20th-century American male musicians

Thomas Avinger (Weslaco, Texas, September 28, 1928 – Houston, Texas, November 18, 2000) was an American composer, conductor and systems analyst for the oil industry.

Donald Ray Payne (January 7, 1933 – February 25, 2017) was an American jazz double-bassist and electric bassist.

Clifford Donley Scott (June 21, 1928 – April 19, 1993), born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, was an American saxophonist and flautist who played in jazz, blues, and R&B idioms.
Scott started as a drummer in a family band and also learned to play piano and violin before picking up clarinet as a teenager. He played in a house band led by James Hopkins at San Antonio's Avalon Grill in the late 1940s, then worked with Amos Milburn, Jay McShann, Lionel Hampton, Roy Brown, and Roy Milton. In 1955 he began working with Bill Doggett, and was a prominent soloist on many of Doggett's most famous recordings, including "Honky Tonk". He also recorded as a leader in the late 1950s and early 1960s and worked as a session musician for rock, pop, and R&B recordings. In the 1960s he worked with Sonny Thompson, Jimmy Witherspoon, Gerald Wilson, Onzy Matthews, and Frank Butler, and was a member of Ray Charles's ensemble from 1966 to 1968 and again in 1970. Late in his career he worked primarily locally in San Antonio, playing with George Prado and Jim Cullum, Jr.

Bernard Wagenaar (July 18, 1894 – May 19, 1971) was a Dutch-American composer, conductor and violinist.
Wagenaar was born in Arnhem. He studied at Utrecht University before starting his career as a teacher and conductor in 1914. He moved to the U.S. in 1920, and he became a citizen in 1927. From 1925 to 1968 he taught at the Juilliard School, where Ned Rorem, Jacob Druckman, Norman Dello Joio, Bernard Herrmann, Robert Ward, Tutti Camarata, Charles Jones, Alan Shulman, Katharine Mulky Warne, and James Cohn were among his pupils. He was an active member of the League of Composers and similar organizations and was an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. He died in York, Maine.
He wrote four symphonies (1926, 1930, 1936 and 1946) and other orchestral, vocal, and chamber music in a broadly neoclassical style.His second symphony was one of the few American works Arturo Toscanini performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; the first performances were on November 10, 11, and 13, 1933, in Carnegie Hall.

Gerald Busby (born December 16, 1935) is an American composer.
Busby was born in Tyler, Texas. He studied piano as a child, playing with the Houston Symphony when he was fifteen. He attended Yale where he studied music in college, but once graduated, began working as a traveling salesman. At age 40 he had an "epiphany" and began to compose, a direction which surprised him.In 1977, with the assistance of Virgil Thomson, he moved to the Hotel Chelsea in New York City where he has written most of his work. Living at the Hotel Chelsea brought him into contact with numerous cultural figures. One of them was dancer Rudolf Nureyev and his then-partner Wallace Potts. Potts gave Paul Taylor a recording by Busby's music, which led to Busby writing the score for Taylor's dance Runes. Regarding his scores for Paul Taylor's dance "Runes" and Robert Altman's film 3 Women, Busby said "Those two pieces are acknowledged as masterpieces, so that I know they’ll last beyond me,” Mr. Busby said. “Not because what I did was a masterpiece, but I was part of it."In 1985 Busby was diagnosed with HIV as was his partner Samuel Byers. Byers died on December 14, 1993; the couple had been together for 18 years. "Sam’s death was just unbearable...He lost his mind and withered away. I was there the whole time with him and taking care of him, so I just went nuts." After a bout of depression and drug addiction, he became sober and began composing again. In 2007, his monthly income amounted to $658 from Social Security, $78 in disability payments, and $156 in food stamps. Income from his music was undependable; in a good month he could get $1000, or nothing. The New York Times ran him as one of their "most neediest cases." Through the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Busby was able to receive $754.96 for digitizing recordings originally made on perishable cassette tape.Despite being HIV positive, he claims that his immune system has regenerated, something he attributes to his daily practice of reiki. He continues to live at the Hotel Chelsea.

Raymond Lewenthal (August 29, 1923 – November 21, 1988) was an American virtuoso pianist. Among his teachers were Olga Samaroff, who was a pupil of Charles-Valentin Alkan's son, Élie-Miriam Delaborde.

Joe Marion Allison (October 3, 1924 – August 2, 2002) was an American songwriter, radio and television personality, record producer, and country music business executive. Allison won five BMI performance awards for hit singles he wrote and a 2 million performance award for writing "He'll Have to Go". He co-founded the Country Music Association. CMT called him "one of the most influential figures in the rise of modern country music."

Marcel Tabuteau (2 July 1887 – 4 January 1966) was a French-American oboist who is considered the founder of the American school of oboe playing.

Henry Arana Rodríguez (May 1, 1921 – February 23, 2008) was a composer of popular songs who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lived all but the last years of his life in Puerto Rico. At the time of his death, from complications related to a neurological disease, he was residing in Alabama and was married to Carmen Mártir Santiago. He served in the United States Army in World War II.Arana composed hundreds of songs made popular by a wide variety of Puerto Rican artists, including Cano Estremera, Bobby Valentín, Willie Rosario, El Gran Combo, Cortijo y su Combo, Tito Rojas, Andy Montañez, Gilberto Santa Rosa, La Sonora Ponceña, Mario Ortiz and Mario Hernández, as well as Mexican artists, such as Adrián Alejandro.
Among his best-known compositions are "Mi Puerto Rico", which was played as his remains were laid to rest at the Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, "La novia automática", "Awilda", "Sanjuanero", "Por culpa de tu amor", "Como sube la gasolina" and "La gringa". His "Samba con Salsa", composed in the 1980s was a precursor of the fusion music that was popularized twenty years later.

Joe Leandrew McQueen (May 30, 1919 – December 7, 2019), also known as Joe Lee McQueen, was an American jazz saxophonist.