Another list of standards

On George Colligan’s Jazz Truth blog there is a group email sent out by a student who sounds nearly as dickish as I was in college, with the heading:

The George Colligan Standards List…LEARN THEM IN ALL 12 KEYS!

1. Stella By Starlight
2. All The Things You Are
3. Autumn Leaves
4. What Is This Thing Called Love
5. There Will Never Be Another You
6. Tune Up
7. Cherokee
8. Beautiful Love
9. Alone Together
10. Body and Soul
11. Confirmation
12. Someday My Prince Will Come
13. Footprints
14. Bye Bye Blackbird
15. On Green Dolphin Street
16. There Is No Greater Love
17. I Love You
18. How High The Moon
19. Just Friends
20. If I Were A Bell
21. Night and Day
22. Au Privave
23. Moose The Mooche

It’s a fair college-level list. Traditionally in Portland we would substitute Scrapple From The Apple for Moose, and possibly Blues For Alice or Cheryl for Au Privave. I would get Softly As In A Morning Sunrise in there just because. And I guess they’re assuming that everyone learned Blue Bossa, Recordame, Song For My Father, Stolen Moments, All Of Me, Billie’s Bounce, Solar, Caravan, Take The A Train, and things of that ilk— only slightly more chestnut-y than the things they’ve included— in high school, because they still get played a lot, too. If you’re plotting a move to Portland, you should also learn Milestones (old), Stablemates, The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, Invitation, I’ll Remember April… well, call me…

More after the break…

Anyway, the circulation of the list provoked some discussion from other professionals, from which my favorite comment is this, from Mike Pope:

I don’t really even get the whole thing with learning tunes. I can’t remember a time when I was coming up where I had to actually sit down and learn anything in terms of a run-of-the-mill jazz standard. If I didn’t know a tune, we would play it on the gig, usually with no chart and a piano player just leading me through it so I learned it by ear, and by the time the tune was over I knew it. Done deal. Sometimes I’d learn five or 10 tunes a night when I was 15 years old. This is the way most of the people that I knew learned music. Why is it a big process now? I guess if you’re a horn player learning bebop heads it’s a little bit of a different story, but it seems to me that just about anybody should be able to find their way through the melody to Cherokee after hearing it once or twice. Too much talking, not enough playing. 

I agree completely, especially where drummers are concerned, since we generally don’t have a lot of hard information to remember— chord changes and such. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and tried to learn tunes from a list— or maybe I did once, and stopped when I realized the futility of it. There’s is a relatively smaller number of tunes peculiar enough that you actually want to sit down with them, which is why we have the How To Play… series of posts, but mostly you can just learn them on the stand as they come up, without a lead sheet.

Someone else goes list-crazy and offers:

A HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE LIST OF A LITTLE OVER 200 STANDARDS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW

Highly subjective meaning “things I shouldn’t have included in my list of tunes I’m saying you might want to know, but which I’m implying you should actually learn, for real.” It seems like he could’ve been a little more selective, but actually I don’t know if more than 10-15% of this list could be classified as non-essential. I know and have played virtually all of these tunes, and, if I could sing on key worth a damn, I could sing them for you. Which is no great feat— anyone who calls himself a jazz musician who has ever worked a regular gig could do the same. Certainly a few of them I don’t know by title, but I know very well when someone starts playing them— I learned lot of things without having a title called so I could hear it.

