What Are the Most Recent Standards?

[Teasing the Korean]

I am wondering what, if any, tunes from more recent decades have achieved "standard" status among professional jazz musicians.  When I say "standard," I mean tunes that could easily be played on the spot by four of five professional jazz musicians who have never played together before.  The same way you could call "Laura" or "These Foolish Things," could a professional musician call anything of more recent vintage and assume everyone on the gig would know the tune?  

I am wondering if cultural fragmentation and niche genres/audiences have made the possibility of new standards more difficult, or if these factors have changed the criteria for considering a tune a standard. 

Edited September 22, 2015 by Teasing

[JSngry]

Couple of Stevie tunes, "Just The Way You Are", maybe "Saving all My Love For You"...enough jazz folks play lounge gigs that they would know the tunes, it's more a question of would they think of them as vehicles for jazz instead of just cheesy lounge songs.

[BillF]

When I saw the Christian McBride Trio a couple of months ago at a Manchester club, they received warm applause when they played a couple of unannounced Michael Jackson tunes. I didn't know these and only found out what they were when McBryde later justified their inclusion. Perhaps he's looking for new standards.  Incidentally, Charlie Parker quotations elsewhere in the program went unnoticed by the audience. The world moves on .... 

[JSngry]

Stigmatization of source is a lot more prevalent now than it was a few generations ago. Used to be, people would play a popualr tune as jazz, and either find a way to make it work or else suck really hard trying. This was before Top 40 and "rock and roll" and the death of so-called "good music", like "I Got Rhythm" and any number of 50s scholck don't have pretty much the exact changes. Then with funk it became "there's no melody there, it's all vamp", and you know, these old standards, they're from the American Musical Theatre, these other things are just radio drivel, and, etcetra.

I swear, I did a reharm on "Close to You, like, more than 30 years ago, just turned the changes all around, gave it a Mobley-esque whole tone bridge, totally new coat of paint, and I could not get anybody to play it without that condescending smirk of oh, the CARRRRR-penters. So one day I brought just the changes to a session and said let's blow on this, and heeeyyyy,m that's NICE, what is it? Ok, let's do it again and see. And the CRASH oh, the CARRRRR-penters. I get it, but...I don't really get it.

fwiw, though, when you play a jazz (or jazz-ish) gig for/with a predominantly African-American audience/band, there's a lot less elf-consciousness about repertoire than there is playing for/with an Anglo-American audience/band. For all the horror stories you can tell about "Smooth Jazz", a negligence of the contemporary popular repertoire is not one of them, although quite often the results are.

Ain't what you play, etc.

[Joe]

Thanks to Miles, but not exclusively due to his influence, "Time After Time" (Lauper / Hyman) seems to have made its way into the lower echelons of the GAS.

[duaneiac]

When I saw the Christian McBride Trio a couple of months ago at a Manchester club, they received warm applause when they played a couple of unannounced Michael Jackson tunes. I didn't know these and only found out what they were when McBryde later justified their inclusion. Perhaps he's looking for new standards.  Incidentally, Charlie Parker quotations elsewhere in the program went unnoticed by the audience. The world moves on .... 

Each year, the SFJAZZ Collective explores the music of a selected composer for their concert performances.  Previous years have seen them focus on Horace Silver, Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, John Coltrane, etc.  This year it is Michael Jackson.  I never realized he wrote (or at least took a writer's credit) on so many of his tunes.

I think there is a lot of snobbery in the jazz world (at least among some fans, if not the musicians) regarding pop music nowadays.  "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper is a perfectly good tune, yet how many people rolled their eyes when Miles Davis recorded it -- not necessarily because of his performance of the tune, but simply because it was a Cyndi Lauper tune?  (Another very good ballad which should be picked up by some jazz musician is "Take A Bow" by Madonna and Babyface.)

Certainly some of Elton John's songs have become standards ("Your Song", "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word").  Maybe Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" might be well enough known to be a standard.

[A Lark Ascending]

The highlight for me of this excellent disc...

...is Chambers version of Janet Jackson's 'Come Back to Me'. I don't know the original but it make a great vehicle for a jazz performance here.

I often hear versions of more contemporary songs on vocal records and in performance - Norma Winstone regular sings things from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Peter Gabriel. 

