Jazz standard

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Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be standards changes over time. Songs included in major fake book publications (sheet music collections of popular tunes) and jazz reference works offer a rough guide to which songs are considered standards.

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Not all jazz standards were written by jazz composers. Many are originally Tin Pan Alley popular songs, Broadway show tunes or songs from Hollywood musicals – the Great American Songbook. [1] In Europe, jazz standards and "fake books" may even include some traditional folk songs (such as in Scandinavia) or pieces of ethnic music (such as traveller melodies) that have been played with a jazz feel by well known jazz players. A commonly played song can only be considered a jazz standard if it is widely played among jazz musicians. The jazz standard repertoire has some overlap with blues and pop standards.

The most recorded standard composed by a jazz musician, and one of the most covered songs of all time, is Duke Ellington's and Juan Tizol's "Caravan" with over 500 uses. [2] [3] Originally, the most recorded jazz standard was W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" for over 20 years from the 1930s onward, after which Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" replaced it. [4] Following this, the place was held by "Body and Soul" by Johnny Green. [5]

Before 1920

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, from the original 1918 promotional postcard while the band was playing at Reisenweber's Cafe in New York City. Shown are (left to right) Tony Sbarbaro (aka Tony Spargo) on drums; Edwin "Daddy" Edwards on trombone; D. James "Nick" LaRocca on cornet; Larry Shields on clarinet, and Henry Ragas on piano. ODJBcard.JPG
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, from the original 1918 promotional postcard while the band was playing at Reisenweber's Cafe in New York City. Shown are (left to right) Tony Sbarbaro (aka Tony Spargo) on drums; Edwin "Daddy" Edwards on trombone; D. James "Nick" LaRocca on cornet; Larry Shields on clarinet, and Henry Ragas on piano.

From its conception at the change of the twentieth century, jazz was music intended for dancing. This influenced the choice of material played by early jazz groups: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, New Orleans Rhythm Kings and others included a large number of Tin Pan Alley popular songs in their repertoire, and record companies often used their power to dictate which songs were to be recorded by their artists. Certain songs were pushed by recording executives and therefore quickly achieved standard status; this started with the first jazz recordings in 1916, with That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland (1916) by Collins and Harlan for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on Blue Amberol in December 1916 [6] : 80  and in 1917, when the Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded "Darktown Strutters' Ball" and "Indiana". [7] The first record with 'Jass' on the label, The Original Dixieland One-Step was issue 18255 by Victor Talking Machine Company in 1917. [8] : 7  Originally simply called "jazz", the music of early jazz bands is today often referred to as "Dixieland" or "New Orleans jazz", to distinguish it from more recent subgenres. [9]

The origins of jazz are in the musical traditions of early twentieth-century New Orleans, including brass band music, the blues, ragtime and spirituals, [10] and some of the most popular early standards come from these influences. Ragtime songs "Twelfth Street Rag" and "Tiger Rag" have become popular numbers for jazz artists, as have blues tunes "St. Louis Blues" and "St. James Infirmary". Tin Pan Alley songwriters contributed several songs to the jazz standard repertoire, including "Indiana" and "After You've Gone". Others, such as "Some of These Days" and "Darktown Strutters' Ball", were introduced by vaudeville performers. The most often recorded standards of this period are W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues", Turner Layton and Henry Creamer's "After You've Gone" and James Hanley and Ballard MacDonald's "Indiana". [11]

1920s

A period known as the "Jazz Age" started in the United States in the 1920s. Jazz had become popular music in the country, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to old cultural values. [12] Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York. [13]

In the early years of jazz, record companies were often eager to decide what songs were to be recorded by their artists. Popular numbers in the 1920s were pop hits such as "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Dinah" and "Bye Bye Blackbird". The first jazz artist to be given some liberty in choosing his material was Louis Armstrong, whose band helped popularize many of the early standards in the 1920s and 1930s. [7]

Some compositions written by jazz artists have endured as standards, including Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Ain't Misbehavin'". The most recorded 1920s standard is Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish's "Stardust". [14] Several songs written by Broadway composers in the 1920s have become standards, such as George and Ira Gershwin's "The Man I Love" (1924), Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" (1927) and Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?" (1929). However, it was not until the 1930s that musicians became comfortable with the harmonic and melodic sophistication of Broadway tunes and started including them regularly in their repertoire. [13]

1930s

Broadway theatre contributed some of the most popular standards of the 1930s, including George and Ira Gershwin's "Summertime" (1935), Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "My Funny Valentine" (1937) and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's "All the Things You Are" (1939). These songs still rank among the most recorded standards of all time. [14] The most popular 1930s standard, Johnny Green's "Body and Soul", was introduced in Broadway and became a huge hit after Coleman Hawkins's 1939 recording. [5]

1930s saw the rise of swing jazz as a dominant form in American music. Duke Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have later become standards: "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933) and "Caravan" (1936), among others. Other influential band leaders of this period were Benny Goodman and Count Basie.

