The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire by Ted Gioia

The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire Reviews

• 
  Craig Cunningham

  I love this book. I really enjoy Ted Gioia and his writing style. I have read all of his books, but this one is one of my favorites. Jazz is a brilliant art form. Jazz stands as the classical music produced from the United States, and created from African American creativity and ingenuity. The music deserves respect. Ted Gioia writes with that type of respect. I am a musician, and I appreciate the respect of Repertoire. Many texts do not focus on the Jazz Repertoire. Jazz stands as a music with a rich, distinct, and diverse repertoire. This book examines the major jazz standards, and provides in depth analysis of each one. However, this book is not a music theory book, so it does not go into any detail, really as to ii-V-I Progressions or resolutions to the Tonic Chord or alterations in Harmonic compositions. However, The book does provide the rich history related to Jazz, and I love that Mr. Gioia provides us with a list of suggested listening for each one of the Jazz Standards provided. Mr. Gioia even details whether these specific standards are called out on a band stand in a Jazz Jam Session Context. I love this book.
• 
  Todd Jenkins

  Disclosure: I was one of the folks that Ted Gioia came to for editing help and suggestions as this book came together. That said, this is a really remarkable musical history, a collection of anecdotes, observations, reviews and performance tips for classic tunes in the jazz repertoire. In many cases, the context that Gioia shares about the creation and history of songs adds a new dimension to one's appreciation of the music. Highly recommended.
• 
  Susan Frances

  The jazz umbrella encompasses an extensive repertoire from the boogie 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.
  
• 
  Pat

  "The Jazz Standards" (2012) by Ted Gioia is so exceptional, either as a resource or a straight read, I'm unsure how to begin praising it. I'll settle for a partial list.
  
  * It is uniformly well written. "We live in an age of anorexic melodies." That's the author on popular music circa 2012. His book brims with sharp sentences like this, and most are not as cranky as that one; I just happen to find that observation spot-on.
  
  * Even for a music geek like me, there is fresh information about many of the 250 songs Gioia highlights and most of it is not technical. For example, his entries on "St. James Infirmary" and "St. Louis Blues" - two early twentieth century tunes - read like brief history lessons, in a good way.
  
  * Gioia is a fine writer, an experienced professional pianist, an educated musicologist and...he's got superb taste. Each essay is accompanied by his list of recommended versions of these standards. I knew I was in good hands when one of his recommendations for Ray Noble's "The Very Thought of You" was the Wynton & Ellis Marsalis duet from "Standard Time, Volume 3: The Resolution of Romance". That performance that moves me to tears every time I listen to it.
  
  If you read this book, please send me your list - we'll compare notes. And then I'll tell you everything else I loved about it.
• 
  GONZA

  Of course this is a reference book and should not be read as a novel, but Ted Gioia is a safe bet and listening to a musical piece by reading his words is sometimes an enlightening experience.
  
  Naturalmente questo é un libro da consultazione e non va letto come un romanzo, ciò non toglie, che Ted Gioia é una sicurezza e che ascoltare un pezzo leggendo le sue parole a volte é un'esperienza illuminante.
  
  I received a digital complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for a honest review.
• 
  Nate

  Totally a fun and very educational read. Plan to spend a few months using it to make playlists and really do some listening. Taught me tons about both classic songs and jazz interpretations. Sent me off in a lot of new directions to hear things I hadn't heard before.
• 
  Warren Senders

  A terrific book, a nice companion to Alec Wilder's "American Popular Song." Gioia's prose is elegant and understated, his insights into the pieces and their history are deep (and sometimes quite funny), and his listening recommendations are spot-on.
• 
  Jim Coughenour

  I was lucky to find a new copy of this book in a used bookstore when it first came out – it's a book made for browsing, lingering, then stopping with a specific song. Gioia's commentary on the composition and popular history of these standards never wastes a word. It's a quick sketch leading you back to the music. I've spent more nights than I know hunting down recondite recordings based his recommendations, which are my favorite part of the book. Most recently, intrigued by
  Richard Brody's reprise of Clint Eastwood's "Play Misty for Me," I was compelled to comb through the internet for Gioia's favorites, particularly Ahmad Jamal's "1965 trio outing with its funky undercurrent" – and he was right, Jamal brings a wry sense of humor to what easily becomes a cornball classic (e.g., Ray Stevens). Fans of George Benson and Fosse's All That Jazz will smile at the phrase from "On Broadway" slipped in about 90 seconds into the track.
  