Nick Drake Songs...especially 'Riverman'...often appear too - I think that like with Joni, the chords work well for jazz. Which is not often the case with music from a rock or folk background - to make them interesting for improvising over a lot has to be done to the harmony and often the tendency is to straighten out the irregularities. Which means you often lose complete sight of the original song. I found that with the Herbie Hancock 'New Standards' album of 15 or so years ago. 

Having said that, these are often one offs rather than standards. Even 'Riverman' has a way to go before it catches up with 'Body and Soul'. 

[aparxa]

Heard more than once over the past decade:

Radiohead songs: Karma Police, Everything in its right place, Karma Police, Exit Music.

Hit Me Baby One More Time!

[xybert]

There's been quite a few covers of Smells Like Teen Spirit but i'm not sure whether it'd be considered a standard in the 'call it on the bandstand' vein.

[Teasing the Korean]

Thanks, all, for the replies.  This is pretty much as I'd imagined. 

Now, here is part two of my question:

What, if any, jazz tunes - or, more precisely, tunes written by jazz artists - from more recent decades have achieved "jazz standard" status among professional jazz musicians? Again, I mean tunes that could easily be played on the spot by four of five professional jazz musicians who have never played together before.  Could a professional musician call certain jazz tunes of a more recent vintage and assume everyone on the gig would know the tune?  

 

[JSngry]

"Bolivia" was already on its way in the mid/late 70s.

I'm also encountering a lot of younger players who know a lot of Scofield tunes. They have me at a disadvantage there.

Are we talking about professional players who come ut of the schools or "others". Seems like the school players all know the same tunes?

[Teasing the Korean]

Are we talking about professional players who come ut of the schools or "others". Seems like the school players all know the same tunes?

Well, that is part of what I am getting at with my questions. Has jazz fragmented into too many sub-genres and sub-cultures to have a coherent center in the present?  While it may have lost some tunes along the fringes, the historical core of jazz and pop standards seems to have remained more or less intact, but not many newer tunes have been added to it.  This isn't to say the tunes aren't heard or known or appreciated, but it seems like jazz and pop tunes from newer eras are not categorically embraced by the players and deemed a part of the core repertoire.

Does anyone make an album anymore that contains a song that nearly everyone decides they have to learn?  Maybe they do and I just don't know about it?   Among the professional and semi-professional players with whom I interact, there seems to be no consensus about which current jazz is worth exploring.  Everyone is all over the map.  Granted, this is anecdotal, but these experiences must be reflective of something.

[JSngry]

There's definitely fragmentation, somewhat along cultural lines...there's plenty of gigs where somebody will call "Falling Grace" and count it off with no problem, just as many other gigs where they don't.

[A Lark Ascending]

You hear a fair number of Kenny Wheeler tunes played by British jazz musicians - I think 'Everybody's Song But Not My Own' is the one that is most common. But I doubt if it's a standard in the sense of musicians just turning up and playing it. But given that most musicians work off sheet music these days I'd imagine they could work up a performance pretty quickly.  

Edited September 23, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Interesting ways of defining standards...

Another way is to think of songs that just won't go away, but keep coming back. Some are jazz songs:

In 2010, 'The hucklebuck' was a hit in Ireland for an Irish country band, Crystal Swing. Numerous hits between 1948 and 2010, of course.

'Honky tonk' is another jazz tune that's had lots of play since forever.

And 'Night train'; the strippers' favourite. Now THAT'S the way to make money out of your copyright!

MG

[Jim R]

Interesting ways of defining standards...

Another way is to think of songs that just won't go away, but keep coming back. Some are jazz songs:

In 2010, 'The hucklebuck' was a hit in Ireland for an Irish country band, Crystal Swing. Numerous hits between 1948 and 2010, of course.

'Honky tonk' is another jazz tune that's had lots of play since forever.

And 'Night train'; the strippers' favourite. Now THAT'S the way to make money out of your copyright!

MG

Misses the entire point of the topic.  Check.

Makes it about R&B.  Check.

"The Hucklebuck".  Check.

Erroneously labels R&B classics as "jazz songs".  Check.

"Another way is to think of songs that just won't go away, but keep coming back."  Brilliant!  Now I get it!  They must keep coming back because... they're... standards?

[HutchFan]

Interesting ways of defining standards...

