The heyday of the Nice American Songbook spanned 4 a long time, starting within the 20s. Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood have been the backdrop for the songwriting of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Harry Warren, and Harold Arlen. For most individuals, the Songbook’s golden age ended with the approaching of rock’n’roll, which additionally offered a definite punctuation mark within the historical past of jazz.
The songwriters discovered prepared ambassadors for his or her music amongst jazz musicians. Partially, that was as a result of their great melodies appealed to anybody with a love of music, however in addition they allowed musicians to improvise, taking their viewers on distinctive and progressive journeys.
This was very true within the recording studio, the place usually disparate teams of musicians have been gathered to make a recording, and the widespread floor offered by materials from the Songbook was fairly often the place to begin. Equally, beneath the auspices of Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic banner, using Songbook songs actually gave the musicians a platform to have the ability to jam and create magic.
1: Numerous: Tea For Two (from The Full Jazz At The Philharmonic On Verve, 1944-1949, 1998)
On the very first JATP live performance, in July 1944, the assembled musicians, which included pianist Nat King Cole, stretched out on Vincent Youmans’ “Tea For Tea.” Among the many featured numbers the next yr was “Oh, Lady Be Good,” written by George and Ira Gershwin for the Broadway musical of the identical title…
2: Numerous: How Excessive The Moon (from The Full Jazz At The Philharmonic On Verve, 1944-1949, 1998)
… In addition they penned “How High The Moon,” a music from the 1940 Broadway revue Two For The Present, with music by Morgan Lewis, which went on to turn into the unofficial Jazz At The Philharmonic anthem. All through its historical past, the JATP repertoire was full of songs from The Nice American Songbook.
3: Numerous: What Is This Factor Known as Love? (from Norman Granz’s Jazz Session #2, 1953)
For jazz musicians, it was the best way during which they interpreted these songs, imbuing them with their very own explicit type and signature improvisations, that created distinctive music, albeit with one foot firmly rooted prior to now. When it got here to recording for Mercury, and his personal label, Clef, Norman Granz was not one for losing money and time on rehearsals. He favored the jam over the thought-about plan, and so when the dawning of the LP period arrived within the late 40s, he put his musicians within the studio and anticipated them to provide magic within the shortest attainable time in order that he may get albums launched.
In July 1952, Granz put trumpeter Charlie Shavers and saxophonists Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, and Ben Webster along with a rhythm part of Oscar Peterson (piano), Barney Kessel (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and JC Heard (drums) at Radio Recorders in Los Angeles to report two albums for Clef which he known as Norman Granz’s Jam Session #1 and #2. On the primary was a ballad medley together with a few of The Nice American Songbook’s most stunning songs; on Jam Session #2 they prolonged Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” to fifteen minutes of sheer poetry.
4: Charlie Parker: Laura (from Charlie Parker With Strings, 1950)
That ought to on no account indicate that Granz was uncaring – he simply beloved the spontaneity of sensible musicians enjoying the music they beloved. In 1949, previous to his Jam Session recordings, Granz put Charlie Parker within the studio with Jimmy Carroll’s orchestra to report one of many landmarks albums of post-war jazz, Charlie Parker With Strings. As Granz stated on the time, “Every jazz musician I know wanted to record with strings.”
Granz might have been somewhat astray, but when he had added “to record The Great American Songbook” to that assertion, he might have been nearer to the reality. Among the many songs that Hen recorded have been classics from the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Jimmy McHugh, Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, and Brooks Bowman. It’s a kind of data that everybody ought to personal and goes a protracted approach to proving the depth of the connection between jazz and the Songbook.
5: Oscar Peterson: Simply One Of These Issues (from Oscar Peterson Performs The Cole Porter Songbook, 1959)
Granz signed Oscar Peterson to a recording contract in 1950 and, two years later, started a sequence of albums during which the Canadian pianist explored the songwriting of among the Songbook’s best exponents. The primary two within the sequence have been Oscar Peterson Performs George Gershwin and Oscar Peterson Performs Duke Ellington, and he adopted these with the music of Harold Arlen, Vincent Youmans, and Rely Basie over the following few years. “Just One Of Those Things” comes from his 1959 readings of Cole Porter’s Songbook classics.
