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Famous musicians who couldn't read music...

Interesting, if a little too brief - some are purely singers (performers), so they have no real need to understand how to read notation. Paul McCartney often discusses his approach to composition and has even stressed that he genuinely believes that his lack of skills in writing music has helped him be more creative.
 
It's common among pop/rock/blues musicians not to read notes. They usually learn by imitating others. ABBA's Benny Andersson can be added to the list.

I think van Halen has said something like: 'Learning to do something as complicated as playing an instrument while trying to do something as complicated as reading notes. Not for me.'

I have learned myself to play the guitar (rather badly), I used sheet music with guitar tabs in the process and had to learn to read notes to do that. How anyone can read it and play simultaneously is beyond me...
 
Musicians who start with good oral skills can trust what they hear and pick up music quickly by ear. Happened to me - when I had piano lessons at an early age I'd ask my teacher to play me the tune first a couple of times, and then I'd play it myself. I fooled both her and my parents for a year before they found out I wasn't reading the score at all.

I've never been comfortable reading music and I've always been a poor sight reader. Conversely I can pick up chords to jazz tunes very quickly. I hear the harmonies and visualise the notes on a piano keyboard. Musicians who start off reading all their music may or may not have such well developed oral skills.

There are three common ways to identify notes and keys - the actual pitch you hear, where it lies on the instrument and the score. Musicians should ideally relate to all three but the first two are enough to make good music
 
Rock and pop musicians I can somewhat understand not being able (or needing) to read music; the majority of it is fairly basic. But what about jazz, for example? Errol Garner was one hell of a piano player, but couldn't read a note of music and yet wrote 'Misty'. Dave Brubeck was a very poor sight reader, and nearly didn't graduate college unless he promised to never teach piano. Wes Montgomery couldn't read either. Any others?

Also, I take umbrage at the inclusion of Kanye West in the above list.
 
For most of human history most music has not been written down. Until the c20th it was for the most part only Western classical music that was preserved this way. For other musics and in other cultures music was passed on through oral tradition.

And no surprise that musics with a strong tradition of improvisation place less emphasis on notation.

I think there's also the fact that traditional notation isn't able to capture the essence of a lot of music. A transcription of, say, a Sunn O))) recording won't give much of an idea of how it actually sounds.
 
Even session musicians often don't read, Tim Pierce is one - he has 969 credits listed on Discogs. They'll work from chord charts and improvise the solos over the chords. It's just the way it's usually done.
 
When one considers just how many folks have taken music lessons for 4-5 years, or longer, and never really got very far for all the time and effort spent, it seems surprising to me that the folks on that list accomplished what they did.
I guess it speaks volumes for the value of having a gift/natural talent and lots of desire.
Or, yes, being a vocalist...
 
Reminded of Artie Shaw, jazz clarinet and bandleader. Applied for a job in a band when he was 15 (?), he already had a bit of a reputation as a player. Paraphrased, the story goes;

"the bandleader said to me "Can you read?", and I thought he meant books, words, so I said "Yeah, I can read". So he puts some sheet music down in front of me, and I didn't know what to do with it. So I said to him "Can you hold the job for me for a week? I'll be back in a week, and we'll do this again". A week later, I got the job."

It'll be on YouTube somewhere, but ...
 
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