The Post-1955 Great American Songbook. What songs qualify?

[Telemark]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

We’re talking about songs, not performances.

I think this is an important distinction. For a song to be in the GAS, IMO, it should have an identity separate from any particular recording. Many performances are iconic, but that by itself doesn’t qualify for the GAS. A song should be able to be interpreted by different artists to qualify.

[MrDibble]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

Sure they do. Just pick up a Byrds record.

Let me rephrase - people don’t go out dancing to Dylan. *Or *The Byrds. Mr Tambourine Man is not dance music.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

We’re talking about songs, not performances.

@Telemark

I think this is an important distinction. For a song to be in the GAS, IMO, it should have an identity separate from any particular recording. Many performances are iconic, but that by itself doesn’t qualify for the GAS. A song should be able to be interpreted by different artists to qualify.

In fact, I suspect that a big part of the reason that the “Great American Songbook” era is presumed to have ended in the 1950s with the advent of rock and roll, is that that’s when the focus shifted from songs, to performances or recordings of songs, so that nowadays many people have trouble seeing the distinction.

[EinsteinsHund]

@MrDibble

Let me rephrase - people don’t go out dancing to Dylan. *Or *The Byrds. Mr Tambourine Man is not dance music.

The people don’t go dancing to the Byrds? Tell that to the people in the packed clubs of 1965 LA.

[JohnT]

@Thudlow_Boink

One criterion I would add:

“Great American Songbook” implies that it’s the song itself, as opposed to a particular artist’s recording or performance of it, that’s iconic.

Among the songs that have been suggested so far, I see some very worthy choices (“Bridge Over Troubled Water” was for some reason the first thing I thought of). Certainly Bob Dylan needs to be represented—by “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” or “Blowin’ In the Wind,” or “Mr Tabourine Man”? “God Only Knows” and “Always On My Mind” are great choices too.

Maybe “Just the Way You Are,” by Billy Joel?

Sorry, missed this one.

So, to this point (also made by Jeff Lichtman and others), I think it merely represents a difference in the technology available at the time.

The 19th-century to 1920 versions of the songbook were largely based on sheet music sales and popularity. I mean, the very name “Great American Songbook” (GAS) literally references songbooks, which makes sense in a pre-electricity age where to hear music one had to find (or be) a player.

The later version of the songbook (the era largely covered by the Wiki article above) are recorded songs for live airplay, Broadway, and (later), Hollywood. This distinction allows for multiple artists to cover the same songs, especially given that the ability of the consumer to reach back in time for their favored version is, well, more difficult.

In both of these eras, the concept of the singer-songwriter was not supported by the means of production or distribution. There was quite a sharp divide between those who sung the songs and those who wrote the songs. But the rock era, itself famously not a product of Tin Pan Alley (TPA), changed all this.

Rock destroyed the old-time distribution model which made for such things as “Great American Songbooks”. Capital, Sun, Stax, Motown, Atlantic, more, all were instrumental in breaking the grip of Tin Pan Alley. Sir Peter Hall in Chapter 19 of his excellent Cities in Civilization says the following:

Underlying the rock ‘n’ roll revolution was a profound set of technological changes which impinged on the whole existing organization for producing and distributing popular music. Overwhelmingly, the most important was the long-playing record, but its diffusion came through a new style of radio broadcasting.

Down to the early 1950s, music became popular by being played in live radio performances. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the association of Broadway and Hollywood producers, licensed network radio songs and controlled the rights to all the big Tin Pan Alley figures like Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Noel Coward. George Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hart, and the big swing bands; effectively, this small group of powerful ASCAP publishers determined what was offered… In 1940, in response to ASCAP’s demand for higher royalties, the radio stations started BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc); and for 10 months in 1941, they took all ASCAP music off the air and played only BMI artists…

(Tin Pan Alley’s) fortunes was changed quite suddenly and simultaneously by the advent of television, which brought the demise of costly radio shows; by the introduction of magnetic and tape recording, which cheapened the cost of masters; by the development of BMI as an alternative publisher’s organization; and by the rise of a new generation of disc jockeys and the growth of car radio and portable radios

… Technology is important here. FM radio had been developed by Edwin Armstrong in 1923-4, but RCA suppressed it… RCA’s emphasis on television caused it to gie little attention to its record division, while the independent radio stations began to experiment with R&B music, pushing aside the staid network stations. Then, in 1948, CBS introduced… the 33 rpm long-playing record (LP)… soon after… RCA brought out the 45 rpm single. But even more significant was the use of magnetic tape for recording music, and import from Germany after WW2. From 1954, multi-track recording became the basis of studio music production, with far reaching consequences for musical performance.

