Great American Songbook

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Songwriter Harold Arlen (right) with singer Bing Crosby (left) and Decca Records owner Jack Kapp (center)

The Great American Songbook is an informal term referring to a period of American popular music songwriting that took place between the 1930s and 1960s. It also refers to a canon of songs written in this style.

Songwriters and their songs considered part of this group include:

Harold Arlen ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "Stormy Weather")
Irving Berlin ("White Christmas", "Always", "Blue Skies")
Hoagy Carmichael ("Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness Of You")
Duke Ellington ("In A Sentimental Mood", "It Don’t Mean A Thing", "Satin Doll", "Mood Indigo", "Sophisticated Lady")
George and Ira Gershwin ("Someone to Watch Over Me", "S’Wonderful", "Summertime")
Jerome Kern ("Ol' Man River", "The Way You Look Tonight", "All The Things You Are", "The Song is You", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes")
Henry Mancini ("Moon River", "Days Of Wine And Roses")
Johnny Mandel ("The Shadow of Your Smile")
Johnny Mercer ("One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)")
Cole Porter ("Night and Day", "I've Got You Under My Skin", "Begin The Beguine")
Rodgers and Hammerstein ("Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'", "Shall We Dance?", "The Sound of Music")
Rodgers and Hart ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", "My Romance", "Have You Met Miss Jones", "My Funny Valentine")

Most of these songs are written in verse-chorus form, with a 32-bar chorus most often in AABA or ABAB form. Characteristically they feature strong melodies, thoughtful lyrics incorporating sophisticated rhymes, and a skillful thematic connection between music and words.

Many of these songs were written for Broadway or motion picture musicals. Often the verses of the songs refer explicitly to the plots of these works, but usually the songs themselves refer to more timeless situations (typically, the vicissitudes of love). This greater generality made it easier for songs to be added or subtracted from a show, or revived in a different show.

Since the 1930's, many singers and musicians have explicitly recorded or performed large parts of the Great American Songbook, to the extent that interpreting material from the Songbook forms a large part of jazz music today.

Ella Fitzgerald's popular and influential Sings the ... Songbook series on Verve in the 1950s and 60's collated 252 songs from the Songbook. Amongst jazz singers, the influential interpreters of the Great American Songbook have included Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand (particularly in her earlier work), Sammy Davis, Jr., Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Blossom Dearie, Cleo Laine, and Mel Torme.