[ebooks] The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire by Ted Gioia at Arts-Photography

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Great Jazz Discography and RealBook companion!By Joe AudetteFor someone who is unfamiliar with most of the tunes in Fakebooks aka the Realbook this is a great reference that gives a bit of history for many of the tunes as well as recommended recordings. Of course it is not a 1 to 1 match vs the tunes in the RealBook 6th edition but it has a great deal of overlap and is a great starting point to find what you should listen to in order to learn jazz.I worked through this book and created a playlist on Spotify based on the discography/recommended recordings of the songs in this book. For the vast majority I was able to find the specific recordings referenced. I find it very educational to listen to the same tune by different artists in a row to get the essence of the tune and see how differently it can be interpreted and arranged. But you can also use shuffle to mix up the list and just enjoy a random stream of really great jazz recordings. For those that dont know Spotify is a free service you can install their player on your computer and listen to just about anything you want though there are commercials every few songs. I created this playlist as a companion especially for this book so thought I should post a link here to the playlist: http://open.spotify.com/user/1213453431/playlist/3C296bXroVSMGoyqWWnAjw114 of 116 people found the following review helpful. Cool. man!. but read on to see if this book is for youBy UrsiformThis book is exactly what it claims to be. a guide to what the author considers the central repertoire of jazz. As he explains in his introduction. which is about his history and his teaching of younger jazz musicians. the book is designed to help a musician learn the repertoire he or she needs to get and keep a job. This is not a history of jazz. nor a comprehensive encyclopaedia of jazz works. It is about the 250 or so works the author considers central to the jazz repertoire.Each work included is covered in 2-3 pages of detail. You learn who created the work and why. There are the early recordings. and how the work waxed and waned over time. Discussion of who played it. how they played it. and who didnt play it. How tempos and approaches to the work have changed over time. And how it is seen today.Each section ends with a list of suggested recordings over the years.As an example of what you can learn from this book. consider the following two successive entries. The Basin Street Blues were named after a street which had changed name by the time the song appeared; the name was changed back to Basin Street because of the song. The Beale Street Blues were named after a Beale Avenue; its name was changed to Beale Street because of the song. Cool!This is a long book. and probably only jazz musicians. jazz scholars. and jazz fanatics will enjoy plowing through the book cover to cover. Many others will enjoy browsing it to find out more about their favorite songs. or to check on something they heard. Keep in mind that it is an in-depth look at key works. not a comprehensive survey. and you should be satisfied.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. The missing half of jazz history books (but insufficient in itself)By Samuel C.Recently Ive read quotes by two major jazz artists (both piano-playing vocalists) who appear to disparage and dismiss the "Great American Songbook" by claiming their original music goes beyond its "limits." No history of the indigenous art form we recognize as "jazz" would even approach completeness without equal attention to the art of of American Popular Song and to the library that has become known as "The Great American Songbook." Not merely a repository but a living library of material that has been performed from the 1920s into the second decade of the 21st. it shares a symbiotic relationship with the music that inspired it and in turn was shaped by it. Simply put. there would be no jazz without the American popular song just as there would have been no American popular song without jazz. Yet the American popular song is taken for granted. treated more shabbily than the music itself. (Try to find. among the hundred or more categories of music at iTunes or . a category thats listed. simply. as "The Great American Songbook." Its time for Ken Burns to get on this enormously vital proejct and bring it to the publics attention through a PBS series similar to the one he did on jazz almost 15 years ago.)Alec Wilders book. American Popular Song: The Great Innovators. 1900-1950. was the pioneer study. remaining largely unchallenged and non-supplemented for the next 40 years while. beginning in the 1960s. the composer and performer began to become indistinguishable from one another. Song-writing was no longer the domain of the "professionals"--Berlin. Porter. Gershwin. Kern. Arlen. Rodgers. Hart. Mercer. Ellington. Strayhorn--but had reverted largely to the past-time of amateur composer-performers. Their product. while representative of a broader. more diverse public. was at the same time a distant. faint shadow of the material that had passed the litmus test of the "standards" comprising "The Great American Songbook."Without Louis and Bing. along with predecessors like W.C. Handy and successors like Frank Sinatra. there would have been no Songbook just as without the Songbook there would be no jazz as we know it. Even the influence of a single composer--Richard Rodgers--can be demonstrated to have had a profound influence on a seminal jazz performer like John Coltrane. both during Rodgers period with Lorenz Hart and his subsequent period with Oscar Hammerstein. For those brought up to proclaim jazz an "African-American Art