Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Old Classic Pops -- Anyone Else Likes?

I posted a note similar to this on another forum that does not have a non-classical corner. I got almost nothing -- just one reply that was rather snippy, I thought.

Let me describe a type of piano music I have lately enjoyed playing. I have hit some estate sales and antique shops, and have purchased quite a few items of sheet music with popular songs of the 1930's. Some are "big band" pieces, and others could be described as old classics. Be ready with the scotch tape, since some of these old original printings are falling apart.

A few include:

Stardust
Over the Rainbow
So Rare
Tenderly
Moon River (more recent, I know)
Long Ago and Far Away
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
As Time Goes By

These are fun to play and sound very nice - IMHO. They are also nice to play when a mixed group of people are in the house, such as for a dinner party. Some guests understand classical, but many do not.

Some of these classic pop pieces are easy, but some are fairly challenging. It is possible to purchase this music for from $1 to $5 per item. My piano teacher likes to hear me play them. She thinks some of the arrangements are very well done.

As a senior citizen, perhaps I experience some nostalgia, bringing this music back to life that I used to hear on the radio when young. I have a mid-sized grand, and the sound is . . . "grand!" My wife loves it, and the cats love it.

Anyone else have enthusiasm for this sort of music?

Here's hoping I get more response than just one rather snippy reply, such as was the case on the other forum.

I love the same stuff.... I lean towards the Jazzy/bluesy stuff.
So I'll add some more great stuff to your list

In A Sentimental Mood (Ellington)
Solitude
Prelude To A Kiss
Avalon
I'm Beginning To See The Light
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Up A Lazy River
I Can't Get Started
Moonlight In Vermont
The Summer Knows
My Funny Valentine
Dancin' In The Dark
Georgia
Love Letters

Begin the Beguine, True Love, Love For Sale, Everytime We Say Goodbye, In The Still Of The Night and other Porter stuff

New York State Of Mind (Billy Joel not so old but it has the same nuances and flair)
Misty
Songbird
Imagination
I Love You For Sentimental Reasons
Always
In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
What'll I DO
Route 66
Fly Me To The Moon
Autumn In New York

Summertime; My Man's Gone Now; But Not For Me;
Someone to Watch Over Me and other Gershwin stuff

It is impossible to leave out all the great songs from the American Songbook ... so these are just a few that came to mind first

BTW you beat me to one of my favorites...Tenderly.

All these songs pull my heart strings....

*Sorry to hear you got a snippy reply at the other place.

I love anything by Romberg or Herbert, Kitten on the Keys, TV themes, big band music arranged for theatre organ or piano or Hammond organ etc.

A friend of mine snagged at auction, and shipped to me, 440 pieces of sheet music -- mostly from the 20's, 30's and 40's. Not only is the music fun to play and widely enjoyed by others, but the artwork on the covers is sensational.

From the collection, it is obvious that others have collected and protected these documents, and we have a responsibility to carry on that tradition!

--G

ps. I especially enjoyed "Why Did You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life" (!)

Ah yes. Tuxedo Junction. Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Blue Tango. San Antonio Rose. Tho the only one I can play at the drop of a hat is Tuxedo Junction. But I love my mother's early 1940's piano books. And I, too, shop the thrift stores for sheet music, LP's, and piano books. It seems to me there is *lots* to learn about harmonies, voicings, rhythms, from even the *easy* arrangements, and people love to hear them.

One of the reasons I like this forum and the ABF here at pianoworld - folks play my kind of piano.

Cathy

Really enjoying the thread.

A couple others I forgot to mention are

Sentimental Journey
Night and Day
Till the End of Time (Chopin melody)
Full Moon and Empty Arms (Rachmaninoff melody)
Begin the Beguine

I'm not good at music theory, and am just an amateur, but when Cathy speaks of learning harmonies and rhythms, I agree.

These old transcriptions of "big band" songs have lots of interesting harmonies, like chords based on seconds and sevenths that are resolved at the end of the phrase. Lots of half-tone key shifts marked in with accidentals (signature doesn't change). Shifts between major and minor at unexpected places, often lasting only a measure or two. Syncopated rhythms that may just last for a phrase, or may continue at more length.

