Manny,

Welcome to the Zone..
I have to go with Diki on this one..
I have an M-3 61 and I absolutely love it, but it would be way down on my list of tools for what appears to be your styles of music.

Lot's of great singers here listed for sure, but few that I have ever spent a lot of time listening to personally. Sinatra, Elvis, and some of the others mentioned of that era are recognized by many as all time greats, but they just don't do a lot for me personally.

My favorites are surely a nod toward the times I grew up in, as well as where . When I was growing up, the great debates of the day included.. Wakeman vs Emerson on keys, Clapton vs Page vs Beck vs the Jazz Fusion guys on guitar...( I was always kinda partial to Frank Zappa's playing and composing skills myself ). Always the never ending debates on who was the best.. but I learned long ago that there is no tangible way to EVER settle those arguments.. it depends on what the individual listener hears and feels, and everything is open to individual interpretation.


I was never big into the Folk scene personally, yet one of my all time favorites is Nick Drake, who got his start in the British folk scene with the likes of Fairport Convention, though I'll readily admit I did not know of him at all until long after his brief life had ended. His unique vocals and absolute mastery of the fingerpicking style on nylon guitar, along with the very raw, sparsely accompanied but brilliant recordings he made still keep me in awe to this day, some 30+ years after he is gone.

As I read back on what Russ wrote, as I go through the list of my favorites, I realize that many of my musical heroes had issues too, but they also conveyed a raw emotion in their music that immediately made me pay attention ( Drake, Roger "Syd" Barrett, Roger Waters, Jeff Buckley, Neil Young immediately come to mind ). I couldn't care less where some of them might rank in a list of all time favorites.


AJ