The Great American Songbook (also known as the American Standards) covers a golden age in jazz, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood composition, stretching from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Acts like Rod Stewart have turned to these songs as a way to introduce them to new audiences and the latest move by publisher Warner Chappell is to bring them, and the stories behind them, into the modern era through the podcast series Setting The Standard: Stories From The Great American Songbook.
Each episode in the initial run of eight podcasts focuses on a different songwriter, starting on 25th October with Harry Warren. He wrote the music for 42nd Street as well as perennials such as ‘Lullaby Of Broadway’, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘That’s Amore’ and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’.
Subsequent episodes focus on Jule Styne, Cole Porter, George & Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen.
These are writers who defined American popular music in the first half of the 20th Century, but they have tended to be overlooked compared to the music that followed them – notably blues, soul, rock ’n’ roll and the multitude of modern genres they spawned.
“Each episode focuses on a different legendary songwriter or team, using historical sources intertwined with new interviews with scholars, critics, and family members to tell the stories of their lives, filtered through the lens of their most iconic songs,” explains the podcast.
The podcasts go into enormous depth on each songwriter, explaining how they wrote and the impact their music had.
Music is there throughout the podcast, but really only in the background. Obviously a series like this comes alive when the music is there to illustrate what the host and interviewees are saying; yet the fact that a major music publisher still cannot create a podcast with full-track music speaks volumes about where music licensing and podcasting remain stuck in 2022.
Music-centric podcasts should, after all, be the next great sync opportunity. Yet licensing terms and costs are such that the very thing they talk about is still consigned – literally – to the background.
