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This is why some songs will always be relevant


jaxson50

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<grin>

 

 

60s and 70s songwriting?

 

Hey, I may be a bit prejudiced, but I'll take the period from the mid 30s through the mid 50s instead. Those are truly the "standards" of music even today, regardless that few recall whence they came.

 

m

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<grin>

 

 

60s and 70s songwriting?

 

Hey, I may be a bit prejudiced, but I'll take the period from the mid 30s through the mid 50s instead. Those are truly the "standards" of music even today, regardless that few recall whence they came.

 

m

Ok, I'll give you that one Milod, a lot of stuff from the early-years of Radio, Rock & Roll and even the Jazz/Show-tunes from the 30's-40's are really good but I'm thinking of more on the side of youth and the modern Rock and R&B era. I'll expand my earlier post to include the late 1950's but there where still many grown-up's involved in the creative process at that time.

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You should be allowed to appreciate any music form you want. The word "standard" is rather subjective. The music we considered standards in our youth, was the music of our parents, the music of the 30s and 40s. Today the standards would most likely be the music of the 50s and 60s. There was a time when the music of the 1870s to the 1890s were the standards. I bet there are few alive today that can recall more then one of them.

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Grandfather Clock - 1876

 

When you and I were Young, Maggie - roughly 1866

 

Both pre 1900. Both well known at least into the '60s.

 

Muleskinner Blues - 1930 but around a lot longer.

 

From the '20s 1930s and 40s and still commonly played:

Somewhere over the Rainbow

Crossroads Blues

Stormy Weather

Stardust

Blue Moon (1934 - but wow how it's been done since... and considered by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 songs that shaped the genre.)

Summertime - Even with the Doors using some of it... supposedly the Zombies???

Nobody Knows you when you're down and out

Chattanooga Choo Choo

White Christmas

Ghostriders in the sky

Blue Skies was 1927 - Willie Nelson in '78 and Rod Stewart did it in 2007 and it's been in movies from 1927 through Star Trek Nemesis in 2002 and some more recent movies and versions.

Georgia on my Mind? From 1930 and still regularly played.

I Can't Get Started... 1936, Bunny Berigan's 1937 version is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, Rod Stewart did it in 2004.

Heart and Soul, #1 for Larry Clinton in '39 and redone through the years sometimes famous, sometimes in ads or whatever.

Miller's Moonlight Seranade? 1939, recorded through the years; Carly Simon in 2005

And I'll wager that almost everyone will recognize As Time Goes By from Casablanca, 1942, although it's seldom played otherwise.

 

A bit later, '47, Stormy Monday?

 

1954 Misty? Oh well.

 

All kidding aside, I think there are some songs - When You and I Were Young as an example, that can be done a la 1870 something or fat-chorded jazz or... bluegrass or country... Dunno about some current rock rhythms and it'd likely be considered too sweet...

 

I think there are some pieces of music that have such appeal that they last virtually forever in various formats. Green Sleeves is another example that's been done in about every conceivable style for how many hundreds of years?

 

Also, given how many times some of the material has been recorded by "aging" rock or country musicians today, it seems that from the 20s early forays into "swing" through the early '50s, the more complex chord structures and lyricism is keeping its appeal.

 

Heck, I wasn't born when Bea Wain did Deep Purple or when Helen Forest and Artie Shaw did a version.

 

Ah, well...

 

Yeah, I think "Yesterday" is likely to be something of a standard but ... notice that it's not done as bluegrass or jazz very much, and even the Mickey Mouse Club theme can be...

 

So I think the more complex progressions that can be redone in any number of styles are more likely to be a "standard" recorded through the decades, if not centuries.

 

m

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Like you I thought of standards as being the hits of the 30s and 40s, but when my grandmother, who was born in 1906 and taught music for most offer 86 years talked about standards, she was speaking of works from the 1800s or even earlier, Mozart etc. I think it is a generational thing.

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Yeah, I think you and I are more likely to think of jazz or "pop" standards, although some material from the 1860s forward has lent itself well to all sorts of renditions in about every conceivable "popular music" genre.

 

But I think what's a "standard" for a music teacher isn't necessarily what's a "standard" for the average performer of genres of pop music. Heck, I love Baroque, but... I doubt that a chromatic fantasia and fugue will be dinner or dance music.

 

One think about "dance music for the masses" as opposed to the professionals is that it can't last forever because the dancers can't. <grin> Hence music with a practical local/regional dance swing will end up a "standard." I'll wager a steak dinner you can figure some more modern piece that's 90 percent lifted from "Bile Them Cabbage Down..."

 

m

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Before the invention of the radio, there were songs considered standards. Before Duke Ellington was born, there were songs considered standards. Just my opinion here, but I have a hunch that the people living in the early 1900s were not waiting for the birth of Count Bassie so they could have standards.

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Before the invention of the radio, there were songs considered standards. Before Duke Ellington was born, there were songs considered standards. Just my opinion here, but I have a hunch that the people living in the early 1900s were not waiting for the birth of Count Bassie so they could have standards.

 

 

"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song and tune, a ground either of the form called a romanesca or of its slight variant, the passamezzo antico.

 

A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in September 1580,[1] by Richard Jones, as "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves".[

 

 

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