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  • Songs from Leonard Bernstein’s Stage Works as Jazz Repertoire
  • Lars Helgert (bio)

One aspect of Leonard Bernstein’s contribution to music literature has received little scholarly attention: jazz recordings of songs from his musical theatre works. The sheer volume of these recordings and the quality of the musicians who have performed them indicate that many of Bernstein’s songs have attained a prominent position in jazz literature. This is a fitting legacy for a musician who advocated on behalf of jazz for his entire career.

Bernstein’s recorded output has been catalogued by Jack Gottlieb (1998).1 Gottlieb’s discography is principally concerned with Bernstein’s recordings of his own and other composers’ works rather than albums of Bernstein’s compositions recorded by other artists. While Gottlieb does list some of the jazz versions of Bernstein’s works, his catalog is very incomplete and often lacking in details with respect to this category of recordings. A more complete picture emerges from various jazz discographies, searches of Library of Congress Recorded Sound Division holdings, commercial websites devoted to recorded music sales, and jazz anthologies (including fake books).2

An estimate of the total number of these recordings would be impractical, but it is certain that at least 120 albums by jazz artists include at least one song by Bernstein. This tally encompasses over 300 individual tracks.3 Several different types of arrangements exist, including big band, vocal, piano trio, small combo, and solo instrumental versions. The degree of improvisation is another distinguishing characteristic of the arrangements, and again, the fare is varied. Big band arrangements with [End Page 356] a substantial amount of precomposed music exist, as do small combo versions in head-solos-head format. The chronological distribution of these recordings encompass the years 1945–2009, and in virtually every year between 1954 and 2009, at least one jazz album that contained one or more compositions by Bernstein was released.

Most of this jazz repertoire was taken from two of Bernstein’s musicals: West Side Story (1957) and On the Town (1944). From West Side Story, “Somewhere,” “Tonight,” and “Maria” were the most popular song choices, followed closely by “America,” “Something’s Coming,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Cool.” Common selections from On the Town are “Some Other Time,” “Lonely Town,” and “Lucky to Be Me.” “It’s Love,” from Wonderful Town (1953) and “Big Stuff” from the ballet Fancy Free (1944) were included on several albums, and songs such as “Glitter and Be Gay” and “Make Our Garden Grow” from the comic operetta Candide (1956) and “Who Am I?” from Bernstein’s incidental music for the play Peter Pan (1950) were found suitable for jazz interpretation.4

Jazz versions of Bernstein’s songs were recorded by many of the most prominent jazz musicians:5 singers Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Tony Bennett; baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan; trumpeters Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard; tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter; trombonist J. J. Johnson; pianists Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, George Shearing, and Oscar Peterson; arranger/pianist Gil Evans; guitarists Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell; bandleader Stan Kenton; bassists Ray Brown and Ron Carter; and drummer Buddy Rich. Two Grammy awards were given for jazz recordings of Bernstein: in 1960, for Andre Previn’s piano trio recording West Side Story (best jazz performance, solo or small group) and in 1961, for the Stan Kenton Orchestra’s West Side Story (best jazz performance, large group).

The presence of Bernstein’s songs in jazz anthologies is an important indication of their status as jazz standards, since these anthologies are commonly used for jazz performance in many contexts. “Some Other Time” is clearly the most entrenched of these songs, since it appears in The Real Book, The Standards Real Book, and the Just Jazz Real Book. The Standards Real Book also includes “Lucky to Be Me” from On the Town. “New York, New York,” from the same show, is in the Just Standards Real Book. “Wrong Note Rag” and “Ohio” from Wonderful Town are included in the Ultimate Broadway Fake Book.6

Some of the jazz musicians who recorded Bernstein’s songs commented on the problem of transforming a musical theatre song into suitable jazz...

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