The debate over what constitutes American music raged particularly fiercely in the early years of the 20th century as jazz invaded our ears. It took on particularly harsh tones in the classical-music world because that insular group—or at least its nervous ideologues in academia—clung to a belief that only the white European canon should prevail. Jazz knocked them off their pedestals.
What constitutes American music? I’m not falling into that trap. There are too many sounds, too many gestures to catalogue. Which is as it should be. Like the country itself (at least in its original intent), it’s varied and welcoming. So let’s zero in on jazz and popular song, and consider a moment in time when they got together to produce a chunk of memorable material that continues to live in our ears.
The story begins with immigrants, who “brought influences of European classical, folk, and religious music to the American shores. Their songs were popularized and sold in Tin Pan Alley, a group of music publishing houses located on Manhattan’s West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.” Thus explains Will Anderson in the introduction to Songbook Summit: Fifteen Pioneers of American Sound, an easygoing introduction to core performers and songwriters who helped define what’s now termed the American Songbook.
Will Anderson is himself a jazz musician, a young, very talented woodwind player who, along with his twin brother, Peter, took New York by storm. They’ve performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, and Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks (with whom they can be heard on the “Boardwalk Empire” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” soundtracks, and they have headlined at Carnegie Hall, The Blue Note, The Kennedy Center, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Feinstein’s 54 Below, and more. So he knows whereof he writes, and his book is sparked by the excitement he feels for the subject.
Those songbook standards became fodder for jazz treatments, but Anderson doesn’t waste ink trying to define jazz itself; he leaves that to Yogi Berra, with a follow-up quote from This Is Spinal Tap. Excellent.
The book’s first part introduces us to significant musicians of the era, and begins, as far as I’m concerned, completely appropriately with Duke Ellington. Followed by Louis Armstrong. And right there you have the definition of jazz, or at least of its ascendance. The bios are brief. Ellington gets five pages, but they’re five solid pages, concentrating more on the story of his life than his compositions. It is, of course, a story worth telling, particularly as Ellington and Armstrong are the only Black artists represented here.
“Duke worked during an era of racial segregation and racism,” writes Anderson, “but he never lost control or expressed anger—instead, he used flattery, humor, and charm. He was indeed a Black man—the grandson of a slave—and was very much preoccupied with his goal of communicating his experience through music. His well-crafted facade, impenetrable to everyone, even those closest to him, allowed him to operate successfully even in a racially-divided society.”
The four white swing-era bandleaders who follow are Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw, each of them given a fleet few pages that deftly summarize their origins and achievements. These are thumbnails that beg for musical accompaniment, so have your player nearby.
I was at first a little surprised to see Frank Sinatra make it into the book instead of Bing Crosby, but I had to remind myself that this is a study of the American songbook, and once Crosby settled into his Decca years, he had tons of trash foisted upon him, whereas Sinatra put a personal stamp on many of the best of those classic songs, and even had composer Jimmy Van Heusen, who is also profiled in this book, as his in-house songwriter.
And this is what aligns Sinatra with the included bandleaders: That personal stamp, a way of honoring a classic song while adding interpretive nuance to the piece, as with Artie Shaw’s “Stardust” and Tommy Dorsey’s “All the Things You Are.”
Profiles of nine composers follow, beginning with Jerome Kern. Anderson could have just given lists of song titles, a biography in itself, but the life story we get instead helps explain how it is this particular person came to adopt the mysterious profession of songwriter.
Not that the songs themselves are neglected. As Anderson writes about one favorite, “Because Kern’s melodies flow so logically, the listener hardly notices his daring harmony leaps underneath. His ‘All the Things You Are’ is…arguably the most harmonically complex of all the American Broadway songs, winding through at least five completely foreign key centers. But composer Alec Wilder said that no matter how complex a song is, if the opening phrase is catchy enough, the public will put up with the rest.”
And what varied life stories these songwriters had! Irving Berlin was born in Russia, in poverty, while Cole Porter was born to Midwestern wealth. Porter refined an idiom in which style and wit prevailed, even while penning classics like “Night and Day,” while Berlin became the musical voice of everyman, the most protean of his profession, churning out hits by the hundreds.
George Gershwin’s story should be familiar to anyone who’s read the liner notes to any of the million recordings of “Rhapsody in Blue,” but it’s nice to have the succinct version given here. Hoagy Carmichael’s, on the other hand, may be less familiar, but it’s the tale of a Midwestern kid who grew up poor but parlayed piano lessons into a musical career, spurred on by his friendship with Bix Beiderbecke.
As Anderson writes, “Throughout his career, Hoagy Carmichael composed nearly 500 songs, including 50 that achieved hit-record status. A contrast to the clever, urbane sounds of Gershwin and Porter, Carmichael joined the sounds of the Midwest with the glamor of Hollywood. Americans adored his nostalgic, down-home lyrics, and original jazzy melodies.”
There’s no question that Richard Rodgers had to be included, not only for the many perennials he wrote but also for the bifurcated career he enjoyed, first collaborating with Lorenz Hart and then completely changing his style to work with Oscar Hammerstein.
Harold Arlen, on the other hand, is more of a songwriter’s songwriter, whose name isn’t always associated with his many and varied hits. He was a cantor’s son, and became a pianist and singer. You can hear him to great effect with Leo Reisman’s orchestra on a recording of his own “Stormy Weather” as well as the much later album Harold Sings Arlen (with Friend), the friend being Barbra Streisand. His catalogue includes such varied songs as “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Blues in the Night,” “One for My Baby,” and, of course, “Over the Rainbow.”
Jimmy Van Heusen isn’t a name that leaps to mind when the greatest of songwriters are listed, but Anderson makes a convincing argument for him, noting his facility in writing songs for Sinatra (“All the Way,” “Come Dance with Me”) as well as general swing-era hits like “But Beautiful,” “Moonlight Becomes You,” “Imagination,” and one of my favorites, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” And the Academy Award-winning “Swinging on a Star,” which is carved on Van Heusen’s gravestone.
I’m not as convinced about the inclusion of Henry Mancini, not when there are tunesmiths like Harry Warren and Frank Loesser to consider. Mancini was a soundtrack guy, but I was so charmed by the rest of this book that I’ll let it go.
Some errata should be cleared up in future editions. It was Bob Eberle, not Bing Crosby, who had those hits with the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra, and Jerome Kern is said to have been a fan of the music of Franz Strauss when I suspect it was supposed to be Richard Strauss (Franz was his horn-playing father). There are more, but a careful re-reading will identify them.
Otherwise, this is an excellent book for the student of classic songs who’d like to get an overview of the masters. The writing is easygoing, not at all academic, and this would be a good jumping-off point for further reading—suggestions of which are at the back of the book—and, especially, listening, again with provided recommendations. And that’s what brought us here in the first place!
Songbook Summit: Fifteen Pioneers of American Sound
by William Reardon-Anderson
Order via email: songbooksummit@gmail.com
