Music history looks different when you track it not by
groups or musicians, eras or styles, but by the songs themselves.
That’s part of the fun of Ted Gioia’s new book, The Jazz Standards, which looks at more
than 250 songs --. He pays special attention to their origins, the varied way
jazz artists have interpreted each one, and a handful of the finest versions of
each. (There are a few technical descriptions, but this is not for musicians
only.)
This is one of the best browsing books I know, and I’ve
spent more time than intended wandering from Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine”
to Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” to the traditional “St. James Infirmary,”
and wondering what these numbers might have in common. Part of what’s striking
is how many great, enduring songs come from goofy movies or minor shows.
Of course, there are songs I would have loved to see in
here: Where’s “Daydream”? “Chitlins Con
Carne”? “Born To Be Blue”? I’ve got my fingers crossed for a second volume.
(Disclosure: Ted -- who is the author of West Coast Jazz, Delta Blues, and a blogger on science-fiction and the detective
novel -- is a friend and confidante of sorts, and I am named in his acknowledgements.)
Here's our exchange.
What were
your criteria for these songs? Your favorite? The most performed or taught, or
some mixture of factors?
When I started work on The
Jazz Standards, I knew that somewhere between 200 and 300 songs needed to
be covered in the book. These are the
core songs jazz musicians are expected to know, and fans are likely to
hear. I eventually settled on 252 songs
for inclusion, and listed more than 2,000 tracks in my recommended listening
guide.
So this isn’t a survey of my favorite standards—although
many of these songs are personal favorites.
Nor is it a look at the bestselling jazz performances or even the most
frequently recorded. Some older jazz songs—such
as “Fidgety Feet” or “Sweet Sue”—have been recorded more often than “Giant
Steps” or “So What,” but aren’t really part of today’s standard
repertoire. Instead, I aimed to put
together a guide to the songs that are the core of the standard repertoire in
the present day.
The ‘30s
was a rich period for Broadway shows, and the ‘40s saw the exploding creativity
of bebop, the ‘50s great jazz songwriters like Monk, Mingus and Miles
Davis. But looking at these songs that
speak to us in the 21st century, did the lid close at some point? How and why?
Any kind of song that seems to succeed since that heyday?
Popular music has grown simpler and simpler over the passing
decades. You could even quantify
it. I’d love to see a statistician
measure the change in hits songs since the 1930s. You could chart the decline in chromaticism,
the narrowing range of the melodies, the replacement of wide interval leaps
with more predictable whole note steps and repeated notes, or the reduced pace
of harmonic movement. Music has gone on a starvation diet, and the
songs often look weak and anemic as a result.
Given this state of affairs, who can be surprised that jazz
musicians continue to play the old songs?
Certainly there are still interesting new songs and talented composers
out there, but it’s harder and harder to find them. I listen to new music every day—I’ve listened
to more than 500 new albums so far this year—and I’m struck by how well hidden
the best recordings are. The good stuff
almost never appears on major labels anymore, and almost never on the radio
either. You need to be determined and
persistent to find high quality new songs nowadays. Most jazz musicians take the path of least
resistance: they play the old standards,
and write new songs of their own, but rarely draw on the broader streams of
modern popular music.
This comes at a cost, however. Jazz needs to maintain a vital dialogue with
the popular music of the current day, otherwise it risks becoming a museum
piece. I applaud the jazz musicians who
are trying to find a way of creating this kind of dialogue. But can they convince others to join them in
this endeavor? And can they incorporate
populist elements in their music without diluting the high standards that, even
today, are the pride and joy of the jazz world? Time will tell. I note with some concern that the list of
jazz standards featured in my book isn’t much different than the list someone
might have compiled ten or twenty years ago.
That can’t be healthy for the art form.
Which
composer shows up the most often? What musical quality could he summon better
than anyone else?
I haven’t done a count, but clearly the great American
songwriters—George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers—are
well represented, as are important jazz composers such as Thelonious Monk,
Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
Yet as I look at the range of the standard repertoire, I
don’t notice many stylistic similarities.
You can’t study this material without marveling over the diversity of
this body of work. And even though I
like some of these songs better than others, there are very few works in the
standard repertoire that don’t have some redeeming quality or noteworthy hook
in their construction. Jazz musicians like smart songs, and the standard
repertoire mostly consists of real gems, and only a few fake jewels.
