Transcendent Artists

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Beatles were great. People who don't like the Beatles almost always either have serious personality issues or were high school band nerds who listened to groups like Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears and actually thought they were being hip. Here's a news flash: Chicago isn't a good rock band. Chicago isn't a rock band. Chicago isn't a good band. I'm not even sure they qualify as a band. Their only close brush with rock and roll was that a band member killed himself, and I don't think you should use that kind of tragedy to get rock and roll points, so let's not take that into consideration. If you're a Chicago fan you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself where you went wrong.
As for BS and T, anything they did after Al Kooper left the band isn't worth bothering with either. "Spinning Wheel"? Come on. Barbra Streisand's version of "Stoney End" rocks harder. There's not enough time left in eternity to waste it listening to Blood, Sweat and Tears. If you've already lost hours of your life replaying "Lucretia McEvil" and telling yourself it's good, you can stop reading now. Go back and surf MySpace or hit up Limewire for some Gordon Lightfoot that you've managed to miss.
But I digress. Any time you're dealing with rational people, there's always agreement that the Beatles were a stellar, ground-breaking band that changed music for the better.
But this isn't really a post about the Beatles. That the Beatles were great is a no-brainer. It's the other stuff that spins your head around unexpectedly on the first listen that I'm concerned with here. It's not the same for everybody, like with the Beatles. Your list of transcendent artists will be different than mine because their work will hit you on a visceral level and you might not even be able to explain why. You might not even "like" the artist in the same way you "like" someone that's catchy or obviously talented. Maybe your transcendent artist never wrote a hook in his or her life and none of your friends "get" it, but it doesn't matter. You play a track and it takes you somewhere.
Here are some artists that do it for me and a song or an album from their repertoire that is illustrative of that transcendency:

1. Skip James: Devil Got My Woman
2. Son House: Death Letter Blues
3. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme
4. Van Morrison: Hymns for the Silence
5. Mississippi John Hurt: I'm Satisfied
6. Ray Charles: Hallelujah, I Love Her So
7. Sam Cooke: A Change Is Gonna Come
8. Reverend Gary Davis: Harlem Street Singer
9. The Drifters: Up On The Roof
10. Dion DiMucci: Mean Woman Blues

I could go on...
So, who's on your list? Hopefully nothing pitch corrected or anything remotely connected to Peter Cetera or David Clayton Thomas because, trust me, they DO NOT ROCK.