[Dixielandjazz] Ted Gioia's new book Jazz Standards. Comments by Vickers, Friedwald and Ringwald

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans list; DJML

From:  Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

 

Bob Ringwald, moderator of the 600+ member, with many international
listmates, Dixieland Jazz Mailing list has posted  jazz-writer Will
Friedwald's  Wall  Street Journal review of Ted Gioa's new book Jazz
Standards published by Oxford University Press. I will be posting my own
review of this book on the Jazz Society of Pensacola's website soon.
However, I wanted to make some comments about the book and also respond to
critical comments by Friedwald and Ringwald.

 

In the introduction Gioia explains how the  Real Book has been influential
for at least a  generation, now beginning a second generation, of musicians.
If the song were not included in the Real Book, then its acceptance  by the
upcoming generation of musicians is less likely.  This was a significant
insight for me, and likely for others as well.

 

Also, this has to be a personal choice for Gioia as to what should be
included, or excluded.  

 

Thirdly, writing about songs---who composed, who played them and in what
style--- gives him an opportunity to tell some jazz anecdotes which likely
would have gone unheralded otherwise.

This, to me, is a significant contribution.

 

My final comment is this.  The critique and cavil by Mr.  Friedwald and Mr.
Ringwald reminds me of the stir caused by the PBS series on jazz by  Ken
Burns  some years ago.

Almost every musician would have done something different-more music, less
sociology, other commentators.  " He should have included   ( insert your
favorite song here)!"

But remember, it was Ken Burns who worked and produced that marvelous series
which gave a boost to jazz, worldwide.  And, it was Gioia who put this
wonderful book together, to everyone's benefit.  Maybe Mr. Gioia will  do a
sequel in a few years and then include some of my favorites which were
omitted in this volume.  Good for Ted Gioia.

 

I have included the original post of the Friedwald review in WSJ and  my
friend Bob Ringwald's comments, should anyone on DJML wish to review.  Those
on Musicians & Jazzfans list, who are not also on DJML, please continue
reading.

________________________

 

Message: 14

Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:53:48 -0700

From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>

To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>

Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>

Subject: [Dixielandjazz] "The Jazz Standards" reviewed - Wall Street

               Journal

Message-ID: <5B948990D3C04F65A13B45A8CF14A8D1 at BobPC>

Content-Type: text/plain;              charset="iso-8859-1"

 

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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