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Jazz Standards: A Guide To The Repertoire (2012)

by Ted Gioia(Favorite Author)

4.41 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1283848422 (ISBN13: 9781283848428)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

review 1: I'm taking my time with this book and really enjoying it. Ted provides the back story for many of the best known jazz tunes. As a music fan, he describes how the songs broadened in appeal from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway show tunes to great melodic blueprints for arrangements and improvisation. As a jazz musician, he breaks down the attractive components of the songs as exercises and vehicles for group arrangements. The music streaming service Spotify has a companion playlist named for the book. The playlist compiles all of the available renditions highlighted in the book. So you can listen to the definitive versions of each composition from the songs debut to the best version of late.
review 2: The jazz umbrella encompasses an extensive repertoire from the b... moreoogie woogie generation of the 1920’s to the dancehall swing era of the ‘40s, the beboppers of the ‘50s to the avant garde bards of the ‘60s, the fusionists of the ‘70s and right up to present day with the likes of modern day improvisers such as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Dave Brubeck. Author Ted Gioia furnishes a comprehensive collection of jazz standards from the mainstream of American Songbook staples to the subterranean culture of jazz touted in local barrooms and intimate night clubs where bebop, hard bop, fusion, bossa nova blues, and improvisational music were fostered.Gioia’s book The Jazz Standards from Oxford University Press takes examples representative of the various stages of jazz from those tunes featured in Broadway musicals and Hollywood films to those works which materialized during late night jam sessions and living-in-the-moment instances when musicians acted as catalysts for one another. Gioia exhumes tracks that have made an indelible imprint on the collective psyche. These illustrious pearls from all walks of the jazz community each have their own story to tell as Gioia describes how the songs evolved from the time of their inception to what they have blossomed into today making variations in their tempo, experimenting with embellishments and ad hoc intervals, and modulating familiar motifs using modern technology and contemporary thought processes. For instance, today’s rendition of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love Baby” has been refurbished since Jimmy McHugh and lyricist Dorothy Fields wrote the song back in 1928. Gioia provides an overview of how tunes of the jazz standard caliber have been retouched and tweaked by generations of musicians that have followed.Gioia’s research is insightful and informative giving readers an understanding of the mindset behind the musicians who have taken popular American showtunes and impromptu compositions and made them reflective of their time. He demonstrates this point with Patricia Barber’s interpretation of Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love” infused with spontaneous cuts, accents and nuances demonstrating the mindset of the jazz community of the 21st century.Gioia notes that innovators in jazz like Miles Davis, Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane to name a handful have shown to be imaginative in their versions of American Songbook staples like Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” and Vincent Youmans and lyricist Irving Caesar’s “Tea for Two.” The ‘60s jazz innovators transformed the staples from their childhood to sparkle with a luster that appealed to their burgeoning generation.Gioia’s book The Jazz Standards goes beyond the mainstream platform exemplified by works from Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Johnny Burke, Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen, George and Ira Gershwin and others of their ilk. He includes the material of beboppers like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Sidney Bechet, and Lennie Tristano who wrote and improvised using their own language. He includes the works of blues singers like Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln in addition to boogie woogie artisans like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, and the silky bossa nova wavelets of Antonio Carlos Jobim. Gioia does not delineate between these jazz-inspired factions that sprouted from the swing generation. For him, they all share the same platform and are equal in value. Gioia tells the history and evolution of jazz as his book covers a broad range of motivators in the jazz community. He presents their tracks in a way that makes each song sound special outlining their individual stories and the applause each one continues to elicit when heard in a live performance, a studio recording or a movie soundtrack. less

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