Last week Bob Dylan announced the release of Triplicate, a triple album that's also his third collection of standards from the Great American Songbook. If Triplicate is seen as three bundled albums—as it should, since its three discs are arranged thematically and each given titles (’Til The Sun Goes Down, Devil Dolls, Comin' Home Late)—it means Bob Dylan has tied Rod Stewart's record for the greatest number of Great American Songbook albums from a rock singer. This seems strangely appropriate since the two represent opposing sides of a familiar formula: the singer jazzing up a career by looking back at the classics of yesteryear.
Donning a tux and a wink, Stewart made cornball records that pulled on the nostalgic heartstrings, replicating the splash of big band swing. He played to the sound and style, not to the sentimental heart of the songs. Starting with 2015’s Shadows in the Night and continuing with last year’s Fallen Angels, Dylan took a different tactic, often spinning the smoky vibe of Frank Sinatra's “saloon albums”—so called because they provided the soundtrack to lonely late nights at the bar—to his roadhouse band. He brought himself to the songs, digging into their meaning and finding a personal connection to tunes everybody knows.
That's what separates the memorable contemporary interpretations of the Great American Songbooks from humdrum evocations of a bygone era. The good records, the ones that surprise, involve artists finding themselves within songs meant for all. Their arrangements can be idiosyncratic or faithful, but in each case, the best of these explorations of our shared history are about the present, not the past. Here are eight through the ages that do just that.
Far from a singer's singer, Ringo Starr nevertheless possessed an everyman charm. That's evident on Sentimental Journey, the 1970 album he recorded in the wake of the Beatles' break-up. Lost, he decided to tip his hat to his mum, singing the songs he heard around the house while growing up. It's pure nostalgia but producer George Martin shakes things up, turning “Bye Bye Blackbird” into a skipping skiffle and giving “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” an arrangement where the rhythm section sets up a joke and the horn section delivers the punchline. He may not be flashy, but he certainly makes these songs his own by relying on his own ambling, amiable delivery.
Unlike his good friend Ringo, Harry Nilsson wanted to do it up right when he revisited the Great American Songbook. Nilsson decided he needed to play in the big leagues, taking a gamble by hiring Frank Sinatra's arranger Gordon Jenkins to create the charts for A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. If the title hints at the irreverence that would ultimately contribute to Nilsson's undoing, the songs themselves are sweet and sincere even when the arrangements wink at the listener: witness how a verse of “As Time Goes By” opens the album, or how “It Had To Be You” almost swoons into “Over the Rainbow.” Ultimately, the album winds up as a showcase for Nilsson's extraordinary vocals. Stripped of studio trickery, he soars.
Willie Nelson's Stardust is the granddaddy of Great American Songbook albums, the record that not only showed how flexible those classic songs are, but proved they still could yield a genuine hit. Remarkably, the album stayed on Billboard's country charts for a decade, going platinum five times. Nelson always had an idiosyncratic touch—his takes on “Night Life” and “Crazy” are much jazzier than the hit versions from Ray Price and Patsy Cline—but the wonderful thing about Stardust is how Nelson luxuriates within a familiar melody, bending and stretching it at will. Producer Booker T. Jones keeps things stripped down—whenever strings are heard, they're an accessory, not the focal point—and the emphasis on earthy rhythms lets Nelson roam, winding up with an album that is faithful to his own take on American music, and to the American songbook itself.
Rickie Lee Jones has never played it straight. Even on her smoothest hits, like “Chuck E.'s In Love,” her melodies followed a skewed path, so it's not surprising that her standards album is unconventional in its selections and arrangements. Pop Pop is anchored on a guitar and a fretless bass, a folk-jazz that is elastic and malleable, allowing Jones to bend “My One and Only Love,” “I'll Be Seeing You” and “Bye Bye Blackbird” so they almost sound she wrote the tunes herself.
Success didn't sit well with Sinéad O'Connor, who at the height of stardom decided to ditch it all by recording a standards album with a full big band. Her controversial appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” in which she tore a picture of the Pope in two, was intended in part to promote her then-new third album Am I Not Your Girl?, but instead put a halt on her commercial momentum. In retrospect, the album contains many lovely performances from O'Connor and, despite its old-fashioned arrangements, is not without its surprises. Loretta Lynn's “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home” is turned into a blaring show-stopper, offering a place for O'Connor pleading the title phrase.
Just as the 20th century drew to a close, George Michael took a glance back with an emphasis on the Great American Songbook. Michael being a pop diehard, though, he snuck in some contemporary hits like the Police's “Roxanne” and turned them into splashy numbers suitable for a big band. That's the charm of this record: Michael finds common ground between the past and present, sometimes giving the audience a sly wink but never not singing with sincerity.
Late in her career, Joni Mitchell teamed with noted arranger Vince Mendoza and jazz producer Larry Klein to revisit melancholy numbers from the pre-rock days. Both Sides Now feels like a cross between one of Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours and Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin, a late-night affair that lingers on its moodiness. Some of this suspended time derives from the lush bed of woodwinds and brass, but the feel stems heavily from Mitchell's delivery, which is every bit as imbibed with jazz greatness as those from guests Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. She may draw out certain phrases, but Mitchell prizes staying true to lyrical intent over showy performance.
ELO leader Jeff Lynne is perhaps thought of more as a producer than a singer, so the fact that he crooned a set of standards may raise an eyebrow. Named after the kind of radio Lynne had as a kid, Long Wave plays to his sonic strengths, as he emphasizes sound over song. Unlike so many re-interpreters of standards, he dustbins the big bands, instead blending his signature harmonies and aural strings to the compressed sound of old-fashioned radio. That's the difference with Long Wave: it's about the experience of listening to an old record, not the song itself.
