12/5/2023 0 Comments Great american songbook list 1960sOddly Enough, there is no universally accepted name for the fruits of this tradition, though they are occasionally referred to by the unwieldy title of “the great American songbook,” with the constituent entries known as “standards.” But with or without a name, most listeners know a standard when they hear one, and they also sense that there are fundamental differences in kind between songs arising from this tradition and those written by rock, blues, or country musicians. Maher has called “the professional tradition in song writing”-a tradition that continues to be carried on by such contemporary songwriters as the jazz pianist-singer Dave Frishberg. And while rock and its related idioms continue to dominate commercial music, more and more younger listeners are becoming interested in what James T. With rare exceptions like Diana Krall’s recent recording of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love,” one no longer hears such songs on the radio, or sees them performed on TVīut they do continue to be performed in concert and recorded regularly, not only by singers who first came to prominence in the 1940’s and 50’s but also by a new generation of younger artists, including Krall and John Pizzarelli. Nor was that impression altogether wrong: pre-rock American popular song is no longer “commercial,” at least not in the way it was prior to 1960. Three decades ago, however, when rock-and-roll appeared to have achieved complete cultural dominance in America, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that these and other songs by (respectively) Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter would have remained popular to this day. Mencken called “the American language.” Though a few European-born musicians, including Kurt Weill, have functioned successfully in the American idiom, no European could possibly have written the words or music of such songs as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Blues in the Night,” “I Got Rhythm,” or “You’re the Top.” But it was from the outset distinctively American in tone, colored not only by ragtime and early jazz but also by the pungent accent of what H.L. Their work was rooted in a well-known European tradition-that of light opera, or operetta. The men (and a few women) who wrote these songs did not exist in a cultural or artistic vacuum. Of America’s many contributions to the arts, the most widely influential-perhaps even more influential than jazz-may ultimately prove to be the body of popular song created during the 20th century by the commercial composers and lyricists who worked on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley and in Hollywood.
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