Anyone else have ideas of some harmonic and other techniques commonly used in this 1930s "American Songbook" type repertoire?

Incidentally, Rod Stewart's three CDs of his "American Songbook" -- which sold in the millions -- do much to re-popularize some of these songs, regardless of whether you believe he does an especially good (or poor) job.

Linda Ronstadt did recordings of these old classics also, with some success.

I love that band Rod put together for his CDs and have the 1st big band dvd he did.
Arturo Sandoval trumpet solo's were awesome.
I played it for some of my residents at the nursing home and they loved it; they even liked the Rod's oldies like "Hot Legs" LOL.

Michael Buble also is doing much to introduce the great American songbook repetoire to the new kids coming up.

Whenever my area has a highschool or college Jazz festival I try to attend; these festivals help to keep the American Songbook music going by passing down these wonderful songs to the younger generations.

More songs I am thinking of now...
Moonglow
In The Mood
Black Coffee
The Midnight Sun
Sway (Love Michael Buble's recording)
Fever
Temptation (Diana Krall does it well)
Skylark
I let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
(Love Ella's rendition)
Outta This World (Another Ella # I love)
Hush Now, Don't Explain
East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon
Stars Fell On Alabama
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
A Nightengale Sang In Berkeley Square
Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me
I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
That Old Black Magic
Between The Devil And The Deeep Blue Sea
It Had To Be You
Call Me Irresponsible
Autumn Leaves
All The Things You Are
The Very Thought Of You
Isn't It Romantic
It Could Happen To You
I Didn't Know What Time It Was
Besame Mucho
I Remember You
Java Jive
Crazy He Calls Me
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?)
No Moon At All
Come Rain Or Come Shine
My Melancholy Baby
That's All

OK... my brain is hurting again from too much thinking of my favorites. LOL

Oh yeah. Not really old but I love this...
CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE

PS I got Ronstadts Big Band Recordings also
(With Nelson Riddle & His Orchestra)

With a Title 'User Name' 'Swingal' what else could I say? All I have on the music desk is a list of 80 odd swing numbers including most of those above. I play them with a jazz style and that's it folks.

I just adore the pop songs of yesteryear but played with a solid beat and harmonic vatiations.

Wolfindmist, There are a few more that Diana Krall recorded in your list above. Such as; East o the Sun. Come Rain come Shine and many other good recordings. I like her style, most of the time. I have not got all her recordings. So Wolf do you play all the numbers in the list and by ear or sheet ?

Mine is ear solely . You have a good selection and I play about 14 of them. I cannot remember some others enough to play them.

Alan

PS everytime I get on this website I want to jump away and play the piano. Thanks to all for your contributions, it's like having a silent friendship.

Sometimes diffrent chord changes can alter the feel of a tune..so standards by artists not always the same..

I Thought About You(dinah washington)
sounds more bluesy sad compared to Sinatra's
Here's another..A Cottage For Sale..sad by Sinatra
but uptempo swing by Nat King Cole!

Bob Newbie

Repeat

I think all my posts over there are getting rather snippy lately, Glyptodont. The Audition Room is good though.

In fact I used to play a great deal around melodies from that era because my teacher's professional style was very much oriented toward it and he incorporated it in his lessons. Every so often I used to take a trip through the Alberts 1001 fake book (out of print now - why I cannot imagine, as it was a particularly good one) and stuff them all full of weird and wonderful embellishments.

However, as I get older I feel that many of the melodies are spoiled by removing their simplicity in this way. Many of the tunes of that era seem peculiarly built for the (to me) endearing type of syncopated swing which belonged to their time. I tend to reach a sort of cut-off point where trying to do any more complications starts to detract from their sentiment.

So these days I tend to just play them in a very simple swing manner, admittedly strongly syncopated, usually tenth bass, sometimes filled or broken in different ways for variety, against full octave chord right hand, with just an occasional exotic run, twist or chord sequence at special moments.

