Great American Songbook

The Great American Songbook , which one can translate into French by Grand American Repertory , commonly indicates the American music of the Années 1920 at the years 1960. More simply, one can say that this term includes all the American popular music preceding the arrival (or success) by the Rock' roll. It is generally the music of the musical comedies of Broadway, Hollywood and the Tin Side Alley. This music, which one can compare to the Swing and the Big band, is often described indistinctly at the same time as pop traditional and of vocal Jazz and it is almost impossible to say exactly for which of these two currents, thereafter very distant, it is advisable to attach it. Many songs resulting from this time became large standards of Jazz which are still taken again regularly. Same manner as the " term; classical music " is employed to qualify the classical music by its amateurs who see it like a higher esthetic form, the " term; Great American Songbook " (and this, even if those which employ it today do not imply obligatorily this idea) suggested a level of musical composition unequalled which referred absolute then of it, in opposition to the other incipient currents, of which the Rock' roll.

Some major names of the Great American Songbook :

Type-setters
Irving Berlin - Duke Ellington - George Gershwin - Henry Mancini - Cole Porter

Singers
Paul Anka - Louis Armstrong - Fred Astaire - Tony Bennett - Nat King Cole - Perry Como - Bing Crosby - Sammy Davis Jr. - Dory Day - Ella Fitzgerald - Billie Holiday - Shirley Horn - Peggy Lee - Dean Martin - Johnny Mathis - Carmen McRae - Frank Sinatra - Nina Simone - Mel Tormé - Sarah Vaughan - Dinah Washington - Nancy Wilson

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