The Great American Songbook

The Story of Popular Standards

By: John Cousins

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

We have entered an age where we now have instant, unlimited, free access to the history of recorded music. We have the ability to listen across genres and eras. This is a world-wide phenomenon. This book is a guide to taking advantage of this astonishing new power. This book is also a way to appreciate one of our great cultural legacies; one that is very alive today. It is about American popular song and the body of work referred to as the Great American Songbook. These tunes are appreciated and treasured by listeners all over the world. This book is an effort to introduce you to the songs, songwriters, performers, venues and versions of the Great American Songbook. There are few things more precious and interesting than a Golden Age. There was a Golden Age of a particular kind of music that ran from the twenties through the fifties: the golden age of popular standards; the songs that constitute The Great American Song Book. These tunes were written by dapper, creative giants like Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Charmichael, Jerome Kern, and Dorothy Fields, all urbane sophisticated talents who created a body of work that effortlessly captures that urbanity and sophistication. These songwriting teams in many cases split the composing tasks along functional lines: one writing the music and one writing the lyrics. The composers were writing vehicles for others to perform and usually pitched the tunes in the context of a Broadway or Hollywood musical. They were cranking out tunes for the Hollywood and Broadway dream factories at a prodigious pace. They really worked! Despite cranking out so many songs, they still managed to create music that has a tossed off, effortless quality and a guileless directness. Their songs feel unpretentious and casual: genuine and authentic. But their craft and genius raise these songs to high art. Many of these tunes became popular hits in their own right, lifted out of the shows and movies, and have been recorded by all the great performers. Fred Astaire debuted many of these tunes and was a favorite of the writing teams. He was known as much for his singing as for his dancing! Diana Krall, Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Buble are some of the latest to pay homage to the songbook. These tunes also have taken on another musical life as blowing vehicles for jazz musicians. The standard jazz repertoire is filled with these tunes because of their great chord progressions and catchy melodies filled with hooks. This kind of song structure allows for endless variations with chord substitutions and embellishments. Bird, Miles, Trane, have all dipped deep into this repertoire, re-interpreted it, and made it their own. In addition to the endlessly inventive music, the lyrics to these songs are crafted with such a combination of wit and humor, tenderness and toughness, as to support the most profound heartache and disappointment with hope and buoyancy, and give light-hearted expression to inexpressible joy. Just listen to Ella, Frank and Satchmo deliver these emotions. Much time has passed since their origins in theatre and film. They have been unmoored from their original settings, transcending time and place. They are now ours to provide substance and expression to our experience. That is how culture functions: conjuring emotion and memory, and providing structure and wisdom for living. I love these tunes. The jazz inflected music and the witty word play and internal rhymes are endlessly fresh. It’s a golden age of music that reflects a golden age of romance. Much of the dramatic action in these tunes takes place in a fantasy land called Manhattan: a place of chic nightclubs, tuxedos and gowns, cocktails and social whirl. It’s a time and place polished by nostalgia to an imaginary sheen that creates an oasis where our hearts can beat and thrive.