If you could bring back one great artist that has

Buddy Holly: He was on that same kind of rocket ship up Dylan was on, full of ideas and ambition... Pretty much everything most folks associate with Buddy was released in a span of a year and a half. He was 22 when the plane crashed.

Kijanki, having pitched in first for Buddy Holly, It's nice to see some others concur in the thought -- and that Charles Hardin Holly still counts enough to be subtly dissed! But I do take your point; I have a respectable Beethoven collection myself, and appreciate the ironic personal tragedy of his deafness. It's very hard to say what might have been different in the music had his personal circumstances been different. I guess that's why we have 'insightful' music critics.

However, I'm not sure that those who did, after all, have a pretty good run -- even Mozart, given his prolific output -- are as appropriately included here as those who had it all nipped in the bud [RIP, Don Knotts]. Let's face it, a brief flicker in a long night IS the human condition. I personally like accepting that fact as a measure of how I should live. I like it better than magic or making deals. In view of the grandeur (as Darwin put it) of life's constant reinvention here on dust spec Planet Earth -- and it's 42 billion light years to the "horizon" in all directions, you know -- it strikes me as just a little "off" relative to the big picture to feel a need for Symphonies 10, 11, and 12, given the treasures we have. Just a personal perspective, of course.

Rcprince has an interesting point with that perspective, and I think it's one fair answer to my mild "philosophical objection" above. I have to admit, I'd be curious myself... or maybe this: "Rock Me, Amadeus!"

One way we might still receive something of the better part of Johnny Cash as artist/conservator of traditional American music would be for Rosanne to record a second installment of "The List".