The Great American

Highlights of a unique gathering of eclectic artists at Air Studios in London to celebrate the songs and composers of the Great American Songbook. Performers are Paolo Nutini, Melody Gardot, Claire Martin, Jose James, Sharleen Spiteri, Krystle Warren, and Gwyneth Herbert.

Live in San Francisco is a collaborative live album by Ry Cooder and Corridos Famosos released in September 2013 by Nonesuch Records and Perro Verde. The album was recorded in 2011 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California. Cooder produced Live in San Francisco and recorded with members of Corridos Famosos, which included vocalists Juliette Commagere, Terry Evans, and Arnold McCuller, Joachim Cooder on drums, Robert Francis on bass, Flaco Jiménez on accordion, and the ten-piece Mexican brass band La Banda Juvenil. It was his first live album since Show Time (1977), which Cooder also recorded at the Great American Music Hall with Jiménez and Evans.

The Great American Songbook has many top-drawer interpreters, but Nancy Wilson is rarely spoken of in the same breath as Ella Fitzgerald or Dinah Washington or Frank Sinatra or Mel Tormé. The reason lies less with her talents, which are sizeable, and more with her orientation, which fits the show tunes concept of putting the song across with precise diction as well as emotion instead of the jazz vocal tradition of personalizing a song. Those who know only Wilson's crossover work and think she intrudes in the field of vocal jazz should simply listen to her 1959 performance of "On the Street Where You Live," where she often varies notes and tempo but preserves the essential ebullience of the song intact – an excellent musical performance combined with an excellent reading of a classic standard. That song is only one of the treasures present on the two-disc set The Great American Songbook, one in a loose series of three Capitol compilations to compile Wilson's late-'50s and early-'60s prime, the others focusing on blues ballads and lost love. There is a lot of music to wade through (more than twice as much as the other volumes in the series), but the compilers ably mix up the proceedings, balancing small-group performances that have a loose touch from all involved with large-band spectaculars featuring impeccable arrangements (often by masters of the form Billy May or Gerald Wilson).

Jazz great James Morrison returns with an essential new album: timeless hits from The Great American Songbook, recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London with the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Keith Lockhart. Performing on a range of instruments (including trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, tenor sax and piano), Morrison brings his trademark virtuosity and flair to classics by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern and more. These tunes were originally made famous by many of the great singers of all time; for this album, Morrison especially commissioned arrangements that bring alive the melodies, styles and meanings that have made these songs so immortal and beloved.

Rod Stewart has been mining the Great American Songbook for the better part of a decade, so it would only make sense that he would get a little bit better as time goes by. And, by some stroke of fate, Fly Me to the Moon the fifth installment in this never-ending series and first since 2005, as Rod spent the back half of the 2000s taking songbook detours into rock and soul is Stewart’s best album in the entire series. Some credit must be due to producer Richard Perry, who returns to the project after a few records off, but what distinguishes Fly Me to the Moon isn’t precision but relaxation.

2021 release. Although for many decades it was principally the domain of jazz-styled singers and musicians, The Great American Songbook has undergone a significant revival in recent years, in terms of the mass market's rediscovery of the genre. Loosely defined, these are the most popular and enduring songs from the 1920s through to the 50s, most of which were written for Broadway theatre, musical theatre and/or Hollywood musical movies. And although regular Pop Music has generally endured a somewhat difficult relationship with what has always been perceived as "serious" music, many R&B and early Soul performers dabbled in the Great American Songbook over the years. This unique compilation presents thirty memorable examples, featuring artists like Ray Charles, Big Maybelle, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, LaVern Baker, James Brown, Etta James, Bobby Bland, Timi Yuro, Ruth Brown and many more. Many of these sides are hard to find elsewhere on CD.