6: Ella Fitzgerald: Night time And Day (from Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook, 1956)
In 1956, when Granz signed Ella Fitzgerald to Verve Information, his first main venture with the singer was Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook. The mix of Ella and Porter is irresistible, and whether or not uptempo or downtempo, Ella’s three-octave vocal vary soars effortlessly as she makes every music come to life. Fitzgerald recorded this, and her different albums that adopted within the Songbook sequence, in Capitol Studios in Hollywood.
Ella went on to report eight Songbook albums, all of which helped to create what we now have come to think about as the trendy album. In line with Granz, the method was easy: “I’d come up with 50 songs that would suit Ella. We would sit together and reduce it down to, say, 20… because part of what we were doing with the Songbooks was to explore songwriters.”
7: Frank Sinatra: I’ve Received You Below My Pores and skin (from Songs For Swingin’ Lovers!, 1956)
Two weeks earlier than Ella recorded her model of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison and trombonist Milt Bernhart had recorded Nelson Riddle’s association of the music with Frank Sinatra, that includes the trombonist’s fabulous solo. Sinatra, like Ella, used The Nice American Songbook to discover the probabilities of utilizing his voice to turn into the best male jazz singer there has ever been.
8: Ella Fitzgerald And Louis Armstrong: The Nearness Of You (from Ella And Louis, 1956)
One other of Granz’s impressed concepts was pairing Ella with Louis Armstrong to report duets totally made up of Songbook requirements. The Ella And Louis album, recorded in August 1956, is a tour de drive and reveals how ingrained these numbers have been with the musicians concerned, together with Oscar Peterson on piano. There was no rehearsal time, it was simply into the studio and lay ’em down. Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness Of You” is classy and reveals simply how easy musicians can seem when they’re on the very peak of their musical powers.
9: John Coltrane: I’m Outdated Usual (from Blue Prepare, 1957)
Not like most different labels, Blue Be aware all the time included rehearsal time inside its manufacturing schedules, which made the label’s output the polar reverse of Norman Granz’s imprints. Blue Be aware’s founder, German immigrant Alfred Lion, paid for the rehearsals himself, and these periods largely led to musicians working up their very own materials, quite than remodeling items from The Nice American Songbook – although it might be unfaithful to say that the Songbook didn’t discover a place on some sensible Blue Be aware albums.
John Coltrane made one album for Blue Be aware, 1957’s superlative Blue Prepare, all however one in all whose 5 tracks are ’Trane originals. The one cowl is Johnny Mercer and Jerome Kern’s “I’m Old Fashioned,” but it surely was removed from the final time that Coltrane would return to the Songbook. 1963’s Ballads was nearly totally made up of Songbook numbers; quickly after that, he made an album with singer Johnny Hartman, impressed by the Songbook’s writers.
10: Cannonball Adderley: Autumn Leaves (from Somethin’ Else, 1958)
The Blue Be aware catalogue boasts different wonderful examples of interpretations from the Songbook, and none are finer than Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else, recorded in 1958 and that includes Miles Davis on trumpet. Of the 5 tracks on this album, three are reworkings of requirements – apparently chosen by Davis – which reinforces the sensation of maximum consolation that each monitor exudes. None is extra masterful than “Autumn Leaves.”
11: Robert Glasper: Stella By Starlight (from Lined, 2015)
All through the final 50 years, jazz musicians have returned time and again to The Nice American Songbook, together with, as not too long ago as 2015, pianist Robert Glasper, the very epitome of a hip younger jazz artist. Among the many variety of cowl variations on his aptly title Lined album, he offers a superb rendition of Victor Younger’s “Stella By Starlight.” Initially taken from a 1944 film, The Uninvited, the music featured on Charlie Parker With Strings, in addition to being recorded within the intervening seven a long time by Anita O’Day, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Ella Fitzgerald, Invoice Evans, Zoot Sims, Frank Sinatra, and Tal Farlow – to call however a number of.
The Nice American Songbook has rightly been hailed as a significant contribution to American tradition, and can all the time be an inspiration to jazz musicians. Given jazz’s place because the pre-eminent artwork type that America has given to the world, that locations it nearly as excessive as you may get within the panoply of American music.
Searching for extra? Uncover the perfect soul variations of The Nice American Songbook.