So rock 'n roll was the first form of music to be distributed in mass quantities on record, the first form of music whose development was linked to radio, film, and television. The recording and editing studios now became central in producing the sound, and the whole process became much longer and more complex. Multi-tracking techniques revolutionized the new music; the result was quite different from a live performance. As George Harrison of The Beatles later said: 'Nobody knows what the tunes sound like till we’ve recorded them, then listened to them afterwords."

… ‘We didn’t write songs, we wrote records’, said Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the songwriting-producing team… In the process of creating music, the producer, who orchestrated this, and the sound engineers who made it possible, became as important as the musicians.

In the Wiki article cited in the OP, it references two GAS’s - the original, representing the recorded TPA songs of 1920-1950, but then later ‘expanded’ by some to cover the sheet music era in the pre-recording days.

Therefore, given the completely different methodologies by which a song is created, marketed, and packaged from the TPA days, a modern GAS which does not allow for specific recordings which themselves are iconic (ala Fortunate Son) seems too limited. Fortunate Son is not a song I would play or randomly sing along to. But the CCR version of this song is so tied to its time and place, utilized in other mediums, that their recording of it has earned the song on my version of the GAS.

However, feel free to add only those songs which you feel should be included.

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

@MrDibble

Let me rephrase - people don’t go out dancing to Dylan. *Or *The Byrds. Mr Tambourine Man is not dance music.

Silly me.

[MrDibble]

That’s not “going out dancing”. That’s standing in one place vaguely moving your feet. For money. On TV.

[MrDibble]

@EinsteinsHund

The people don’t go dancing to the Byrds? Tell that to the people in the packed clubs of 1965 LA.

Do they still?

Because dance music has moved on, but if I go to a current jazz or swing dance club, I can assure you they’ll still be playing some things from the GAS. That longeivity is part of what has to count to make something “Great”.

[Anny_Middon]

Where are all the blues songs?

I’ll nominate Sweet Home Chicago, Hoochie Coochie Man and Stormy Monday.

[EinsteinsHund]

@Anny_Middon

Where are all the blues songs?

I’ll nominate Sweet Home Chicago, Hoochie Coochie Man and Stormy Monday.

All were pre-1955, though Hoochie Coochie Man only by a year.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

Good suggestion Anny Middon, and good catch EinsteinsHund.

How about:

Boom Boom (John Lee Hooker)

Pride and Joy (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

[EinsteinsHund]

@F.U.Shakespeare

Good suggestion Anny Middon, and good catch EinsteinsHund.

How about:

Boom Boom (John Lee Hooker)

Pride and Joy (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

Two more blues songs from 1955 (the year Mannish Boy was released) and later that would qualify:

Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters (an answer song to Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man” which was an answer song to “Hoochie Coochie Man”)

Smokestack Lightning - Howlin’ Wolf (the writer, Willie Dixon, shouldn’t be left out of a great American songbook)

ETA: Muddy Waters, like thousands of bands after him, did Smokestack Lightning too.

[JohnT]

So, does Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye, a #1 single in December 1969, written by Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo, & Dale Frashuer, count? It’s definitely… well, one line of it anyway… sung all the time @ sporting events and contests.

[Telemark]

Cat’s in the Cradle - Harry Chapin

[Zeldar]

Deacon Blues – Steely Dan

[AllShookDown]

The Long and Winding Road

[Thudlow_Boink]

@AllShookDown

The Long and Winding Road

Not really American, is it?

[Telemark]

@AllShookDown

The Long and Winding Road

Written by a Brit (Paul McCartney) so it doesn’t qualify.

[HyacinthBucket]

Apologies if it’s already been mentioned but I looked and didn’t see it.

My Way - lyrics written by Paul Anka in the late 1960s, the music was apparently from a French song with totally different lyrics, but with this song it’s the lyrics that count. Sung by the Great American Singer and in thousands of nightclubs by thousands of others who wish they WERE the Great American Singer.

[Telemark]

@HyacinthBucket

My Way - lyrics written by Paul Anka in the late 1960s

Paul Anka is Canadian, so this doesn’t qualify.