  I could multiply such happy trivia many times over. Gioia's Standards is packed with delight and discovery, braced with the intelligence and lack of pretension his subject deserves.
• 
  Randall Wallace

  This is an indispensible Reference Guide – I read straight through it a few months ago, loved it, and have referred back to it a few times since, as I work on specific songs in depth. Also helpful is that this book explains the year each song was written, what was the origin of the song, what each song offers or doesn’t offer the soloist, a history of the song’s popularity with which instrument or which players. I learned so many little things about each song and can see that info like this exists only here in a single place. Highly recommended…
• 
  Lydia St Giles

  A major work of reference - how could it be otherwise from Oxford University Press? - this book examines 250plus songs from the repertoire expected of the jazz player. From “After You’ve Gone” to “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”, the contents ensnare the jazz-loving reader. Simply penning this review has, once again, tempted me to follow different trails.
  Each title offers a page or more of background information, foremost of which are the names of composer and lyricist. Some of the best-known songs are the work of people whose names would not be recognised by the listening public. The names put forward in the recordings listed as Recommended Versions are another matter: jazz masters such as Sonny Rollins and Keith Jarrett sit alongside best-selling vocalists - Joni Mitchell or Ella Fitzgerald, for example.
  Background stories make this book far from a dry academic tome. We learn that Turner Layton (an unfamiliar name) has supported the work of Great Ormond Street Hospital, through royalties from his estate. Django Reinhardt, in wartime Paris, had to provide the German censors with his play-list in advance of the performance. And saxophonist Charlie Ventura was discovered while he was earning a living in a shipyard.
  This is a book to swallow up a complete afternoon. Opening at random, I find a favourite song “Misty”, with words by an unfamiliar name. This prompts me to look up Johnny Burke in the Index and I find he’s credited with the words of “Here’s That Rainy Day”. On that page, the melody is the work of Jimmy Van Heusen. So I really must find out more about their collaboration. Following trails like that can swallow up a couple of pleasurable hours.
  If you beg, borrow or buy this book, you’ll enjoy it too - but don’t skip the Introduction.
  
  
  
• 
  Fernando Pestana da Costa

  This is a wonderful reference book about (as the title tells us) the "Jazz Standards", or some of them anyway... Like any reference book, it is not intended to be read one page after another but to be browsed at leisure and consulted when needed. However, unlike the vast majority of reference books, this almost calls to be read as a "normal" book, and that was exactly what I did: between August 23, 2014, and May 1, 2015, I read each day a single "chapter" of this book (each "chapter" is 1,5 to 2,5
  pages long story of a particular standard) while listening to the recommended versions of each standard I happen to own in my CD collection. This way to degust the book gave me, each day, and for 252 days in a row, a joyous half an hour after dinner that sadly came to an end all too soon with the reading of the chapter on "You'd be so nice to come home to", accompanied by the great Lee Konitz version in the album Motion: enjoy!
• 
  Joel

  I love this book. You choose a popular jazz standard from the Great American Songbook, look it up in this book and get the story behind its composition and recording history followed by a list of the best versions of that song. It's addictive to thumb through this book picking out one well-known song after another, learning a bit about it and discovering the best versions to listen to. It can be overwhelming, with so many recordings in the past 100 years, to find the best version of say Autumn Leaves or When I Fall in Love, for example. This book will give them to you and you'll learn some interesting facts about the songs along the way. All in all a must reference book for any fan of jazz or the Great American Songbook in general.
• 
  Nicolle Mosquera

  Definitivamente un libro imprescindible para cualquier Jazzista ya sea aficionado o profesional.
  Un contenido muy interesante y fácil de digerir debido a el recuento de cada estándar en particular.
  Me encantó.
• 
  David

  I like listening to Jazz. I like horns in all types of music (funk especially). When I listen to music when I read or study, I like no lyrics to distract me, and jazz is my solution. This book is a rather definitive source of the classic repertoire of jazz.
• 
  Andrew

  Like Gioia's other books, this one is a trove of knowledge. It's nice to get further context about the tunes I've played hundreds of times.
  
