What do you think of this list? Also for you Dylan fans, on this site it has Dylan opinions on what albums he likes the best. Some suprised me. Please, Please Me is one of the albums he picks, that really suprised me.

12 Essential Artists You Should Know
The Beatles
James Brown
Johnny Cash
Ray Charles
Miles Davis
Bob Dylan
Ella Fitzgerald
Jimi Hendrix
Billie Holliday
Bruce Springsteen
The Rolling Stones
U2

I think the list sucks. It's way too heavily weighted to older artists. Hardly surprising.

They're all important artists, of course, but if the idea is that they're the 12 MOST essential artists for someone beginning a life of listening to music, then obviously Moonbeam is spot on: It's ridiculous to consider Springsteen and U2 the only post-1967 artists on a par with Ella Fitzgerald.

To give Amazon it's due: In the same place (http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=359372011), they also have "12 Essential Artists You Should Hear":

Art Blakey
Bright Eyes
Devo
De La Soul
Nick Drake
Joao Gilberto
Pavement
Judee Sill
Slint
Nina Simone
Wilco
The Zombies

The criteria seem weird indeed, but at least people debuting in the last 20 years are not entirely excluded.

Where's that list of Dylan's fave albums, Beckham? It's well known that he considers the quality of music to have gone generally down-hill for 50 years (after all, he has a reputation for grumpiness to keep up), so Please, Please Me would be one of the last decent one's in his catalogue :-)))

http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-content-search/results/ref=cm_srch_q_col_rpsy/?query=Bob+Dylan%27s+list+of+music+you+should+hear&search-alias=rp-sylt&x=0&y=0

The first 6 hits are the ones you need.

I see - it's not like they had Dylan do a list (he would probably have praised Barry Manilow just to spite them), they simply picked music references out of his autobiographical "Chronicles".

Chronicles has just got to be the best-written memoir by a pop singer. I probably read it a couple of times a year.

If you want more Dylan-recommended music, Bob also DJs "Theme Time Radio Hour," a show on satellite radio featuring his choices of records on a certain theme (themes have included Cadillacs, trains, Tennessee, luck, guns, baseball, and so on...).

XM occasionally replays old shows (there have been a little over 50 so far)...but if you just want the playlists, you can find them here.

Not sure if this is legal, but this guy has uploaded all shows here: http://patrickcrosley.com/?q=node/90