Standard Time
Over the past 50 years, many rock stars have recorded some of the great American standards. But which are worth checking out?
Many rock stars have recorded albums of the great American standards. But which are the ones most worth checking out?
Rock’n’roll smells phony and false,” superstar singer Frank Sinatra said in the late 1950s. “It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons.”
Thirty years later, Frank may have felt vindicated when some of those cretinous goons began to cover his kind of music.
Although there were a few early examples in the 60s (The Supremes and Aretha Franklin among them), the phenomenon of rock and pop singers recording albums of standards began in earnest, as many things do, with The Beatles. Ironically, the Beatle who might have seemed least qualified to tackle great American songwriters such as Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer was the one who started the trend. While Ringo Starr’s debut solo album Sentimental Journey (1970 ) didn’t exactly open the floodgates, it drew up a blueprint for all future Great American Songbook projects. A decade later, thanks to Linda Ronstadt’s Grammy-winning trilogy of albums, the idea of ‘standard time’ became a popular career move.
So why cover classic old songs made famous by a previous generation of singers? First, they were built to last. Sophisticated, tuneful, full of heart, they’re also flexible enough to be reinterpreted in many ways. Second, it enables singers to age gracefully and show off their vocal ability, all while appealing to a new demographic (consider that Rod Stewart’s 2002 release It Had To Be You was his first No.1 album since 1979). Third, it’s an acknowledgment that good music is really a continuum rather than a collection of opposing styles.
Over the years, the most successful Songbook forays have been those where the singer has some history and emotional connection to the material. You can hear that Harry Nilsson, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson not only knew the standards, they had also incorporated their inf luence into their own work. Having a sensitive arranger like Nelson Riddle or Quincy Jones on board is also crucial in order to add the requisite swing and sparkle. Singers like Carly Simon and Cyndi Lauper have acquitted themselves nicely on throwback albums, but the arrangements sometimes suffered from cruise-ship blandness.
While the past year didn’t see any new Songbook releases, there are surely more to come. As a beloved old standard put it: ‘Moonlight and love songs, never out of date.’