Come to think of it, the sample from the Pianoworld CD, in this case one of my own tunes, demonstrates the type of simplicity I mean better than talking about it. Scroll down to my name and try the mp3 sample. That's the way I like to play most of those old tunes.

Elegance on Federal Street

I usually play by ear or improvise from either fake books/leadsheets/sheetmusic. I can play all of these songs listed. I get bored sticking to just a few songs. Fortunately there is so much material to choose from with regards to pop music of this era; it would be hard for me to get bored with this stuff.

Yesterday I sat at the colleges piano and just went from one song to another in some of my fake books; at times I pick a song and would try out different ways to play the same song (messing around with intros, endings, fills, rhythms etc.) I did this for about an 1 1/2 hours and never got bored.

When the digital radio is on I keep my dial on the vocal standards section. And the regular radio dial is set for the local college's PBS radio station that plays lots of Jazz/Blues.
I try to buy Jazz CD's recorded by my favorite singers (my latest purchase is Ella Swings Brightly/ The Nelson Riddle Orchestra). The more music I listen to the better my playing seems to evolve.

BTW I love D. Krall's East Of The Sun. The opening 6 note hook she adds to the piece really freshened the song up. I have most of her albums.
I would love to learn Diana's version of Blvd. of Broken Dreams.

I can't get enough of these wonderfully crafted songs; and at times I feel inspired to write songs with the same sort of feel.

So many times the songs I hear on the popular music stations don't offer too much to a listener. Some songs are just plain stupid... like Fergie's "London Bridge" song. There is nothing to it IMO; yet she is getting big bucks for it. Yet there are talented musicians and singers who get less money and less promotion. Go figure.

BTW I was disappointed to hear Rod Stewart is not going to make any more American Songbook Albums. I thought he was doing a great thing to help introduce the old 30-40's popular music to the kids out there.

I DVR'd the AMA awards last night and on so many song performances I just zipped right through after hearing just a few bars. I just can't stand listening to songs that just keep repeating the same words over and over again; with uninteresting or absent memorable melodies.

I like others check out thrift stores , garage sales, and such used book stores for songs from this era.
JMO

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I have that "Million Dollar Library" of about 20 spiral bound fake books with an additional spiral index and I've just gone crazy from there.

Amazing to see how many bad fakes there are out there and how fun it is for an amateur like me to "fix" them.

The Johns Hopkins online sheetmusic archive is a great place to source oldies too.

When we compare those old 1930's classic pop tunes to many of the current production, it's a joke.

I've been playing a number of pieces with Jerome Kern as either composer or co-composer. Wasn't he great?

I've been playing "over the rainbow" lately and you will see that there are at least three separate melody lines. This tune's really a rather complex product. Ditto for "As Time Goes By" and others.

Rod Stewart in his three American Songbook albums has some terrific instrumental back-up, as well stated by wolfenmist. Surprisingly, quite a few of the nicest pieces on these CDs are based on a piano background.

Some of these songs are swing, but some are lounge singer classics, like "A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square."

It was nice of all you folks to make this such a lively discussion.

lol, I've bookmarked this page for future reference. I love the standards listed (those that I recognize). Their deceptive simplicty allows a beginner like me to jump in right away, but also contain plenty of potential for future embellishment and growth. The golden era for piano solo/improv was during this time period, so no surprise that alot of these pieces seem ideal for solo piano performance and improvisation. Another thing is that these standards have all stood the test of time, and yes, even to my relatively inexperienced ears they still sound lovely and grand.

Fortunately I've got hundreds of the songs ready to go lying in my steadily growing fake book collection. Unfortunately, my biggest difficulty is my general unfamiliarity with many of the songs beyond the first few bars...thank goodness for the internet.

Consider subscribing to digital cable radio or to the satellite radio services (both if you can "swing it"--- pun intended) .... commercial free music of all sorts of genres almosts takes you back to that time. I usually play the vocal standards, & the big band/swing channel when I am online here.

Go to your local library and check out CD's of the great singers and songwriters from the 30-40's .

The key to getting intimately familiar with the songs from back then is listening to them often.

