The Song Is You: If ever there was a perfect singer - and I do mean perfect - it was Ella Fitzgerald. Her Songbooks (please scroll down for the listings and samples) are still - and will always be - the best collection there is of the great American standards. That is, if you don't mind crying and having the little hairs on the nape of your neck stand up and revolt. And swing. They'd be the last records objects I'd be willing to part with: they're the mother's milk of American Western popular culture. So imagine my surprise when I found their perfect counterpart on the Web: the best-ever collection of lyrics to the songs of the greatest American composers: Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Richard Rodgers. Admirably, the compiler has gone way beyond his duty and included wonderful standards (quite a few unknown to me) that even Ella never got around to singing. Thank you, Todd. And God bless you, Sir!
posted by MiguelCardoso on Sep 22, 2003 - 26 comments

There's Always Something There To Remind You of a Burt Bacharach or a Stephen Sondheim song. [Do check out this MeFi thread where our own MarkB mentions his work on the Sondheim website.] Burt turned 74 this month, Steve was 73 in March. Must we wait until they die before celebrating the genius of American popular music's two greatest living composers? [ And isn't it appropriate that Elvis Costello is the most recent composer to receive the ASCAP Founders' Award which previously honoured Bacharach and Sondheim?]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 15, 2003 - 12 comments

Was Richard Rodgers The Greatest American Popular Composer So Far? 2002 is his Centennial. He may be less cool and more bourgeois than the other greats like Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim. But even the most cursory look at the long list of the wonderful songs he wrote(try the excellent song search feature), with Hart, then Hammerstein(and some other lyricists, including himself)makes it very difficult to deny there never was - and probably never will be - a more talented and versatile tunesmith. Miles Davis was right. He was a genius. And yet...[Flash required for the (interesting) intro]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Apr 18, 2002 - 41 comments