• Interview with Jeremy Wilson, Founder of JazzStandards.com
• Jazz Articles
• The Reader's Corner
• Summer Photo Gallery
• Newsletter/Contact Info

(Jeremy Wilson is a jazz fan and veteran information management specialist. He is using his retirement to help organize and preserve the history of the jazz standards. He is the creator of JazzStandards.com and author of its top 100 jazz standard origins.)

jazzView: How did you come up with the idea for JazzStandards.com?

Jeremy: A number of years ago I was talking to a friend about jazz standards, and we started questioning how many tunes would fall into that category. I did a little research and found various definitions for the term "jazz standards" and a few ad-hoc lists, but nothing comprehensive. It seemed to me that at these tunes deserved to be listed and documented as a group so that interested musicians, students, and fans could easily look up their origins and history.

jazzView: You have a wealth of resources available on the site - tell us about those.

Jeremy: There are 1000 jazz standards identified and ranked. The top 100 are completely documented including their origins, musical analyses, jazz history notes, CD recommendations, and biographies for the composers and lyricists. We are working on the second 100, for which the musical analyses and history notes are already available. Most of the origins and all of the writer biographies are written and will be posted on the site later this summer.

JazzStandards.com also has a decade-by-decade jazz standards history section, interviews with musicians and writers regarding the jazz standards, and a bookstore section that lists and reviews the books we used to create the website.



jazzView: How did you decide on which jazz standards to include on your site?

Jeremy: The first step was to define the term. Using a distillation of existing definitions I came up with the following:

A "jazz standard" is a composition that is held in continuing esteem and is commonly used as the basis of jazz arrangements and improvisations.

Based on that definition I downloaded and tabulated hundreds of thousands of track titles from CD recordings by 700 respected jazz artists. The selection and ranking of the JazzStandards.com top 1000 was done according to the number of different artist that covered each tune. That is, "Body and Soul" ranked number one because it had more artists covering it than "All the Things You Are," which ranked number two. This system has it pros and cons, which are discussed in detail on our Overview page. Everyone may not agree with the methodology, but certainly most would agree that the majority of tunes they consider to be jazz standards are included.

jazzView: What were the challenges you faced in putting this collection together?

Jeremy: For quite a few of the tunes there is very little documentation available. In many cases we have had to go to newspaper archives and out-of-print books to piece together the tune origins. But by and large the biggest challenge is just assembling and maintaining a 1400 page website on a hobby basis.

jazzView: Did you work with other editors or writers to assemble the material?

Jeremy: Yes, the main contributors to the site are Sandra Burlingame who is our editor and biographer, Chris Tyle who is the site historian (all of Jazz History Notes and many of origins that will be posted later this summer), and K.J. McElrath who writes the Musical Analyses. They have been a great help in making JazzStandards.com a reality.

jazzView: What's the next project for you?

Jeremy: Within a few months I will be launching a new website named "Jazz-Biographies.com." It will contain over 2000 biography pages for jazz artists and writers. The current problems with finding jazz biographies on the web is that no site has everyone, and sifting through search engine results can be tedious and time consuming. And the sites that have any volume of material won't tell you where to find biographies on other sites because they don't want you to leave unless it is through a paid sponsor link. We're going to change that. In addition to hundreds of our own biographies, Jazz-Biographies.com will provide links to alternate sites that provide biographies, articles, discographies, and artists' home pages. It will be the largest directory of its kind and a real time saver for anyone looking up jazz personnel.

jazzView: How can jazz enthusiasts get involved in your site?

Jeremy: In the fall I hope to be done with the current projects and will likely welcome some help adding information to the two websites. If anyone is interested in volunteering some time at that point please contact me at jeremywilson@jazzstandards.com.

Editor's Note: If you're a recorded musician, you can write your own commentary (tips, insights, etc.) on any of the jazz standard tunes. Check out comments from such jazz luminaries as Bill Mays, John Stowell, Jessica Williams, and others.

top

Article 16: Teaching Improvisation ... Differently

Teaching an improvisation course is pretty straightforward, right? Basically, you just need to accomplish two things: 1) overwhelm your students with a stack of music theory notes, and 2) bore your students by having them each wait 3 minutes to take 30-second practice solos in class.

Let's see about that ...

(READ MORE >>>)

Article 17: Improvisation - Food for Thought

Hungry? Let's spend a little time in the "kitchens of our minds" … First, we'll imagine three kinds of diets to choose from:

1) All fast food - the easier the better
2) Prepared meals - Lean Cuisine, frozen burritos, etc. - with a little original cooking thrown in
3) Original recipes - healthy and creative recipes - with a few prepared meals here and there

OK, this isn't supposed to be an article for Modern Cooking Magazine, so let's make the transition to jazz now ... (a different type of "cooking" ...)

(READ MORE >>>)

Article 18: The Fast Lane

"Racers, start your engines ..."
There's something about the thrill of going fast, whether it's driving, riding horses, or - especially - improvising jazz. Too often, however, the jazz "racetrack" is littered with skid marks and remnants of crashes. Tone, accuracy, rhythms, even chord progressions are routinely sacrificed by players because of the need for speed.

So how do we play jazz in the fast lane, without getting run over? Let's take a look at the challenge in three phases: why to play fast, where to play fast, and how to play fast.

(READ MORE >>>)

Ready for more sight-reading fun? (Of course!) Here are some brain teasers from the "Sightreading Jazz" book by Bob Taylor.

Instructions:

1. Get your instrument or voice ready.
2. Start up a metronome if you like.
3. Click on one of the links below - when the music appears, start reading!
Important: Study each exercise for only a second or two, then read it!

Rhythm Exercises:
1: Easy
2: Medium
3: Tough

Treble Clef:
4: Easy Pitches
5: Medium Pitches
6: Tough Pitches
7: Easy Etude
8: Medium Etude
9: Tough Etude

Bass Clef:
4a: Easy Pitches
5a: Medium Pitches
6a: Tough Pitches
7a: Easy Etude
8a: Medium Etude
9a: Tough Etude

(All exercises ©2006 - Visual Jazz Publications)
* For more about Sightreading Jazz, see:
http://www.visual-jazz.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=2

Here's a few photos for your summer fun. Click each photo to enlarge it.
(Photos courtesy of John Taylor - www.taylor-graphics.net





top

Visual Jazz Publications does not sell or redistribute e-mail or personal information. Your subscription to jazzView is free and confidential. top

©2006 Visual Jazz Publications – All Rights Reserved.