers
Jerome Kern
The following guys were good, but in no way come up to the level of the previous songwriters:
Lennon & McCartney
Bob Dylan
Woody Guthrie
You know, we should all try to get out of our own era and geography a little bit. Nearly all of us have only picked from the twentieth century and most, only from a 30-40 year period within the twentieth century. What about foreign songwriters? What about music from other cultures? What about those from other centuries? Where do Bach, Beethoven and Mozart stand in this list? Remember, although we consider their music classical, it was the popular music of their time and 300-400 years later, we still listen to it. The name of the thread is greatest songwriter of all time, not greatest American songwriter from the last 20, 30, 40 or 50 years who wrote a couple of songs that I like a lot.
