Ted Gioia’s The Jazz Standards - Second Edition

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I look forward to Ted Gioia’s books about Jazz with the same excitement and anticipation that greets the arrival of the next recording by one of my favorite Jazz artists.

The guy can flat-out write, he’s a magnificent story-teller and he has a depth and a breadth of knowledge about Jazz which rivals that of any writer of the subject.

I know his next book is always going to be good so I grudgingly allow him the necessary time to research it and write it because I can’t wait to read it.

In this regard, Ted’s The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire - from Oxford University Press in July/2012 – didn’t disappoint.

In his writing, Ted has a “conversation” with the reader.

His style is never polemical or didactic like those academic treatises that only twelve other people on the planet can read, let alone, understand.

Be it specifically about Jazz on the West Coast from 1945–1960 or more generally about the entire history of Jazz, Ted’s writing is personal and he teaches you stuff about Jazz.

His approach is reminiscent of your favorite high school teachers; you really wanted to learn from them because they knew what they were talking about and they made the subject fun and interesting.

This is no less the case with Ted’s book - The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire – in which he talks about Jazz from the singular perspective of the music and not from the more accustomed standpoint of the musicians who made it.

If you’ve ever wished for a “road map” through recorded Jazz tunes, this book is it.  It offers “… an illuminating look at more than 250 seminal Jazz compositions …, “recommendations for more than 2,000 recordings with a list of suggested tracks for each song, [each accompanied by] “… colorful and expert commentary.”

- The editorial staff at JazzProfiles

The lead-in quotation is what I wrote when I reviewed the first edition of Ted Gioia’s The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire [From the Archives] for the blog on June 12, 2018. You can find the full archived review by going here.

At the time of the first edition, music streaming services were not as ubiquitous as they are today so it took a bit of doing to locate sources for the tracks that Ted lists as examples following his annotations for each song or tune.

The expanded Second Edition uses the same format - commentary with suggested recorded examples - but it arrives at a time when Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube and other streaming services provide almost instantaneous access to Ted’s suggested listening.

For those who want to expand their knowledge of the Jazz repertoire, I can think of no better guide than what is on offer in Ted Gioia’s expanded second edition of The Jazz Standards.

However expository writing about Jazz is not as easy as it sounds -

“Those of us who have tried writing about Jazz know what a daunting challenge it can be to do it well. Expressing an opinion about a given musician or recording is easy; explaining what exactly it is that makes that musician or recording worth caring about is not.” - Peter Keepnews

In this regard, the reader certainly benefits from Ted’s practiced and informed writing on the subject of Jazz which dates back to the publication of his first work in 1988 - The Imperfect Art: Reflections of Jazz and Modern Culture.

Additionally, because he is a trained pianist and also has a background in theory and harmony, the work also affords more of Ted’s brilliant musical analysis.

For example, when writing about Benny Golson’s Along Came Betty, Ted

provides this review of elements that make both the song and Benny’s compositional style so distinctive.

"The melody starts out with an insistent three-note-phrase ... but immediately moves into variations and elaborations on it. This reflects a recurring tension in Golson's compositional style, which wants to embrace the familiar riffs of swing and bop, but seems to be more eager to push them aside as soon as possible and enter into a Jazz equivalent of the development of sonata form. Where other composers might opt to repeat, he prefers to manipulate. This is more than a matter of melody but is also reflected in the underlying harmonies. The modulations start almost immediately, and the second eight bars are already in a different key."

The application of Ted’s unique insights to the songs and tunes under review form a recurring theme as is the case with this example involving the work of pianist Jimmy Rowles’ The Peacocks:

“The popularity of this ballad among jazz musicians is well deserved. The haunting open theme is countered by a slyly dissonant and almost Monkish melody in the release. This combination of lyricism and abstraction is powerful, almost a left-brain-meets-the-right-brain kind of creation. Because of the fluttery phrases in the melody, this piece works especially well on sax, flute, or piano—less so on brass instruments: hence you won't hear quite as many trumpet or trombone versions. For those who knew Rowles, the composition is especially evocative of his quirky (and peacock-ish?) personality.”

Ted puts forth this intriguing analysis of Horace Silver’s work when addressing the background for the Jazz Standard - Song for My Father:

“The hard-bop movement of the 1950s and 1960s forced almost every performer to double as a composer. Instead of recording familiar standards or relying on outsiders to develop the band's repertoire — as so many previous jazz stars had done — this new generation of players mostly relied on their own pieces to fill up albums. These might feature simple head arrangements or more elaborate horn parts—but, in either case, the end results tended to emphasize content over form, energy over refinement. At times, the songs came across more as excuses for a blowing date than as finely crafted works intended to last for the ages.

