[Dixielandjazz] "The Jazz Standards" reviewed - Wall Street Journal

[Robert Ringwald]

Keeping Score of the All-Time Greats
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2012
The guitarist John Pizzarelli once did a bit in which he showed how his father (and
fellow jazz guitarist), Bucky, taught him how to play various standards: plucking
out the tune, one resonating note at a time, then showing him the chords. That's
the way most musicians learn standards -- melody and then harmony -- but Mr. Pizzarelli
lamented that he was never exposed to anything else about these songs: who wrote
them, who sang them, where they were first heard.
Why does this matter? Because jazz is the only music that uses, much of the time,
what might be called a "hand-me-down" repertoire. Most "jazz standards" were not
originally composed with jazz musicians in mind but introduced in Broadway musicals
and Hollywood films: "All the Things You Are" and "It Could Happen to You" -- to
cite two of the most frequently performed jazz standards of all time -- were written
for the 1939 show "Very Warm for May" and the 1944 film "And the Angels Sing." The
story of how these songs became standards is the story of how jazz connects to all
sorts of other threads in American music.
Broadway and jazz factions tend to dismiss each other, but in "The Jazz Standards"
Ted Gioia at least tries to bring the two together, showing no bias as to whether
a song was written by John Coltrane or Richard Rodgers. For every song by a jazz
composer (Thelonious Monk, Benny Golson, Sonny Rollins) there is one by a Broadway
or Hollywood songwriter (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen). Duke Ellington
is a rare of example of a composer who wrote for both the pop and jazz markets. In
terms of the greatest number of contributions to the canon listed here, I imagine
Ellington and Rodgers are neck and neck. (One thing the book could use is a composer
index.)
In the past few decades, a bewildering amount of information about the classic works
by all these songwriters and many more obscure ones has become available, especially
online. But Mr. Gioia's is the first general-interest, wide-ranging and authoritative
guide to the basic contemporary jazz canon. An ideal companion to the author's "History
of Jazz" (1997) -- one of the best overall books on that subject -- this volume contains
entries on more than 250 tunes that today's jazz musicians are likely to play, from
Burt Bacharach's "Alfie" to Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite." Any young musician
or singer would do well to learn every one.
Yet "lay" listeners will also find it fascinating to read Mr. Gioia's descriptions
of how each song has been interpreted in the jazz world and how performances have
evolved over the years. He is particularly good at explaining to the reader why certain
songs catch on with musicians. He describes Coltrane's "Moment's Notice" as "a good
workout, the musical equivalent of a full circuit around the Nautilus gym." The reason
that Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso" sounds so unusual (even for that eccentric composer),
he says, is that the tune is "played in a steady, on-the-beat rhythm, without any
syncopation or rests. No previous jazz song sounded anything like it." And Mr. Gioia
explains why post-1960s pop had little to offer virtuoso jazz interpreters: "The
melodies of pop music got more compact," he writes while discussing the 1965 show
tune "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever." "The vocal range for performing Top 40
material became narrower and narrower and the melodies increasingly avoided wide
interval leaps in favor of repeated notes and phrases that moved up or down in steps
or half-steps."
Mr. Gioia's missteps are few. Like a lot of nonspecialists who write about the pop
music of the interwar period, he assumes that Joel Whitburn's fanciful "Pop Memories"
(1991) -- which purports to give "Billboard" chart positions from the pre-1940 period,
when, essentially, no such charts existed -- is a genuine reference book. He oddly
identifies Bud Freeman as a "white Chicagoan." Wouldn't it be more important to tell
us that he was a pioneering tenor saxophonist? And he shows himself less a showbiz
buff than a jazzman when he describes "Babes in Arms" (1937) as "one of those 'C'mon
kids, we'll put the show on right here' musicals'" -- it's actually the show that
invented that genre.
Mr. Gioia, himself a jazz pianist (he once performed with Stan Getz), makes clear
