Introduction to Blog

Introduction & Purpose-Classic American Popular Song blog

Beginning in the 1920's, a unique art form burst on the American music scene. America always had a flourishing musical tradition featuring ragtime, spirituals and work songs, blues and Appalachian folk traditions. However, European music forms played a dominant influence on earlier American song traditions with operetta and clasical art songs guided by a more formal and restrained stylistic output. But America was changing-it had helped win World War 1, it was emerging as an industrial giant and mass immigration and increased urbanism all pointed to the need for songs tha treflected the unique character and restlessmess now pervading the country.
With the arrival of Jerome Kern, the Godfather of a unquely American song tradition, a new era had arrived on the musical scene. Alec Wilder, author of the authoritative book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators  1900-1950, wrote that Kern's music was " The first that was truly American. He was the first to find a new form of melodic writing unlike that of his predecessors or contemporaries."
NOTE:  Wilder examined more than seventeen thousand songs in the course of his exhaustive analysis  of what constituted original and innovative song writing and the more than seven hundred songs he felt were of the highest quality. His explanations of why these were singled out were  based on a thorough musical foundation as well as his life long admiration for what has been called Classic American Popular Song or The Great American Songbook.

Performance
The first example of Kern's musical output is " All The Things You Are " with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein Jr.
http://youtu.be/dnkS7oMP2Xk

It was written for a 1929 musical " Very Warm for May."   It has a magestic melodic sweep that is the equal of any Twentieth century opera aria or classical art song.
It is sung by Tony Martin who sings with a passionate restraint and elegant phrasing that does justice to bothe the remarkable melody and the heartfelt words of Hammerstein.