The Top 10 Most Successful DJs Of All Time!

What if there were a poll to establish the Top 10 most successful DJs of all time? In this day and age, where would such names as Casey Kasem, Wolfman Jack, or Jazzy Jeff place on that list, relative to each other? Or would they even be on there?

I'm talking a poll of the general public - not your insular insiders of the industry. I'm talking, phone up maybe a thousand people, culled from the mass and throng of the very public itself, the people to whom DJs have meant so much over the years. Call them up, maybe give them a buzz some weekday night during dinner when you pretty much know they'll be there. Except the ones who go out to eat, weekday nights. But really - screw those bourgeois douchebags*! We want the opinion of the real people, the good bedrock bones and blood of this country people, the people for whom the music of the nation rings in their ears and makes them tap their happy feet - the salt of the earth as it were! Not your dining-out on a Tuesday night crowd. Lounging at their corner tables at Chez Français, sipping decadent cocktails, ordering a nice Côtes Du Rhône (I'm pretty sure one of those o's gets a hat!) to go with their petites filets mignons. Such people should be tried in front of a show jury and well-shot, then dumped into mass graves with a side of sauce béarnaise.

Getting back to the poll. Now of course your general public, when faced with such a question, is going to try to elicit a bit more meaning or context for the question before barking out answers. What do you mean by "successful"? Do you mean the most artistically successful DJ? Most successful from a technical standpoint? Most innovative? Most influential to other DJs? Most paid in full? Well sorry, public! I'm not filling in ZAP. You have to put yourself into the question - decide what success means to you, decide how you measure a DJ - and then give us your answer.

And none of that multiple choice bull, either. Fill in the blank. It's you tell me - not, me show you a list of names and you point to one of them. What kind of a skewed poll result would that yield?

So that's the kind of survey I'm talking about. What DJ would place tops on such a list? Would it be the one you would expect? Or more likely, would it be the one you wouldn't expect? And what about the other names - where would they fall out?

Would the public pick Casey Kasem and Wolfman Jack? If you call them during dinner...? I'm guessing that under those conditions the public would go with a more confrontational choice, a more controversial choice such as Jazzy Jeff. Sure, Wolfman Jack was a real pioneer in the field, justly-lauded for inventing and honing many techniques that are still in wide use today, such as howling. But I believe that the public today, as much as they might appreciate the contributions of a pioneer like the Wolfman, as much as they might respect the hegemonic domination that a colossus of the game like Kasem was able to achieve for what really was quite a long, respectable period of time, the public today is very much more cut from the mode of "what have you done for me lately?"

It's kind of sad, really.