his concern is songs likely to be encountered in the current-day jazz scene, not
a historical survey. That said, his choices do reflect certain quirks of his own
background and generation. I've worked as a reviewer for almost as long as Mr. Gioia
and been present at thousands of jazz sets over the past dozen years. Of the 11 works
he lists by Thelonious Monk, I'm surprised to see "I Mean You," which I don't think
I've ever heard live, but not "Green Chimneys," a tune played by some New York club
musicians almost every week.
The author acknowledges that young jazz players, weaned on the music of Radiohead
or Bjork as well as Bird and Diz, now perform songs by contemporary pop musicians.
He wisely omits these, not least because it would be difficult to find one that's
more popular with jazz musicians than others. An exception might be the songs of
Lennon and McCartney -- for better or worse, their music is heard in jazz clubs more
often than that of Jelly Roll Morton.
Jelly Roll ("inventor of jazz," according to his business card) does get some attention
from Mr. Gioia, but my biggest complaint about this enjoyable book is that it leaves
out certain early songs in the genre, including Dixieland warhorses such as "Sheik
of Araby" and "Some of These Days." Perhaps they are no longer played in California,
where Mr. Gioia resides, but a major traditional revival is going on in New York
right now. Tunes like "Tiger Rag" and "St. Louis Blues" are played and listened and
danced to by people under 30 every night.
Part of the point that Mr. Gioia makes is that the repertory is not a static thing
-- the "jazz songbook" is not encased in glass; it is constantly evolving. Future
editions of this book could conceivably have a very different list of songs, perhaps
by contemporaries like Jason Moran, Dave Douglas, Kurt Elling, Stevie Wonder or Stephen
Sondheim, as well as by composers we haven't even heard of yet. That is a very good
thing, and we could do much worse than having Ted Gioia keeping score of what the
standards are, and, more important, why.
___________________________________
Five More Standards That Shouldn't Be Forgotten
Ted Gioia aptly identifies more than 250 songs that every jazz musician ought to
know. But he still missed a few favorites.
'Something to Live For'
Composed by Billy Strayhorn, lyrics by Billy Strayhorn
This was one of several works that Strayhorn presented to Duke Ellington on their
fateful meeting in 1939; it became a staple of the Ellington-Strayhorn catalog. For
my dough, it's even more moving than "Lush Life," the song usually cited as Strayhorn's
masterpiece. Ella Fitzgerald named this as a favorite Strayhorn song, but the most
moving version in my library is by underrated jazz singer Chris Connor.
'No Moon at All'
Composed by Dave Mann, lyrics by Redd Evans
This 1947 riff-number was one of hundreds of earworms written during the Swing Era,
all eminently hummable. But key recordings have been made by Nat King Cole, Ella
Fitzgerald, Mel Torme and Anita O'Day, and these endeared it to generations of jazz
singers. I once heard "No Moon" sung three times in a single week by performers in
New York clubs.
'The Ballad of the Sad Young Men'
Composed by Tommy Wolf, lyrics by Fran Landesman
The title of Scott Fitzgerald's 1926 collection of short stories became, 33 years
later, the basis for a stunning art song, with a poignant, moving lyric and a rambling,
engrossing melody that made it an immediate beatnik anthem. Anita O'Day and Annie
Ross have both sung it brilliantly, and Mark Murphy ingeniously wed it to the closing
passage of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road."
'Stablemates'
Composed by Benny Golson
Benny Golson said he knew he had made it in the jazz world when (in 1955) he heard
that Miles Davis had recorded one of his songs. Nearly 60 years later, I still hear
jazzmen play this one all the time, with its catchy melody, slightly reminiscent
of the first few notes of another standard, Arthur Schwartz's "Alone Together."
'Doxy'
Composed by Sonny Rollins
The peak years of bebop were also the pinnacle of jazz musician-composers. "Doxy,"
Sonny Rollins's 1954 variation on the 1916 jazz-vaudeville standard "Ja-Da," was
put on the map by Miles Davis. I hear it around New York more than any of Mr. Rollins's
other standards, such as "Airegin" or "Oleo"; that it's snappy and brief (16 bars)
certainly doesn't hurt.


-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

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