Then we have Horace Silver, the most consistently creative of the hard-bop composers and an artist whose allure was almost inseparable from the appealing songs he wrote for his band. In truth, there was no single "Horace Silver style," and a list of his most popular works would include funky groove tunes, gentle mood pieces, vamp songs, outings in 3/4 and 6/8 time, Latin workouts of various stripes, up-tempo jam numbers, and examples of almost any and every other land of approach congruent with the hard-bop aesthetic. Yet a consistent set of values underpinned all of these efforts: Silver's best work was invariably marked by an economy of means in which excesses were pared away, an inviting sense of rhythmic momentum and, above all, supple melody lines that stuck in your head long after you first heard them.”

But Ted doesn’t limit his instructive expository to Jazz composers, he also includes it as a part of his analysis of the songs and composers commonly associated with the Great American Songbook as is the case with -

“The Shadow of Your Smile

Composed by Johnny Mandel, with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster

The Shadow of Your Smile" first arrived on the scene via the soundtrack of The Sandpiper, a high-profile 1965 film starring Hollywood's most beloved couple of the era, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. ….

I wouldn't change a note in this composition, which may be Mandel's finest moment. The melody moves with a stately emotional logic, as if each succeeding phrase builds from some syllogism of the heart established by the previous notes. Yet this mood is best undersold — as much as I admire this composition, if it is played too forcefully it comes across as overwrought and insincere. Unlike some songs, which benefit from fireworks in the final bars, this one requires a more measured buildup. The lyrics are almost better whispered rather than declaimed,

For these reasons, some of the finer versions of "The Shadow of Your Smile" come from performers with a knack for understatement. ….

The retrospective nature of the lyrics, which celebrate a love past rather than a current passion, perhaps endears this song to performers in their golden years.”

Or Blue Skies by Irving Berlin -

“A simple and catchy main melody with lots of whole notes and half notes offset by a klezmer-ish bridge, "Blue Skies" is a tune you could teach a toddler — I used to sing it as a lullaby to my son when he was a baby — or bring to the nightclub, cabaret, or (as Benny Goodman did) Carnegie Hall. But don't underestimate the lyrics, with their crisp naturalistic imagery closer to a traditional folk song or populist poetry than to Tin Pan Alley fare. Even today, "Blue Sides" is more likely to be called on the gig by a vocalist rather than an instrumentalist, and many of the most formidable versions feature the defining singers of modern times—Ella Fitzgerald (hear her extended scat excursion from 1958); Frank Sinatra, who sang it with Tommy Dorsey in 1941 and again as a leader in 1946; Willie Nelson, who had a number one country hit with "Blue Skies" in 1978 ... all the way to Cassandra Wilson and Dr. John in more recent years.”

Or Love for Sale by Cole Porter - 

“By the 1960s, the taboo associated with "Love for Sale" had faded [the song was associated with prostitution], and it became entrenched in the repertoires of jazz players. And for good reason. The opening theme is suitable for vamps of all stamps, from Latin to funky, and the release offers effective contrast both rhythmically and harmonically. A tension in tonality is evident from the outset: this song in a minor key nonetheless starts on a major chord, and seems ready to go in either direction during the course of Porter's extended form. A composition of this sort presents many possibilities, and can work either as a loose jam or bear the weight of elaborate arrangement.”

Ted Gioia’s The Jazz Standards is an interactive joy. It’s a book you can have fun with while learning from it and it can also serve a companion anthology and reference guide.

Those new to Jazz will find it to be an invaluable introductory guide while those with an acquaintance with the music will find much to enhance their appreciation of this unique and enthralling art form.

But be careful [he says with his tongue in his cheek] because:

“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."

— Dave Brubeck

'Warning: This book is addictive... Putting together a compendium like this must involve prodigious research and an encyclopaedic memory. Fortunately Gioia... wears his learning lightly and conveys it with wit and insight, and a

minimum of musicological jargon.”

— Dallas Morning News

On the other hand - 

“What a useful and informative book The Jazz Standards is! Explaining the jazz repertory in a way that is accessible for the jazz beginner yet stimulating for the aficionado, Ted Gioia shows once again why he is one of the best jazz writers around today.”

—Gerald Early, Editor of Miles Davis and American Culture

“The book is wise, often funny — and it always accomplishes the highest mission of writing about music, which is to send you back to the music with wide-open ears.”

— Kansas City Star

For order information go here.