Knowra Great American Songbook Great American Songbook The Great American Songbook is a canon of influential American popular songs, especially those written from the 1920s through the 1950s. Its repertoire became a lasting standard for singers, jazz musicians, and musical theater.
Tin Pan Alley : A New York music-publishing district and industry that produced and promoted popular songs from the late nineteenth century onward. Its publishers helped circulate many songs later grouped into the Songbook.
George Gershwin : An American composer and pianist whose works joined popular song, Broadway, and concert music. His songs, including “The Man I Love,” became standards.
Jazz standard : A widely known composition that jazz musicians use as a common basis for performance and improvisation. Many Songbook songs became standards shared across generations of jazz players.
Summertime (song) : A song composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. Its many jazz and popular recordings show how a stage song outlives its original setting.
Rock and roll : A popular music genre that emerged in the United States in the 1950s, drawing on rhythm and blues and country music. Its rise shifted popular song toward new sounds and youth-oriented performance.
American musical theater : A theatrical tradition combining songs, dialogue, dance, and staging in productions developed in the United States. Broadway shows supplied many of the canon’s enduring songs.
Irving Berlin : An American songwriter who wrote popular songs and Broadway music across much of the twentieth century. His prolific catalog includes “Cheek to Cheek” and “Blue Skies.”
Vocal jazz : Jazz performed with a singer as a central musical voice. Singers reinterpret Songbook lyrics through phrasing, timing, and improvisation.
Over the Rainbow : A song by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, introduced in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Its film origin and enduring performances exemplify the canon’s reach beyond Broadway.
Rhythm and blues : A broad genre of African American popular music that developed from blues, jazz, and gospel traditions. Its history and musical language expose traditions not fully represented by the Songbook canon.
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