[asciimov]

A great jumping in spot would be to watch Ken Burn's Jazz and Country Music Documentaries. Two other shorter documentaries that I can recommend is "The Wrecking Crew" (2015) and "It Might Get Loud" (2009)

Listening to music isn't gonna do you a lot of good unless you have context. For example, The Beatles and Beach Boys influenced each other. Rubber Soul led to Pet Sounds which led to Sgt. Pepper which led to Smile.

Another consideration is that some of the real influencers aren't well known or popular, and some of them were not the singers but the music writers, producers, and musicians.