Nick
Catalano is a TV writer/producer and Professor of Literature
and Music at Pace University. He reviews books and music for
several journals and is the author of Clifford
Brown: The Life and Art of the Legendary Jazz Trumpeter,
New York
Nights: Performing, Producing and Writing in Gotham
and A
New Yorker at Sea. His latest book, Tales
of a Hamptons Sailor, is now available. For Nick's
reviews, visit his website: www.nickcatalano.net
Awhile
back rock star Cyndi Lauper recorded “At Last” a
1941 song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the film
Sun Valley Serenade starring Sonja Henie – a name few
under the age of 40 will remember. A few months before this
classic rocker Rod Stewart 
recorded
a CD performing George Gershwin’s “They Can’t
Take That Away from Me” composed in 1937. The album was
dubbed It Had To Be You: The Great American Songbook and
contained a host of ancient songs from the pens of Cole Porter,
Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields, and similar legends. In the same
year soft rock star Boz Scaggs recorded Rogers & Hart’s
“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” from their
1940 show Pal Joey.
These
rockers together with rapper Queen Latifah, Roxy Music rocker
Bryan Ferry, country/folk rocker Bob Dylan, latin pop rocker
Gloria Estefan, synth-pop rocker Annie Lennox, Linda Ronstadt,
Sting, Paul McCartney and many others from the rock dominated
musical history of the last 60 odd years have all dragged out
of the closet popular standards that were written long before
they were born.
Much
speculation has surrounded this phenomenon. A&R executives
at recording companies have rarely ventured away from repertoires
of the big money-making rockers who have provided windfall profits
over the decades since the genre exploded in the 50s. When Alan
Freed coined the term Rock n’Roll around 1954, record
producers summarily abandoned the aforementioned pop standards,
their eminent composers, and the illustrious artists who made
them famous.
Thus
Elvis Presley supplanted Frank Sinatra, The Beatles obliterated
The Mills Brothers, and Bill Haley & the Comets demolished
Duke Ellington. The standards (much of it from musicals), and
big-band jazz which had been America’s popular music for
the previous 30 years fell off the mountain and Billboard chart-toppers
would now feature names like The Rolling Stones.
As
a young jazz musician used to constant audience appreciation
when performing Ellington’s “Take the A Train,”
I was astounded when teenagers mobbed the bandstand after I
had soloed on “Rock Around the Clock” -- repeatedly
playing only one note on my tenor sax. I couldn’t believe
that audiences went so wild over such elementary sound. Oh well,
I thought, this stuff can’t possibly last . . . How wrong
I was . . . a half century later it still dominated the world
music market.
But
now, in what finally may be the onset of a post-rock era, the
American Songbook has returned albeit in the recordings of the
rockers. Why?
Last
March Bob Dylan released a 3-disc CD dubbed Triplicate,
a collection of 30 pop standards. Together with 2 previous such
albums- Fallen Angels (2016) and Shadows in the
Night (2015) it brings the total of Dylan’s recordings
of pop standards to just over 50. These recordings were the
basis for Dylan’s attainment of a 2016 Nobel prize for
“having created new poetic expressions within the great
American song tradition” according to the Swedish Academy
which awarded the prize.
Listeners
of these recordings who can recall their original issuances
and their countless covers by subsequent master vocalists and
arrangers have described Dylan’s efforts as something
of a lark. Just one example: “These Foolish Things”
-- composed in 1936 by Jack Strachey and seminally recorded
by Billie Holiday – has been covered by Ella Fitzgerald,
Frank Sinatra and other immortals. Dylan’s effort, as
in his other aforementioned covers of standards, adds nothing
to the musical, lyrical, and emotional meanings of this song.
Boz
Scaggs’ 2003 album, But Beautiful, reached number
one on the list of Billboard’s top jazz albums for the
year. The accolades motivated another effort in 2008 dubbed
Speak Low which Scaggs described as “a sort of
progressive, experimental effort along the lines of some of
the ideas that Gil Evans explored.” One critical reaction
to Scaggs’ vocalizing labeled it as “hollow”
and other commentary had similar reactions.
It
is clear from these and other similar examples that rockers
and their present recording producers are stretching.
An
argument supporting the trend has been made: rockers performing
standards introduces this historic art music to the younger
generation. However, if producers were truly dedicated to introducing
the Standards to younger audiences they would promote obscure
but conspicuously talented vocalists rather than celebrity figures
under contract. Even perfunctory knowledge of contemporary talent
reveals gals like Rene Marie, Nnenna Freelon, Malene Mortensen,
Sophie Milman, Carla Cook, Mary Stallings, and guys like Aaron
Caruso, Matt Welch, Sachal Vasandani, Ori Dagan, and many others
all of whom can render the Standards noted above with exceptional
performances.
When
phonograph records arrived on the scene over a century ago,
very quickly entrepreneurs descended on the scene, realizing
that fortunes could be made by issuing outrageously manipulative
contracts to performers. They soon controlled the music business
and wound up exerting enormous influence on the musical tastes
of the population. Geoffrey Stokes’ 1977 book Star
Making Machinery: Inside the Business of Rock and Roll
painfully relates the story of this insidious development.
Although
present-day music fans can escape this big brother manipulation
because of the choices available through YouTube, Pandora, Spotify,
and a host of streaming sites, the vestige of this ancient power
still exists and a major expression of it can be found in the
CD sales of the retreading rockers.