Form" the discovery of the Songbook practically calls for a revaluation and redefinition. Jazz is as much a "Jewish-American." as an African-American. art form once the critical importance of the Songbook is acknowledged. (See Gioias discussion of "Easy to Love.") Or. if such a designation would seem injurious to the contributions of a Cole Porter (who was. as Gioia reports. an Episcopalian. even though he described his compositions as "Jewish music"). better that the historical definition of the music be broadened to a greater degree: jazz is an "American" art form.Gioias book is not without flaws. For example. his impressionist and personal statements often seem dispensable (e.g. "I personally find "Easy Living" an old-fashioned song" or his compulsion to tell us whether or not he plays a particular song). He claims that Coltranes is one of the most faithful readings of Cole Porters "Every Time We Say Goodbye" (on my two recordings. Coltrane "flubs" the last several measures of the final chorus. at the critical matching of the harmonic progression with the lyric ("from major to minor"). each time around. causing me to wonder if he ever looked at Porters music). He references the Getz album "West Coast Jazz." which features arguably Getzs greatest recorded solo. on the tune "Shine." Yet when he gets to the separate discussion of "Shine" and its recorded history. he makes no mention of Stans breath-taking solo! In search of a more "serious" interpretation of "Everything Happens to Me" than the Dorsey/Sinatra hit version. he points to the sensitive reading by Billie Holiday but shows no awareness of the two later recordings by Sinatra (on Capitol and Columbia). both of which contain as much Sinatra "gravitas" as the song can bear. He explains some of the punning in Monks "Evidence" and its relation to the word "justice." but neglects any mention of perhaps the most important detail: when Art Blakey recorded the song (featuring a brilliant. "career-making" solo by Lee Morgan). the song was literally known as "Justice" and listed as such on the back cover Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World. Moreover. Gioia would do the jazz world by pointing out that Coltranes favorite tune. which he worked and reworked. was Billy Eckstines "I Want to Talk About You" (see Live at Birdland. which is perhaps the definitive version. with a cadenza I would have not believed had I not been in Birdland in 1963 to witness it. Perhaps most importantly. Gioias organization does not lend itself to an understanding of the lives. careers. and signature musical characteristics of the major contributors to the songbook: Berlin. Kern .Gershwin. Arlen. Porter. Rodgers and Hart/Porter.This is not meant as a criticism of Gioias book as much as an acknowledgment of complementary resources that readers--musicians and enthusiasts alike--have available to them for a more complete picture of "The Great American Songbook." its highlights. and its major authors. For the "story" of American Popular Song--including its most noteworthy achievements and its chief composers (including their public and intimate private lives)--the best one-volume study that Ive found is Gerald Masts Cant Help Singin. A prolific film scholar during his abbreviated lifetime. Mast would have been the ideal consultant for that Ken Burns PBS series that many of us have been waiting for: "The American Popular Song and Its Great Composers" (One composer per episode--but no fewer than 24 complete episodes--would constitute a terrific introduction). Just as astute jazz followers instantly identify seminal voices like Louis. Prez. Hawks. Birds and Tranes. its possible to identify the major composers by the unique approach of each to writing popular songs. each as distinctive and personal as major poets (e.g. Shakespeares and Miltons differences within the same 14 lines of the iambic pentameter sonnet form are as striking as the contrast between Gershwins motivic melodies and Rodgers scale-based melodies in the 32-bar American popular song).Besides books like Masts. readers who are serious about the American popular song should be made aware of the wealth of information on the internet--esp. the comprehensive website. "Jazz Standards dot com." which organizes its discussions of the songs from "most" to "least" recorded (most recorded of all time? "Body and Soul." Learn your flats and sharps!) as well as the individual entries about most standards on Wikipedia. In the meantime. Gioias book is probably the definitive one-volume study of the individual songs from a musicians point of few. singling out melodies and harmonies that must be learned and memorized by any musician whose goal is completeness or. simply. being brought up to speed sufficiently to play the tunes on the job (after learning the first 10. the next 150-200 are apt to be surprisingly fast and easy. And not least of all. musicians. from my experience. are far too limited in their listening experience. 30 albums by Sinatra. Ellas Songbooks. 10 albums each by Billie. Sarah and Tony. 30-40 Sonny Stitt albums (the instrumental equivalent of Sinatra)--listen to them until you "learn to like" them and can identify the songs. (Ive met a couple of musicians who had a single vocal album in their collection--the Coltrane-Johnny Hartman Ballads session. A good choice. but if you expect other people to support your music. you owe it to the great predecessors to listen to theirs.At the very least. musicians will--like Sinatra and Bennett--announce the name of a songs composer and even begin to attach the music they play to the name of a composer. (Only then am I unlikely to experience ever again an exchange like the following: Me: "Watch out. Its a Jerome Kern bridge!" Student: "Whats that?" Me: "Jerome Kern"? Student: "No. A bridge?")