Another way is to think of songs that just won't go away, but keep coming back. Some are jazz songs:

In 2010, 'The hucklebuck' was a hit in Ireland for an Irish country band, Crystal Swing. Numerous hits between 1948 and 2010, of course.

'Honky tonk' is another jazz tune that's had lots of play since forever.

And 'Night train'; the strippers' favourite. Now THAT'S the way to make money out of your copyright!

MG

Misses the entire point of the topic.  Check.

Makes it about R&B.  Check.

"The Hucklebuck".  Check.

Erroneously labels R&B classics as "jazz songs".  Check.

"Another way is to think of songs that just won't go away, but keep coming back."  Brilliant!  Now I get it!  They must keep coming back because... they're... standards?

Sheesh, Jim. We're all just here to have some good fun. Why the harsh vibe?

[JSngry]

Blame it on Kay Starr, and don't cry until you've waltzed a mile in her other shoes.

[Joe]

Not sure of many of these are recent enough to qualify, but they immediately come to mind:

"Little B's Poem" (Bobby Hutcherson)

"Ida Lupino" (Carla Bley)

"Escapade" (Kenny Dorham)

"Birdland" (Joe Zawinul)

"Sail Away" (Tom Harrell)

[ghost of miles]

Would any Chick Corea tunes make the cut?  "Spain" or "Windows"?  I see Mulgrew Miller compositions popping up now from time on new releases.

My friend Mitch Shiner is none too keen on the very kind of problematic repertoire snobbery that Jsngry describes.  Here's his Santeria-flavored arrangement of Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" (with percussionist Michael Spiro also providing vocals):

Wrecking Ball Oggun

 

 

[JSngry]

I don't know anybody that plays "Spain" any more...late-70s kinda wore it out, especially after Al Jarreau had a semi-hit with it. Same thing with "La Fiesta"...at one time those were almost pop songs, audiences were hip enough to the fusion/crossover thing that if you had the chops and the gig, it worked as commercial material for general(ish) audiences. There were clubs around here (and probably everywhere) where that kind of jazz and the parallel R&B & Michael McDonald-era Doobies (and of course, Steely Dan) were all of a piece, good crowds every nght, people danced and listened, club made money, dealers made money, every damn body made money. And then it stopped. Oh well.

The Chick tune that has kinda had legs around here in a very stealth way is "Humpty Dumpty". It seems like there's a small pocket of players who know/play it, but they span generations and are often independent of each other. Who knew?

 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Standards aren't standards unless they're very well and broadly known by audiences. The gradual segmentation of radio, and consequently the music heard on radio, has increasingly mitigated against the creation of standards. No one's at fault for this; the segmentation was an essential component of the things that were necessary as the record industry struggled for survival, as it lurched from crisis to crisis from 1921 to 1949, and left its marks on the company owners for years until it became just part of the way things were. One element of the segmentation was the development of black radio (and black-oriented record companies). But an industrial strategy shouldn't blind (deafen) us to what the music's like.

And Jim, I'm sure you don't seriously think that Bill Doggett, Billy Butler, Clifford Scott, Paul Williams, Phil Guilbeau, Jimmy Forrest and Johnny Mixon weren't jazz musicians.

MG

[Teasing the Korean]

Standards aren't standards unless they're very well and broadly known by audiences.

This is true in one sense of the term, but it has a secondary use among musicians.  "Standard" can also refer to the standard repertoire, i.e., the expected repertoire known among musicians.  Wide audiences do not necessarily know "Nica's Dream"or "Minority,"  but a professional musician could call them at a gig with an expectation that the players would know them.   I was using the term with its secondary meaning, and am very curious about the fact that so few tunes from, say, 1980 (if not before) have been canonized in this fashion. 

Not to get off tops, but to address your original point, I would argue that many of the traditional standards are no longer known by broad audiences.  The people who know "All the Things You Are" and "Body and Soul" are dead or dying.  The songs are still considered standards among jazz musicians. 

Edited September 24, 2015 by Teasing

[Joe]

Another one: Joe Henderson's "The Kicker" (as evidenced most recently by a Criss Cross release under pianist Danny Grisset's leadership, THE IN-BETWEEN).

[danasgoodstuff]

The Kicker was written in the '60s, hardly recent.