Bluegross musician Bill Monroe, whose repertory, views on musical collaboration, and vocal style were influential on generations of bluegrass artists, was also an inspiration to many musicians, that included Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia, whose music differed significantly from his own.

(A) Same
(B) influenced generations of bluegrass artists, also inspired many musicians, including Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia, whose music differed significantly from
(C) was influential to generations of bluegrass artists, was also inspirational to many musicians, that included Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia, whose music was different significantly in comparision to
(D) was influencial to generations of bluegrass artists, also inspired many musicians, who included Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia, the music of whom differed significantly when compared to
(E) were an influence on generations of bluegrass artists, was also an inspiration to many musicians, including Elvis Presley and Jerry Garcia, whose music was significantly different from that of

Instructors - please help!!

I go with B

Yep...I say B

Can someone/Instructors explain?

A:
- "Influential on" is bad idiomatic usage.
- "That included" can't follow a comma, and, even if you remove the comma, the meaning is absurd (the implication would be that Elvis and Jerry composed part of the anatomy of many different musicians).

C:
- "Was influential to" is at best awkward.
- See A for discussion of "that included."
- "Significantly" should come before "different."
- "In comparison to" is redundant because the sentence already says "different."

D:
- See above for "influential to."
- The wording of this choice implies that bluegrass artists aren't musicians (skeleton sentence: "BM, whose stuff influenced lots of bluegrass artists, also inspired many musicians.")
- "The music of whom" is wordy ("whose music" is better).
- "Differed when compared to" is redundant - and it's an incorrect interpretation (literally, it means that the music was only 'different' when someone was actively comparing it to some other music).

E:
- "That of his own" is redundant (and incorrect, because it literally means "Bill Monroe's music's music").

[edit: I had originally posted incorrect information about subject-verb agreement on choice E. The correct verb is 'was'.]

Thanks for the great explanation. A quick question - you mentioned 'that included' cannot follow a comma. Is it grammatically incorrect?

Yep - you wouldn't use a comma before "that included" if you wanted to use it correctly.

First, the split between was and were. I voted for were.
There is no comma after vocal style, so the subject is not Bill M. and therefore is not singuar.

HELP! Let me know if I'm OK.

For choices C & D, we have the incorrect usage of "compared to". Compared to is only used to express similarity between
dis-similar things, something we are not doing here.

For (E), everything looks good except the "from that of his own" as mentioned by Ron. (The plural verb "were" is actually correct).

Instructors please re-assure me.

First guest:
There are two different verbs in the original sentence - one "were" and one "was." I'm not sure which one you're referring to when you say "was vs. were."
The first one, "were," ("vocal style were influential") has a compound subject: "repertory, views, and vocal style were influential"
The second one, "was," ("was also an inspiration to") has Bill Monroe as the subject - the clause "whose...artists" is not part of the core of the sentence, so the core becomes "Bill Monroe was..."

Second guest:
yes, in E, that opening "were" is correct. The abstract structure of the sentence is:
"Subject1, (whose subject2, subject3, and subject4 verb234 objectX), verb1 objectY..."

Subject1 and Verb1 go together. Subjects 2, 3, and 4 all go with verb234 (compound subject).

Hi Ron,

I didn't get this part....
why cant that included modify "many musicians" ... musicians that included Elvis and Jerry....

please explain

Thanks..

because then you'd have to mean, literally, that the musicians themselves, rather than the category of musicians (which is what you mean to say), included elvis and jerry.
either physically (in their anatomy), or 'included' them in some sort of social occasion or something.

if you mean to say that someone or something belongs to a category that you've laid out, you should use 'including' rather than 'that include(s)' in this sort of context.

Confusion nut no connection.... :(..

Hi Ron... i really got confused with the last part..

we want to say their music differed from Bills' music...

whose music differed from his
whose music differed from Bill's ...

both of these are correct ... ???

but shouldn't we specify what exactly is different ???

well, first of all, the word "his" isn't underlined, so you probably shouldn't worry about it too much.

grammatically, both of those options would be fine, although there's no need to use "bill's" (there are no other possible referents for "his", because the other two male names in the sentence are stuck together by "and" - you can't use he/she/it to refer to half of a compound noun)

i don't understand what you're asking in the last question ("shouldn't we specify exactly what is different?").
are you asking about whether we should actually talk about what made those other guys' music different from bill monroe's music? if so, don't forget that this is just a sentence correction problem - you shouldn't really concern yourself with its content, except inasmuch as it lets you make sure that the meaning is faithful to the original.