Lists of definitive recordings of standards- where are they?

[Jonah]

Tune-Dex cards (3x5 cards with the lyric and chords) started coming out in 1942 and kept coming out until 1963. Lots of musicians bought them.

I read a book about them some years back. Here's a link to short article on a collection of them in a library.

Popular Music Tune-Dex Cards | University Library Blog

Thanks!
I have ti admit I did not know that.

[MarkRhodes]

Thanks!
I have ti admit I did not know that.

I can't remember now where I first heard of it, but this is the book I read:

The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians (Studies in Jazz): Barry Kernfeld: 9780810857278: Amazon.com: Books

[jtizzle]

I mean, if what you're looking for is the recordings that made the tunes the reason we play them nowadays, then get the early recordings by Erroll Garner, Nat Cole, Art Tatum, and Ahmad Jamal. These are great places to start, as these guys had some of the great recordings of many standards, which others then learned the same repertoire and recorded them in more advanced contexts. Miles, for example, learned a big amount of Ahmad's repertoire and it comes out in many of the early first quintet records (Walkin, Cookin, etc.)

There's also a book I saw in Barnes and Noble which is basically a compilated list of many of the important recordings of many standards. I can't think of the name of the book, but it can't be hard to find.

[SamBooka]

Btw I have this book at home..

http://www.amazon.ca/Jazz-Standards-...jazz+standards

It will not give you the definitive version but always a few examples to check out.

[jtizzle]

That's the book I was talking about! It has to be worth it, seeing as it's just 20 bucks.

[Jonah]

My wife during some home evenings or celebrations with family guests etc. puts on some vocal retro jazz and she asked me to make a selection from Rod Stewart's American Songbook cd set (I cant remember how many he made - 3 or 4?...

I am not a fan of Stewart in any of his scenic images... and I think in these CD's only few tracks he really made interesting performance... the rest is just.. is just regular... and makes it very boring after 2-3 songs
It will work for background track of romantic comedy, or as I used it for party where people want music to be nice but not really catchy.

But why I mention it here.

These records are very definitive - not in a way they are close to original performance, but close to songbook charts.

So pros:

- the melody and comping changes are very close to originals (or rather to songbook charts) and very simply arranged, and they can be easily picked by ear
- he sings with original intros - and for many songs it is the first time that I heard these intros and some are really interesting (often dropped out in songbooks!)
- this set is very complete

Cons:
- artistically not really interesting/corny - and mostly boring for listening

He just made sounding version of songbook charts. So if you cannot read charts/scores you ca go one of these records and be sure you'll pick the songbook version.

PS
I personally prefer to go not for 'songbook' version, but going from artistic rendition I really like...