Following Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga’s #1 debut on Billboard last week, and with American Songbook-centric releases by Annie Lennox and She & Him due out before the end of the year, it seems as good a time as any to interrogate the ongoing role of the crossover standards record. The trend has persisted for decades, but has built up particular steam in the last two. Given these albums’ clear commercial potential, it’s easy to be a bit skeptical of any new rock star emerging to resurrect some pop songs from the first half of last century; one sometimes wonders if these projects are, at this point, artistically bankrupt by default.
The roots of the phenomenon stretch back to the first decade and a half of rock and R&B’s existence, when new pop music was primarily disseminated on 45s; LP release in these genres were usually just compilations of successful singles with filler in between.* The cohesive "studio album," as a format, was still associated with the loosely conceptual standards collections of the 1950s (i.e. Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee or Ella Fitzgerald’s songbook collections), and even into the mid-to-late ‘60s, full-length releases of new material by pop stars were frequently standards-based. The most notable examples came from up-and-coming R&B artists, including The Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart, The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye’s The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye and Hello Broadway, and—outside of the title track—Cold Sweat by James Brown and His Famous Flames. Recordings such as these stand both as testaments to the artists’ diverse musical interest areas (Gaye, most notably, initially hoped to establish himself as a Nat King Cole-style crooner) and the pressure the industry felt to establish their young acts as legitimate in the eyes of both the public at large and (as Motown’s Berry Gordy recalled) booking agents at “top nightclubs,” who were looking for stylistically flexible talent to appeal to varying demographics.
Half a century later, pop entertainers are no longer professionally obligated to work in a variety of styles; the modern consumer is expected to accept that today’s stars make standards albums solely out of love for the material—as pet projects. However, it’s difficult to credit such assertions when there is such a lucrative and seemingly built-in market for these releases. Rod Stewart’s It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, which reached #4 on the Billboard Top 200 in 2002, was an important proving ground—J Records head Clive Davis encouraged Stewart to stretch the idea into a five-album set, and by the third installment, Rod had scored his first #1 album since 1979. The market seemed to flood with more crossover standards collections than ever before in the wake of his good fortune, including ones from Bette Midler, Boz Scaggs, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Glenn Frey and, most notably, Sir Paul McCartney. Today, the one-off Standards Album has become a token career move, and comes across as a ploy to appeal to the pool of (older) consumers who are still buying albums and not streaming or pirating them. It’s not hard to imagine a 21st century Spinal Tap remake in which Michael McKean’s David St. Hubbins ends up recording a collection of Gershwin tunes.
The practice has also become strangely uniform from a musical perspective. On these albums, artists almost inevitably emulate the technique of the “greats” (usually either the lilting emotiveness of Sinatra, the husky sensuality of Billie Holliday or the elaborate riffing of Sarah Vaughan), while being ritualistically accompanied by either a glitzy studio orchestra or a small, smoky jazz combo. These impressions of Jazz Singer often land solidly in the rough, as artists overstretch to mimic the pyrotechnic improvisations of more trained singers at the expense of dynamics and subtlety.
However, over the previous few decades, there have been successful and unique albums in this general category: ones which evidence the artist’s reverence and deep engagement with the material, and offer hope for the future of the art form. The selling point of the albums may be the artist’s careful treatment of the lyrics (their wistfulness, humor or bitter irony), their resourceful or offbeat arrangements, a clever conceptual framework or some combination thereof. Here are five albums which make a case for the crossover standards collection as an effective form of self-expression.
*The filler songs, in themselves, were frequently covers of old pop material. This goes beyond the part-time crooner work of Elvis and teen idols like Dion and Frankie Avalon; even the Beatles cutThe Music Man’s “Til There Was You” and a pre-Herb Alpert “A Taste of Honey” amid their R&B revamps, and their early rivals Gerry and the Pacemakers scored a unlikely hit with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Harry Nilsson: A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973)
Today Harry Nilsson is primarily remembered as a talented and idiosyncratic songwriter, but he entered the industry in the early ‘60s as an odd-jobs man, and frequently demoed or cut others’ songs. His first and most apparent gifts were his unusually large vocal range and a rich, natural vibrato. A Little Touch—a distinctly anti-commercial project Nilsson insisted on doing despite being on thin ice with his record company—is the last great recorded showcase of his voice in peak form, and of his gifts as an interpreter. With idiomatic orchestrations by Sinatra conductor and arranger-of-choice Gordon Jenkins, it’s possibly the best extant example of a rock artist paying tribute to the style of ‘50s standards albums almost verbatim. However, Nilsson doesn’t alter his own trademark vocal style or irreverent phrasing even a bit in the process of tipping his cap to Sinatra. Jenkins’ tempos are relentlessly lazy, allowing Harry—here at the height of the partying which would soon nearly destroy his voice—to craft each line perfectly without having to put out his cigarette. The program is unified beautifully by the recurring motif of Casablanca’s iconic lovers theme “As Time Goes By".