  It works well as a reference or coffee table book. I like to read one entry in the morning and spend the day listening to the referenced recordings.
• 
  Michael Sedor

  The perfect companion in a world of music post- Pandora's Box of Spotify
• 
  Geert

  Provides a very comprehensive overview of great jazz songs and in doing so also of great jazz artists.
• 
  Will Wigmore

  Lots of great information!
• 
  Sean

  Actually, I did not finish this book. But its not really a novel that you read front-to-back. It is a great reference. But the early part of the book is very worth reading. It made me realize how standard these 'standards' really are. In my digital music collection, I have a sorting way similar to the old record stores. I start a playlist with a single genre letter: A Africa, B Blues, C Classical, D Drum Corp, E Reggae, F Folk, G blueGrass, I Irish, J Jazz, K Kids, L Latin, etc, etc. The next two letters are the artist the way you would find it in a record store. JFe would be Jazz Maynard Ferguson. Then I add a short descriptor of the songs in that list. Well, after reading this book, I expanded my JVa - Various Artists. I have many JVa like "JVa Blue Note Jazz", "JVa Essential Big Bands". But I added JVaS with the many Standards. "JVaS A Night in Tunisia", "JVaS Autumn Leaves", etc., etc. Wow! I guess I did not realize how many different versions by different artists I have of all these different songs. Now I can use this book a a guide to expand my collection to include definitive versions. I like pulling up a single song playlist and reading the section in this book pertaining to this song. Great way to re-enjoy all this music.
• 
  Carolyn

  Here's a reference book you can get lost in, or read straight through with pleasure. As Dave Brubeck says on the dust cover, "If you look up just one title in _The Jazz Standards_, before you realize it you will have spent an intriguing hour or two learning fascinating and new things about old songs that you have known most of your life."
  
  The book lists about 275 titles, telling of each who wrote the music and the lyrics, who recorded it most notably, where it came from (Broadway, movies, or composed on the spot in 20 minutes when the recording session required another number (Ellington's "Solitude"). The few paragraphs about each song contain anecdotes about the song and/or the composer, with comments about what's good and bad about some of the recordings, and a list of recommended ones. It's perfect if you're looking for something new to put on your e-device or to find your favorites. If you love jazz and you open this volume while browsing in a bookstore, chances are you'll walk out with it. I read a copy from the library, but plan to buy it.
• 
  Jay

  You should get this book! If you listen to much jazz you absolutely should, but also if you care about songcraft and popular music.
  
  Each of about two hundred songs from the standard repertoire gets its own chapter with the history of how the song was conceived, some musical analysis, and remarks on how some jazz artists have interpreted the song. At the end of each chapter is an invaluable list of recordings Gioia recommends.
  
  If you've read many books on the subject of jazz, you know almost all of them are disappointing, marred by poor writing and errors. The Jazz Standards is a refreshing exception. Ted Gioia writes beautifully, has a profound musical understanding of the subject, and wide-ranging taste in his recommendations. He also has a sharp sense of humor and in all appears to be a Nice Person.
  
  
• 
  Ray

  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.
• 
  Mark

  A great idea. The author discusses more than 250 jazz standards in pieces about 1200 words long with a list of about 8 or 9 recommended recordings at the end. His analysis is informal with historical information (e.g. when the first radio performance was, how it came to be written, who was in the band when it was performed) and he discusses the tune's financial success or lack of it, and what he thinks of various recorded performances. He occasionally does a more technical analysis of the song or discusses which musical features he thinks contribute to its popularity. Makes a nice gift, but I am reviewing it too late for Xmas, perhaps Chinese New Year.
• 
  Mark

  
  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/...