Who Would've Stayed Cool Had They Not Died Before Their Time

I am curious to find out whom the forum thinks would've undoubtedly retained their cool had they not died before their time. For example, which artist who died in the 60s or early 70s most definitely wouldn't have gone on to make a disco album or hitched their wagon to some embarrassing fad or, do I dare say it, shamelessly sell out to advertisers. I cut the age off at artists who died before 40 years of age.

My top choice would go to Hendrix. He put out four amazing albums in four short years, and they all broke new creative ground. He was always pushing the envelope, never resting on his laurels. He's like Miles to me in that way. I can't even imagine that he would've put out a cheesy blues album in his older years like some of the bluesmen of that same era who will go nameless. What do you think?

 

John Lennon.

 

Amy Winehouse would be one of the biggest acts in the world right now.

 

Jim Morrison........without a doubt.

 

My crystal ball says Stevie Ray Vaughan.

 

Cobain and hendrix

 

This will just be a thread of people picking their favourite dead artist instead of actually thinking about what he or she would be like 25-30 years down the line.

 

Did you even read the OP?

 

When was Sid Vicious ever cool?

 

I'm going the extremely skeptical route here, and I only voted for Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse. I can totally picture Hendrix doing a disco album, and even if not, I don't know how he would have stayed "cool" in the 80s and 90s. What sort of music could he have done that would have retained the same social cachet? Very few older artists continued working throughout the 80s and 90s with while maintaining their cultural niche. That's pretty much limited to a handful of kinda cult/fringe type artists.

This is not at all comment on whether I would have continued digging anyone, and personally I like disco a lot, too. I'm strictly sticking with who I think had a chance of retaining anywhere near the same widespread social stature re the "cool," "hip, " etc. factor.

 

Marvin Gaye

I know he was 44 when he died and doesn’t fit the OP, but he would have been cool at 48, 58,68 and 78.

 

Paul McCartney

 

Agreed. Please give it some thought.

 

The great Otis Redding gets my vote.

 

All but Winehouse, Parsons, Vicious, and Morrison would have continued to make great music.

 

Buddy Holly
Jim Croce

 

It's interesting to see people picking Bob Marley. He arguably went "soft", almost adult contemporary, with Kaya but corrected that with Survival and Uprising. And then we all know what happened next.

 

Buddy Holly for sure. His death changed he course of music history like none other. Imagine what he might have done through the early 60's -- he could have kept American rock alive during that time. And them imagine what the guy would have delivered once he was "psychedlicized". We'll never know, of course, but I like to think that he would have been right there with the Betles and Dylan throughout the 60s.

 

Good lord, who knows what Buddy Holly could have done. That’s the one I always think of. The mind reels at the possibility of his killer mid-sixties albums, his dipping into psych in the late sixties, his singer-songwriter albums in the early seventies...

 

And that’s not the point.

 

One way to look at this is to first figure out who was "cool" when they died. Some of these artists weren't cool before they died ( Sid Vicious)--while others only became cool after they died ( certainly Nick Drake, arguably Jim Morrison).

The one I think we can all agree on is Jimi Hendrix.

 

Looking at the OP's question, there was one name that immediately popped into my mind. And his name is absent from the poll. He was cool then, cool now, and will always be cool. He lived and breathed rock:

Joe Strummer

 

Meh. He probably would have went country. Or even pop. Look at what he was doing at the time of his death. Then again, he could have gone "outlaw" in the early '70's--or folk like Dion and Bobby Darin....

 

I don't suspect that Marley would have ever strayed that far from reggae, and the audience that most respected him wasn't going to waver on their admiration of that music over the years.

 

All of that would’ve been good too.