Parts 1 and 2 from 2013 as heard on
Marfa Public Radio’s “West Texas Jazz” Program.

In 2013 I returned to Texas for the first six months of the year to complete my Master of Fine Arts degree at UT-Dallas. While I was there, I learned that Ted Gioia – who had just released his book “The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire” in September 2012 – was then living in Plano, Texas, just up the road from where I was living.

In these programs, Gioia talks passionately about the Jazz music repertoire as discussed in his book “The Jazz Standards”. I find the book to be both very readable and useful to anyone who wants to understand a little more about jazz as an art form. It bridges a gap between American Popular Song (the Alec Wilder book about the literal construction of song standards), and most of the biographies or jazz history books which tell you about the players but often little about the songs they play – or why.

Ted Gioia is one of my all time favorite music writers and he is as eclectic as any listener/critic I know. These interviews capture his eclecticism and allowed me to riff with him a little bit on some songs that we both appreciate. The book contains 252 jazz standards, which Ted defines as the songs that get played by working musicians and that should probably be in your repertoire as a jazz musician. That being said, the book is eight years old, and Ted would be the first to tell you that tastes and styles change in a decade. Still, if you are a jazz fan, these are songs you probably know. The book remains essential if you want to learn jazz and hear about representative music by icons in the field.

One quick note: if you have Spotify as a music service, there are playlists of the more than 1000 song examples provided. The recommended recording lists at the end of each song discussion provide basic information on the musicians/groups, recording dates and CDs/records.