Great American Songbook


The Great American Songbook is the canon of American popular songs and jazz standards. Although several collections of music have been published under the title, it does not refer to any actual book or specific list of songs. The Great American Songbook comprises standards by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, and Richard Rodgers, among others.

Definition

Music critics have attempted to develop a "canon." For example, in Alec Wilder's 1972 study, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950, the songwriter and critic lists and ranks the artists he believes belong to the Great American Songbook canon. A composer, Wilder emphasized analysis of composers and their creative efforts in this work.
Radio personality and Songbook devotee Jonathan Schwartz has described this genre as "America's classical music".

Songwriters and songs

The following writers and songs are often included in the Great American Songbook:
, one of the most prolific composers and lyricists of the Great American Songbook
In 1970, rock musician Ringo Starr surprised the public by releasing an album of Songbook songs from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Sentimental Journey. Reviews were mostly poor or even disdainful, but, being by a Beatle, the album reached #22 on the US charts and #7 in Britain, with sales of 500,000.
Other pop singers who established themselves in the 1960s or later followed with albums reviving songs from the Great American Songbook, beginning with Harry Nilsson in 1973 and continuing into the 21st century. Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, and Bob Dylan made several such albums. Of Ronstadt's 1983 album, What's New, her first in a trilogy of standards albums recorded with arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle, Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: