Lift every voice and kvetch

There are all these music popularity contests these days and here is a dandy. NPR has been announcing a contest for the 50 Greatest Voices of the Century.

Their graphics are great even if they are kind of a pain to navigate. They throw the nominated singers' pictures at you and when you move the cursor over them, they jump out at you, along with their names. Then you click on them and hear their voices!

But you know what, these popularity contests, you can always see where they are headed. Right away, alarm bells go off in my mind because the greatest singer of the last century, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, has not even been nominated.

Which, I could nominate him, but then I do not want to subject him to voting and defeat by someone like John Lennon, you know? I have not checked to see if John Lennon is on the list but he probably is. I mean, the audience for this contest is just not such that it would vote in Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is on the list. That is something anyway. She is on there only as "Elisabeth" but once you click on her you see it is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. And you hear a little of her singing Schubert's "An Die Musik."

But what about Richard Tauber?

Nope, not there.

Among living singers I would nominate Thomas Hampson but he is not there either. Booooo.

The W's are particularly discouraging. Not only is there no Fritz Wunderlich ...


... which, just listen to the first note of that link I just posted, and ask how you could exclude him, but there is no Dinah Washington. No Muddy Waters. No Howlin' Wolf! That is a picture of Howlin Wolf at the top of this post. I am sorry but he deserves to be on this list.

Rage, rage.

Popularity contests never wind up going the way I want them to.