My favorite singers of all time is Ella Fitzgerald; but I love Billie Holiday also.
There are many other great female singers I also love (like Diana Krall). But nobody comes close to Ella and Billie in my book.

On the male singers side the favorites I love I love Louis Armstrong; Michael Buble (exciting young male singer); Tony Bennett; Frank Sinatra.
I dearly miss Ray Charles may he RIP.

If I were to have to live on a deserted Island and only have one artist's entire library of recordings to listen to for the rest of my time on earth.... I would want all of Ella's recordings with me.

To get familar with the great repetoire from this area all I can say is listen, listen, listen to the greatest recordings by the greatest singers from that era. Then try to sing what you are listening to.

One of my all time favorite duet vocal recordings is of Ella and Louis singing Gershwin's "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off".
I haven't heard anyone do it better than than Louis and Ella imo.
==================================
Listening to: "I Wished On The Moon" sung By Ella
====================================

It's very interesting to read all this because I have recently become enamored of the "American Songbook" myself. I subscribed to XM Satellite radio last year, and someone rcommended station 73, "Frank's Place." It's 30s-early 50s songs, some done by current singers but mostly originals.

While I believe that everyone thinks the music of their teen years is absolutely the best--it must be the hormones that really make us feel the music deeply then--I've often thought how powerful it must be to have been a teenager when these songs came out. To have this absolutely gorgeous music be associated with years of exploration, young love, etc. must make it especially beautiful to hear now. Maybe even almost too hard to hear.

By the way, my teacher gave me a great arrangement of "In the Mood" that I've been playing. I have really enjoyed it, though it took quite a while to get it up to speed.

Nancy

Glyptodont pointed out some of the harmony techniques used in this music and asked if anyone had other examples, and while the following may be old hat to many of you, I got a kick out of discovering it. I've been hosing up some new tunes with my "use as many 7 chords as possible" experiment, but I found a new take on it.

I had figured out that many pop/jazz/whatever songs/tunes use what I call the "V of the V" chord for variety - in the key of D, the A chord is the V chord (D-E-F-G-A is 1-2-3-4-5), and many times it's an A7, and sometimes you'll find an E7 chord leading into the A7 chord, which then cadences back to the D, the tonic, even tho E7 is not a chord in the key of D. That happens because in the key of A, E is the V chord, so you can throw it into D before the A in some places to give it a more "pop" feel.

But I was "analyzing" San Antonio Rose, which is in Bb, and the first three measures go / Bb __ / Bb7 __ / Eb __ / and I couldn't figure out what a I7 ("one 7") chord is doing there! So I transposed the chords to D, which is a key I'm much more familiar with , and they become / D __ / D7 __ / G __ /, or generically, / I __ / I7 __ / IV __ / But it's much more obvious to me why the D7, or the I7, chord is there - in the key of G, D is the V chord, and D7-G, or V7-I, is pretty common. So the D7 can be used in the key of D to lead into the G chord sometimes. Which is the same progression as Bb7-Eb in the key of Bb. So I tried this I7-IV (which has the sound of a V7-I in the key of the IV of the original scale, if that's not getting too wordy) trick on several other tunes I play and it was pretty "cool"!

And then serendipity struck again, and there's a short discussion of this "V of the V" progression in the Schubert analysis discussion stickied at the top of the Pianist Corner forum. Do you suppose Schubert would have liked San Antonio Rose?

Cathy

Now that I have this new machine I am discover the joys of high speed internet and youtube.

Oh boy! I found some great video clips of Ella.
Here is Ella doing one of my favorites "Angel Eyes". The pianist is doing a wonderful job also.

Here is a link to "Angel Eyes" sung by Ella in 1957; Dresden Germany Concert. I wish I could have been there.Wow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m6vtHIXzF8

Youtube is as addictive as PW too! Yikes. My addiction is taking over now....

Oh boy! S'more Ella. Here is a nice medley of songs put together by Ella. Berlin 1968 concert video.
Blue Skies, A Foggy Day, On A Clear Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvM_d90vff0

Enjoy!