Airegin
All Blues
All of Me
All of You
All the Things You Are
Almost Like Being in Love
Along Came Betty
Angel Eyes (vc)
Alone Together
Anthropology (rhythm)
Ask Me Now
Au Privave (blues)
Autumn in New York
Autumn Leaves
Bags Groove (blues)
Beautiful Love
Beatrice
Bemsha Swing
Bessie’s Blues (blues)
Billie’s Bounce
Black Nile
Black Orpheus
Blame it on My Youth
Blue Bossa
Blue in Green
Blue Monk (blues)
Blues for Alice (bird blues)
Body and Soul
Bolivia
But Beautiful
But Not For Me
Bye Bye Blackbird
Caravan
Ceora
Cherokee
Chelsea Bridge
Cheryl (blues)
Child is Born
Come Rain or Come or Come Shine
Con Alma
Confirmation
Corcovado
Daahoud
Darn That Dream
Days of Wine and Roses
Do Nothin Til You Hear from Me (vc)
Dolphin Dance
Donna Lee
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (vc)
Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing
Doxy
Emily
ESP
Easy to Love (vc)
Embraceable You
End of a Love Affair
Epistrophy
Equinox
Eternal Triangle (rhythm)
Everything Happens to Me
Evidence
Falling In Love with Love
Fee Fie Fo Fum
Footprints
Four
Fly Me to the Moon (vc)
A Foggy Day (vc)
Four
Gentle Rain
Georgia on my Mind Getting Sentimental Over Y ou
Giant Steps
Girl From Ipanema
Gone with the Wind
Good Bait (rhythm— variation)
Green Dolphin Street
Grooving High
Have You Met Miss Jones
Here’s that Rainy Day
Hi-fly
Honeysuckle Rose/Scrapple From the Apple
How Deep is the Ocean
How High the Moon/ Ornithology
How Insensitive
How Long has this Been Goin On
I Can’t Get Started
I Didn’t Know What Time it was
I Fall in Love too Easily
I Got Rhythm
I Hear a Rhapsody
I Love You
I Mean You
I Remember You
I Should Care
I Thought About You
I’ll Remember April
If I Should Lose You
If I Were A Bell
If You Could See me Now
I’m Old Fashioned
In a Mellow T one
In a Sentimental Mood
In Walked Bud
In Your Own Sweet Way
Inner Urge
Invitation
It’s All Right With Me
It Could Happen to You
It Never Entered My Mind
It’s You or No One
I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face
Jeanine
Jitterbug Waltz
Joy Spring
Just Friends
Just in Time
Just the Way you Look Tonight
Lady Bird
Lament
Lazybird
Laura
Let’s Fall in Love (vc)
Like Someone in Love
Long Ago and Far Away
Love for Sale
Lover
Lover Man
Lullabye of Birdland (vc)
Lush Life (vc)
Maiden Voyage
The Masquerade is Over
Meditiation
Milestones (old)
Milestones (new)
 Minority
Misterioso
Misty (vc)
Moment’s Notice
Monk’s Mood
Moonlight in Vermont
Moose the Mooch (rhythm)
The More I See You
Mr. PC
My Foolish Heart
My Funny Valentine
My Ideal
My One and Only Love
My Romance
My Shining Hour
Naima
Nardis
Nearness of You
Never Let Me Go
Nica’s Dream
Night and Day
Night in Tunisia
Now is the Time (blues)
Old Devil Moon
Old Folks
Oleo (rhythm)
One Finger Snap
One Note Samba (vc)
Our Love is Here to Stay (vc)
Out of Nowhere
Peace
Perdido
Prelude to a Kiss
Polka Dots and Moonbeams
Recordame
Rhythm-a-ning (rhythm)
Round Midnight (Monk’s changes, Miles’ changes)
St. Thomas
Sandu (blues)
Satin Doll
Secret Love
Serenity
Seven Steps to Heaven
Shadow of Your Smile
Skylark
Smile
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Someone to Watch Over Me
Speak Low
Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most
Solar
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Someday my Prince will Come
Soul Eyes
Sophisticated Lady
Star Dust
Straight No Chaser
Sunny Side of the Street
Stablemates
Stars Fell on Alabama
Stella By Starlight
Stomping at the Savoy
Strolling
Summertime
Someday my Prince will Come
The Song is You
Star Eyes
Sweet and Lovely
Sweet Georgia Brown
Take the A Train
Take the Coltrane
Tenderly
Teach Me Tonight
There is No Greater Love
There Will Never Be Another You
That’s All
Triste
Twisted (vc, blues)
Turn Out the Stars
Up Jumped Spring
Wave
Well You Needn’t
What a Difference a Day Makes (vc)
What is this Thing Called Love
What’s New
When I Fall in Love (vc)
Whisper Not
Will You Still Be Mine
Willow Weep for Me
Without A Song
Woody’n You
Yardbird Suite
Yesterdays
You and the Night and the Music
You Don’t Know What Love
You Go to My Head
You Stepped out of a Dream
You’d be So Nice to Come Home To

So, you’ll learn most of those by doing a lot of listening and a lot of playing. I’ll close with perhaps the most valuable piece of information you will learn today: Do not ask to play Smile. Don’t mention it, don’t call it when you are leading. Ever. Unless you thrive on being hated by musicians, file it under do not play.

UPDATE: That goes double for Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.