Is there a
musician who seemed to have an individualistic and intuitive sense of the
possibilities of a great song – even those that others had neglected or failed
to transform? Maybe you could say a word about the way Chet Baker and Sonny
Rollins – two very different artists – chose their material.
People who listen to the recommended tracks I list in my
book—and by the way, a great Spotify playlist compiled by Jim Higgins (http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/161618065.html)
makes it easy for them to do so—will see the many different ways jazz musicians
have put their own distinctive stamp on the music. Sometimes their interpretation builds on the
basic personality of the song, but in other instances a jazz performer will
force a song to take on new, unexpected disguises. Lester Young and Chet Baker might be
considered masters of the former approach, building their own renditions on the
lyrical ingredients inherent in the composition. On the other hand, a Sonny Rollins or a
Coleman Hawkins erect their own imposing superstructures on the original foundations,
sometimes with such boldness and mastery that the original song is turned into
something the composer might never have anticipated. Both approaches are part of the jazz
heritage. In fact, part of the joy of studying
this music comes from accepting that there is no one right way of playing it.
Do we
learn anything technically by looking en mass at the best or most-played songs?
That is, does there seem to be a key or tempo our ear likes best, or some
hard-wired rule about not jumping more than a fifth in our favorite melodies,
or something?
I’m not sure we can draw conclusions about songs in general
based on the jazz standard repertoire.
Most of the songs in the standard repertoire are more complex than your
typical pop tune, but even that isn’t a hard and fast rule. Some standards are simple riff-tunes., not
much different than a rock or R&B tune.
Sometimes the song itself is nothing special, but the chord changes
serve as a good vehicle for improvisation.
In general, this body of work tells us more about how jazz
musicians can find inspiration almost anywhere—in a movie theme from a
forgotten film, from a tune from a failed Broadway show, from some new twist in
a song from Brazil or France or wherever.
Studying this music, you learn that jazz musicians are omnivores, able
to devour and digest a surprising diversity of raw materials and adapt them to
their own purposes.
Do you
have a single favorite, after listening to and thinking about hundreds, maybe
thousands, of songs? What makes it so perfect?
If I could have composed any standard, and put it up on the
shelf like a trophy, I probably would choose Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush
Life.” The chords are exquisite and the
composition is as sophisticated as any art song in the classical repertoire. And the words are as daring as they
come. Have you ever heard a love song
that presents such a savage denunciation of love? Is there a more unexpected line in the
popular song idiom than “Romance is mush stifling those who strive”? That’s some heavy stuff. Yet “Lush Life” also shows a soft underbelly,
an extraordinary vulnerability, even as it pretends to give up on love and
romance. There are many levels of meaning in this song, and even its title has
a double signification. It’s hard to believe that Strayhorn wrote this piece at
such a young—part of it when he was perhaps only 17 or 18. This sounds like a song you would compose
after long and painful experience of life’s many vicissitudes.
In the
broadest sense: Does jazz need standards, or does a firm canon inhibit the
music’s growth?
Any canon is both a blessing and a curse. You want to hold up the best work for
emulation and admiration, and formulating a canon is an essential part of this
process. You can use it as a teaching
tool for the young, and an emblem of achievement for the old. But too much reverence for a historical body
of work can be stultifying. In my book,
I aimed to celebrate those who established the standard repertoire, but also acknowledge
the contributions of those who tried to subvert it. The jazz world needs both kinds of
practitioners, and fortunately we are still blessed with a few of them.
This is one of the best browsing books I know, and I’ve
spent more time than intended wandering from Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine”
to Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” to the traditional “St. James Infirmary,”
and wondering what these numbers might have in common. Part of what’s striking
is how many great, enduring songs come from goofy movies or minor shows. 
Given this state of affairs, who can be surprised that jazz
musicians continue to play the old songs?
Certainly there are still interesting new songs and talented composers
out there, but it’s harder and harder to find them. I listen to new music every day—I’ve listened
to more than 500 new albums so far this year—and I’m struck by how well hidden
the best recordings are. The good stuff
almost never appears on major labels anymore, and almost never on the radio
either. You need to be determined and
persistent to find high quality new songs nowadays. Most jazz musicians take the path of least
resistance: they play the old standards,
and write new songs of their own, but rarely draw on the broader streams of
modern popular music.
