Discover Jazz: Standards

As you look at the individual lists that make up our Discover Jazz: Big Bands Essential, you'll notice a striking similarity in the playlists. We've taken jazz standards and presented them in three contexts: their "hit" version (the one that made the song a jazz standard), a later reinterpretation, and a modern-era recording. Let's go riffing! Doomed cool school trumpeter/singer Chet Baker's version of Rodgers & Hart's "My Funny Valentine" is smooth as a dry martini and served straight up, while Miles Davis (in the Reinterpretations tab) stretches the length by more than double and improvises freely on the melody.

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When Wes Montgomery transcribed Dave Brubeck's "In Your Own Sweet Way" for guitar, he not only slowed it down a tad, but he also smoothed Brubeck's internal accents, playing it in a more deliberate manner, while keeping its dreamy quality. By contrast, the David Hazeltine & George Mraz Trio with Billy Drummond version in our Modern Takes tab kicks up the tempo several degrees. Kenny Burrell converts Dizzy Gillespie's Afro Cuban styled Con Alma to a laid back samba while Jim McNeely's cover (in Modern Takes) goes for a straight-ahead 4/4 tempo.

Click to hear our featured companion podcast, iTunes Jazz Discovery.

Kevin Spacey's take on "Mack the Knife" was modeled on the Bobby Darin pop hit; after all, it was recorded for Beyond the Sea, a biopic about Darin. It's a swinging tune, in striking contrast to the Dixieland-flavored version that Louis Armstrong cut decades earlier, and both are light-years removed from the original in Bertholt Brecht/Kurt Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). And Larry Goldings' "Hesitation Blues" (featuring Madeline Peyroux on vocal) is more of a torch song than the Reverend Gary Davis could possibly have imagined when he recorded his Delta-inflected acoustic version in 1957. Click to hear our featured companion podcast, iTunes Jazz Discovery.

As you look at our Basics, Next Steps, and Deep Cuts, you'll notice a striking similarity in the playlists. Either that, or you must be deceased. Check your pulse. What we've done is to take jazz standards and first introduce you to the versions that made them jazz standards. As you move along, you'll see the same playlist, but subtly altered — sort of the way a jazzbo will riff on a theme, once it's established. These are a little more adventurous takes on the tune stack. By the time you get to Deep Cuts, we'll introduce you to contemporary recordings of the same songs yet again, so you can appreciate that these tunes — like jazz itself — experience a continual evolution over time.

Click to hear our featured companion podcast, iTunes Jazz Discovery.