Posted on 04/04/2014 4:06:58 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Who are the REAL kings (and queens) of cool? National Portrait Gallery runs exhibition of the 100 coolest Americans, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Debbie Harry
Years after they first made their mark Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra, Madonna and Blondie are all still hip enough to have earned a place in the top 100 coolest Americans.
The 'American Cool' exhibit is currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, D.C. America, until 7 September.
Included in the exhibit are the likes of jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Billie Holiday, actors such as Johnny Depp, and singers such as Elvis Presley and Debbie Harry.
The term 'cool' originated in the United States in the early 1940s when legendary jazz saxophonist Lester Young brought the central African American concept into the modern vernacular.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
101-LAZ!
“That’s tight, man, that’s tight”
I would guess 90% of those on the list are about as cool as a swallow tailed straight jacket.
I do agree with Steve McQueen, Buster Keaton, Mae West and a couple more. Add Jack Benny to the list.
Walt Whitman? Wasn’t he a pedophile to the point where he was tarred and feathered and run out of town? And Madonna? What? Please, there is absolutely nothing cool about that jackass whatsoever, but I assume she must have spread her legs to get on this list just like she did with the RnR hall of fame.
Yeah I’ll pass. We’ve sacrificed this country on the altar of pop culture and what is cool. Sorry if I don’t want to play anymore.
Sidney Potier, Bill Murray, Weird Al Yankovich, George Noory,
Will & Kate aka, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Dr. Bill Wattenburg; Radio Scientist.
You know a hipster doofus wrote this with some of the names that are on here such as, Afrika Bambaataa. Oh yeah, he’s really cool, who is he again? I vaguely remember him from the 80s.
Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young?
First 50:
The Roots of Cool
Fred Astaire
Bix Beiderbecke
Louise Brooks
James Cagney
Frederick Douglass
Greta Garbo
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Jack Johnson
Duke Kahanamoku
Buster Keaton
HL Mencken
Georgia O’Keeffe
Dorothy Parker
Bessie Smith
Willie “The Lion” Smith
Mae West
Walt Whitman
Bert Williams
The Birth of Cool
Lauren Bacall
James Baldwin
Humphrey Bogart
Marlon Brando
Lenny Bruce
William S Burroughs
Raymond Chandler
Gary Cooper
Miles Davis
James Dean
Duke Ellington
Dizzy Gillespie
Woody Guthrie
Audrey Hepburn
Billie Holiday
Jack Kerouac
Gene Krupa
Robert Mitchum
Thelonius Monk
Anita O’Day
Charlie Parker
Jackson Pollock
Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra
Barbara Stanwyck
Muddy Waters
John Wayne
Hank Williams
Lester Young
Cool and the Counterculture
Muhammad Ali
The next 50:
James Brown
Jim Brown
Johnny Cash
Angela Davis
Joan Didion
Faye Dunaway
Bob Dylan
Clint Eastwood
Walt Frazier
Marvin Gaye
Deborah Harry
Jimi Hendrix
Bruce Lee
Steve McQueen
Bill Murray
Paul Newman
Jack Nicholson
Bonnie Raitt
Lou Reed
Carlos Santana
Patti Smith
Susan Sontag
Hunter S Thompson
John Travolta
Andy Warhol
Malcolm X
Frank Zappa
The Legacy of Cool
Afrika Bambaataa
Jean-Michel Basquiat
David Byrne
Kurt Cobain
Johnny Depp
Missy Elliott
Tony Hawk
Chrissie Hynde
Jay-Z
Steve Jobs
Michael Jordan
Madonna
Willie Nelson
Prince
Susan Sarandon
Selena
Tupac Shakur
Sam Shepard
Bruce Springsteen
Jon Stewart
Quentin Tarantino
Benicio del Toro
Tom Waits
Neil Young
An injustice screams out that flaws this list beyond repair....namely the absence of the King Of Cool...Dean Martin....shame on the list makers...however I do heartily approve of Mitchum being included.....but dammit...the list needs Dino!!!
I see Anita O'Day is on that list. I met her once, we were playing the same venue.
She was Scary Nasty.
Agree completely!! Nothing cool about perverts and skanks.
Billy Gibbons is cooler than any of the other rockers on the list.
I forgot Mitchum. He, McQueen, and James Dean pretty much defined “cool”.
Most of the people on the list are either cannibals or communists.
Cab Calloway is cooler than any of the musicians on the list.
I wonder how many would even know of Cab, if it wasn’t for “The Blues Brothers”?
Not many is my guess
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