[Dixielandjazz] Jonathan Schwartz, Vince Giordano and standards - New York Daily News, August 4, 2013

[Robert Ringwald]

As Venues Close and Radio Hosts Retire, It Gets Harder to Keep America's Golden Age
Music Alive
by David Hinckley
New York Daily News, August 4, 2013
The quiet but terribly important battle to keep popular standards playing in our
contemporary culture has just suffered a couple of setbacks.
This past Friday, Jonathan Schwartz left SiriusXM satellite radio after more than
a decade as its most prominent popular standards host playing the music and songs
of the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s.
"SiriusXM, which has been very good to me, asked me to stay," he said. "But I'm 75.
I've been working very hard for a long time and it's time not to do that."
On W. 46th St. in midtown Manhattan, meanwhile, Sofia's restaurant at the Hotel Edison
is closing on Aug. 13, ending a 37-year run. The owners will be renovating the space
with an eye toward a more lucrative use.
Among other things, Sofia's was the place where Vince Giordano's band played every
Monday and Tuesday.
If Giordano's name sounds familiar, it might be because his band provides much of
the music for HBO's "Boardwalk Empire." That's what he mostly plays at Sofia's, too
-- big-band jazz in the style of the '20s and '30s.
These events don't shut down Golden Age popular standards in the city. Schwartz will
continue on WNYC (93.9 FM) on Saturdays, 8 p.m.-midnight, and Sundays, noon-4 p.m.
Giordano is looking for a new club, though he says it's a challenge.
"You need a place with a stage that can accommodate an 11-piece band," he says. "And
with a piano, you need storage. Sofia's was perfect."
Indeed. Giordano's audience there has included the likes of Liza Minnelli, Mel Brooks,
Tommy Tune, Dave Koz, Leon Redbone and Elvis Costello.
"We filled the place," says Giordano. "In the old days, that would have meant other
clubs would try to get you. Not anymore."
In the old days, of course, music from the Golden Age was the pop music of its day.
And a splendid day it was. Popular songs then were written by the likes of Irving
Berlin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Gershwin brothers.
It was played and sung by the likes of Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and
Frank Sinatra.
Tony Bennett calls it "America's classical music," and he won't get a lot of arguments.
Bennett still sings it. He also turned 87 Saturday, which underscores the simple
truth that popular music, like a shark, must always stay in motion. Each generation
wants its own, which leaves a little less for what came before.
So popular standards today are a niche. Rich Conaty plays them Sunday nights on WFUV,
David Kenney Sunday nights on WBAI. There are a few other radio outlets. SiriusXM
still has "'40s on 4" and "Siriusly Sinatra." Internet streaming, which may be the
radio of the future, has room for everything, if you can find it.
As it happens, Schwartz and Giordano reflect two of the many shadings of popular
standards.
Where Giordano plays vintage band arrangements, Schwartz also champions classic songs
played and sung by contemporary singers, often with tastefully modernized arrangements.
Schwartz, who has played this music for decades on WNEW, WQEW, WNYC and SiriusXM,
has often argued that's the way to keep the music alive, by showing it can fit in
any era rather than just coming from one.
Giordano, too, says the most encouraging sign he sees for the future of Golden Age
music is that, "I hear more young people enjoying it. If they're exposed to it, some
of them like it."
The key, of course, is exposure, which is why it's never good to lose a radio show
or a live venue.
Bennett, for one, says this music will live for the same reason European classical
music lives, that it's too good to die.
Schwartz agrees about the quality, but says it's still a challenge.
"Is my mission accomplished?" he says. "It will never be accomplished. My mission
is for the music to live on. If I lived to be 800, it still wouldn't be accomplished."
However bright the torch, someone still must carry it.
-30-


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

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