Willie Nelson: Stardust (1978)
Nelson’s Booker T.-produced runaway hit explores the intersection between jazz and country idioms, which had fundamental to the latter genre for decades—from Hank Williams and Buck Owens’ standards recordings, to the “Western swing” of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, whom Nelson admired and covers on 1973’s Shotgun Willie. On Stardust, Nelson successfully synthesizes his well-known jazz source material with country and rock arrangements and rhythmic feels. The fusion is so natural that it feels age-old more than innovative. Nelson’s restrained and speech-like phrasing is the key to this record’s enduring power. Even amidst the hundreds of notable recordings of “Stardust” since the ‘20s, Willie’s ranks as one of the definitive versions.
Carly Simon: Torch (1981)
In the '80s, standards experienced a minor resurgence following Linda Ronstadt’s trilogy of albums orchestrated by Nelson Riddle and, later, the commercial success of nu-crooner Harry Connick Jr.’s soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally. But just before this—in the midst of her messy divorce from James Taylor—Carly Simon tried her hand at an LP compromised largely of impassioned and often unconventional renderings of classic pop songs. On Torch, Simon sticks to her characteristic, unadorned mode of vocal delivery, and her unrepentant Bronx diction makes for some humorous and occasionally grating moments.
However, her awareness of the boundaries of her skill set is key to the album’s success. Arrangement-wise, Simon imaginatively revamps her source material: see the phased synth underpinnings of "I Get Along Without You Very Well", which Simon reharmonizes like a typical Laurel Canyon piano-rocker. She delivers in more traditional settings as well, as in her gut-wrenching performance of mid-‘50s sop-pop ballad "Hurt", the album’s only charting single. Perhaps most notably, Simon debuts a new song by Stephen Sondheim, one of the best post-1960 writers to follow in the tradition of early pop writing: the darkly humorous and heartbreaking "Not a Day Goes By", which would later go on to be one of the highlights of his musical Merrily We Roll Along. Carly has since recorded three more albums of standards, but none are so disarming and well-curated as Torch.
Dr. John: In a Sentimental Mood (1989)
New Orleans iconoclast Dr. John came to prominence by infusing Bayou-indigenuous styles with the textures of psychedelic rock and funk. Nowadays, he is also known for being an exceptional jazz player, but In a Sentimental Mood was his first straightforward venture in this direction, and, outside of his Louis Armstrong tribute album of this year, it is his only standards-based release. For some fans of his lecherous voodoo-Professor-Longhair material, In a Sentimental Mood might seem like the Doctor going for that adult-contemporary money; however, the record sacrifices none of his trademark wit or greasiness. Most surprising is his delicate treatment of his chosen ballads, particularly Side A’s "Candy", "My Buddy" and "More Than You Know", which recall Ray Charles on Modern Sounds of Country and Western Music (in the mode of "You Don’t Know Me"). These performances are full of humor, centered by Dr. John’s conversational, bluesy piano crocheting, with understated string surges adding tasteful flair.
Joni Mitchell: Both Sides Now (2000)
After a twelve year hiatus from recording, Joni Mitchell went into the studio with a contract to fulfill and no new songs. With the help of musical director Larry Klein and up-and-coming composer/arranger Vince Mendoza she crafted a moving song cycle about the rise and fall of an archetypal relationship, consisting more of lesser-known Tin Pan Alley songs. There also arch attacks on more standard fare like Harold Arlen’s "Stormy Weather", and ethereal, world-weary renditions of two of her own ubiquitous tunes: Blue’s "A Case of You" and the eponymous track. Mendoza’s arrangements (for both an orchestra of Mahlerian proportions and big band) vacillate powerfully between traditional jazz gestures and moments of classical modernism, and there are staggering solos from post-bebop visionaries and long-time Mitchell proponents Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Decades on the other side of an industrious smoking routine, Mitchell’s voice is nearly someone else’s: gutted and turned inside out, limited in mobility but nonetheless staggeringly expressive. As a performer, she sounds eerily self-assured at every twist and turn.