Standards Revisited

To call a song a “standard” conjures certain associations.

An instantly recognizable melody. Words everyone knows (or thinks they do). Songs that you hear many times, in many contexts, performed in a variety of ways.

The word “standard” might conjure images of songs from a prior generation; timeless gems from the big band era, 20th century stage musicals, or golden age film musicals. As musical styles have developed, changed and diffused, songs with origins in popular genres have achieved the status of standards, from the catalogues of rock icons like Elvis and the…