The Great American Song Book

THE GREAT AMERICAN SONG BOOK

The Great American Songbook, also known as “American Standards”, is the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century. Although several collections of music have been published under the title, it does not refer to any actual book or specific list of songs, but to a loosely defined set including the most popular and enduring songs from the 1920s to the 1950s that were created for Broadway theatre, musical theatre, and Hollywood musical film. They have been recorded and performed by a large number and wide range of singers, instrumental bands, and jazz musicians. The Songbook comprises standards by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin, and also Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Richard Rodgers, and others. Although the songs have never gone out of style among traditional and jazz singers and musicians, a renewed popular interest in the Great American Songbook beginning in the 1970s has led a growing number of rock and pop singers to take an interest and issue recordings of them. (More from Wikipedia)

Over the years, Linda Ronstadt has had the wherewithal and the talent and the drive to try her hand at almost every musical form there is. After an amazing string of hit albums, Linda released an album of standards called What’s New, the first of three albums that she made with legendary conductor and arranger Nelson Riddle. It was the first successful album from the Great American Song Book by a rock performer and paved the way for numerous such albums by male and female rockers alike.

(October 2013)