1940s

The swing era lasted until the mid-1940s, and produced popular tunes such as Duke Ellington's "Cotton Tail" (1940) and Billy Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train" (1941). With the big bands struggling to keep going during World War II, a shift was happening in jazz in favor of smaller groups. Some swing era musicians, such as Louis Jordan, later found popularity in a new kind of music, called "rhythm and blues", that would evolve into rock and roll in the 1950s. [15]

Bebop emerged in the early 1940s, with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk leading the way. It appealed to a more specialized audiences than earlier forms of jazz, with sophisticated harmonies, fast tempos and often virtuoso musicianship. Bebop musicians often used 1930s standards, especially those from Broadway musicals, as part of their repertoire. [15] Among standards written by bebop musicians are Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" (1941) and "A Night in Tunisia" (1942), Parker's "Anthropology" (1946), "Yardbird Suite" (1946) and "Scrapple from the Apple" (1947), and Monk's "'Round Midnight" (1944), which is currently one of the most recorded jazz standard composed by a jazz musician. [16]

1950s and later

Modal jazz recordings, such as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue , became popular in the late 1950s. Popular modal standards include Davis's "All Blues" and "So What" (both 1959), John Coltrane's "Impressions" (1963) and Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" (1965). Later, Davis's "second great quintet", which included saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, recorded a series of highly acclaimed albums in the mid-to-late 1960s. Standards from these sessions include Shorter's "Footprints" (1966) and "Freedom Jazz Dance" by Eddie Harris (1966).[ citation needed ]

In Brazil, a new style of music called bossa nova evolved in the late 1950s. Based on the Brazilian samba as well as jazz, bossa nova was championed by João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. Gilberto and Stan Getz started a bossa nova craze in the United States with their 1963 album Getz/Gilberto . Among the genre's songs that are now considered standards are Bonfá's "Manhã de Carnaval" (1959), Marcos Valle's "Summer Samba" (1966), and numerous Jobim's songs, including "Desafinado" (1959), "The Girl from Ipanema" (1962) and "Corcovado" (1962). Later, composers such as Edu Lobo and Egberto Gismonti contributed a great deal to the Brazilian jazz repertoire, with tunes that include "Casa Forte", "Frevo Rasgado" and "Loro".[ citation needed ]

The jazz fusion movement fused jazz with other musical styles, most famously funk and rock. Its golden age was from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Top fusion artists, such as Weather Report, Chick Corea and Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters, The Manhattan Transfer, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, achieved cross-over popularity, although public interest in the genre faded at the turn of the 1980s. Fusion's biggest hits, Corea's "Spain" (1971), Hancock's "Chameleon" (1973) and Joe Zawinul's "Birdland" (1977), have been covered numerous times thereafter and are considered modern jazz standards.[ citation needed ]

A number of songs written by pop and rock artists have become standards, such as "Somewhere Out There" by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram, "Yesterday" by The Beatles, "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys, and "Moondance" by Van Morrison.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Original Dixieland Jass Band</span> American jazz band

The Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) was a Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz record ever issued. The group composed and recorded many jazz standards, the most famous being "Tiger Rag". In late 1917, the spelling of the band's name was changed to Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big band</span> Music ensemble associated with jazz music

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trad jazz</span> Form of jazz in the United States and Britain in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

Trad jazz, short for "traditional jazz", is a form of jazz in the United States and Britain in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, played by musicians such as Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer and Monty Sunshine, based on a revival of New Orleans Dixieland jazz, on trumpets, trombones, clarinets, tambourines, banjos, double basses, saxophones, Hammond organs, pipe organs, pianos, electric basses, guitars and drums and cymbals, with a populist repertoire which also included jazz versions of pop songs and nursery rhymes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiger Rag</span> 1917 jazz standard

"Tiger Rag" is a jazz standard that was recorded and copyrighted by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917. It is one of the most recorded jazz compositions. In 2003, the 1918 recording of "Tiger Rag" was entered into the U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

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Christopher D. Tyle is dixieland jazz musician who performs on cornet, trumpet, clarinet and drums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margie (song)</span> 1920 single by Original Dixieland Jazz Band

"Margie", also known as "My Little Margie", is a 1920 popular song composed in collaboration by vaudeville performer and pianist Con Conrad and ragtime pianist J. Russel Robinson, a member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Lyrics were written by Benny Davis, a vaudeville performer and songwriter. The song was introduced by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1920 as Victor 78, 18717-A, in a medley paired with "Singin' the Blues". The B side was "Palesteena". The ODJB recorded their instrumental version on December 1, 1920.
Other popular versions in 1920-21 were by Gene Rodemich; Eddie Cantor; Ted Lewis; and Frank Crumit. The Rega Dance Orchestra recorded the song in October, 1920 for Okeh Records, 4211.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rose Room</span>

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Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, fostered awareness of this new style of music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1950s in jazz</span>

By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of bebop was replaced with a tendency towards calm and smoothness, with the sounds of cool jazz, which favoured long, linear melodic lines. It emerged in New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white swing jazz musicians and predominantly black bebop musicians, and it dominated jazz in the first half of the 1950s. The starting point were a series of singles on Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950 of a nonet led by trumpeter Miles Davis, collected and released first on a ten-inch and later a twelve-inch as the Birth of the Cool. Cool jazz recordings by Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Stan Getz and the Modern Jazz Quartet usually have a "lighter" sound which avoided the aggressive tempos and harmonic abstraction of bebop. Cool jazz later became strongly identified with the West Coast jazz scene, but also had a particular resonance in Europe, especially Scandinavia, with emergence of such major figures as baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg. The theoretical underpinnings of cool jazz were set out by the blind Chicago pianist Lennie Tristano, and its influence stretches into such later developments as Bossa nova, modal jazz, and even free jazz. See also the list of cool jazz and West Coast musicians for further detail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1940s in jazz</span>

In the early 1940s in jazz, bebop emerged, led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. It helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it used faster tempos. Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz; the dissonant tritone interval became the "most important interval of bebop" and players engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation which used "passing" chords, substitute chords, and altered chords. The style of drumming shifted as well to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time, while the snare and bass drum were used for accents. This appealed to a more specialized audiences than earlier forms of jazz, with sophisticated harmonies, fast tempos and often virtuoso musicianship. Bebop musicians often used 1930s standards, especially those from Broadway musicals, as part of their repertoire. Among standards written by bebop musicians are Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" (1941) and "A Night in Tunisia" (1942), Parker's "Anthropology" (1946), "Yardbird Suite" (1946) and "Scrapple from the Apple" (1947), and Monk's "'Round Midnight" (1944), which is currently the most recorded jazz standard composed by a jazz musician. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians, especially established swing players, who bristled at the new harmonic sounds. To hostile critics, bebop seemed to be filled with "racing, nervous phrases". Despite the initial friction, by the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary. The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1920s in jazz</span> Jazz music-related events during the 1920s

The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of jazz</span> Overview of and topical guide to jazz

Jazz – musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States, mixing African music and European classical music traditions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarinet Marmalade</span>

Clarinet Marmalade, later Clarinet Marmalade Blues, is a 1918 dixieland jazz standard composed by Larry Shields and Henry Ragas of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. It is played in the key of F major. It was recorded by Fletcher Henderson in 1926 and Frankie Trumbauer in 1927.

References

Notes
  1. ↑ "What Types of Compositions Become Jazz Standards?" jazzstandards.com. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Caravan by Barney Bigard and His Jazzopators on WhoSampled".
  3. ↑ "Most Covered Tracks". WhoSampled.
  4. ↑ St. Louis Blues at jazzstandards.com - retrieved on February 20, 2009.
  5. 1 2 "Body and Soul". jazzstandards.com. Retrieved February 20, 2009.
  6. ↑ Hoffmann, Frank; B. Lee Cooper; Tim Gracyk (November 12, 2012). Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. Routledge. ISBN   9781136592294.
  7. 1 2 Tyle, Chris. "Jazz History". JazzStandards.com. Retrieved May 18, 2009.
  8. ↑ Hancoff, Steve (October 26, 2005). New Orleans Jazz for Fingerstyle Guitar. Mel Bay Publications. ISBN   9781610658294.
  9. ↑ Kernfeld 1995, p. 2
  10. ↑ Hardie 2002, p. 27
  11. ↑ Tyle, Chris. "Jazz History: The Standards (Early Period)". JazzStandards.com. Retrieved June 18, 2009.
  12. ↑ Faulkner, Anne Shaw (August 1921). "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?". Ladies Home Journal: 16–34. Archived from the original on June 20, 2010. Retrieved March 20, 2010.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. 1 2 Tyle, Chris. "Jazz History: The Standards (1920s)". JazzStandards.com. Retrieved August 20, 2009.
  14. 1 2 "Songs – Top 50". JazzStandards.com. Retrieved August 15, 2009.
  15. 1 2 Jazz History: The Standards (1940s) on jazzstandards.com - retrieved on May 18, 2009
  16. ↑ "Jazz Standards Songs and Instrumentals ('Round Midnight)".
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