I’ve been working on a Spotify playlist for the last few weeks that is finally done, and I thought I would share it here. It’s a collection of all of the versions of jazz standards listed as “recommended versions” in Ted Gioia’s The Jazz Standards. If you aren’t familiar with this, this book is a tremendous resource that provides a history of ~250 popular jazz standards as well as recommended recordings from the origins of each song up through 21st century versions. Here’s a link to that book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199937397. I highly recommend checking it out on your own. Ted Gioia is an excellent jazz historian and writer, and I’ve also enjoyed his other works The History of Jazz (https://www.amazon.com/History-Jazz-Ted-Gioia/dp/0195399706) and How to Listen to Jazz (https://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Jazz-Ted-Gioia/dp/0465093493).
Anyway, a few Spotify playlists existed for The Jazz Standards, but I found them to be lacking many versions that Gioia listed in his book. This may be due to the fact that Spotify continuously updates its content (for example, ECM albums only appeared on Spotify in the last few years), but either way, I wanted as complete of a list as possible for my own reference. Additionally, not all versions included in other playlists actually matched the specific recordings Gioia listed. So, the nutcase that I am, I’ve been working hard on tracking down all the actual versions in Gioia’s book. This was a pretty heavy undertaking, but Gioia provides the recording dates for all recommended versions, and certain online resources like https://www.jazzdisco.org/ helped me narrow down the right ones. I’m fairly confident that 95-99% of the ones in this playlist now correspond to those specified by Gioia. However, I should mention that probably ~20% of recordings in Gioia’s book aren’t on Spotify yet, though they can often be found on YouTube. So again, if you are interested, definitely check out the book! And of course, this goes without saying, but obviously there are hundreds of versions of every standard and you shouldn’t confine yourself to just these, but if you’re looking for a simple reference that has ~10-15 versions in a diversity of styles for standards you are working on, I think you may find this useful.
tl;dr I made a jazz standards playlist, here it is:
Oh, and if you still haven’t seen my History of Jazz playlist, it’s here (and still a work in progress in the latter ~20%!):
I’ve tried hard to make playlists for my study list, but never can figure out how to use the app of any app like this. Not good with online computer stuff. Always hours wasted.
I’d highly recommend Spotify. It’s very easy to search through their library of musicians, albums, and songs. You can compile playlists with the click of a button. It’s a very intuitive system to use.
You can also save the playlists of others to your account. For example you could click on Christian’s playlists above and sync them to your account.
Once you have a Spotify account, you can have the app on your computer, laptop, tablet, phone etc… and your music and playlists are automatically synced across all of your devices.
Wow what an effort, and what an interesting looking book. As with Hayden I’ve grabbed a copy. Just skimming through the playlist it’s really interesting to hear the stark difference between the older and newer versions of songs, while reading (thanks amazon “look inside”) the history and blurb.
Hi After watching “The Shining” where they played “Midnightwith the stars and you” By Harr Noble Id thought that I really need a playlist with great jazz from that era in time…
If you also like that music every now and then, then this could be a playlist for you,
Take Care
Can these Spotify playlists be used to play along with where you can download individual songs? I currently use apple iTunes that I have bought… and have them on playlists on my phone and I pad. It makes it easy to play along with. Although I have to learn song in different keys… beegie Adair usually plays songs in the key we’ve learned it in.
Having a Spotify playlist as broad as the ones listed has obvious benefits……just listening to so many different jazz recordings ….
Yes exactly as you say it’s nice to listen to broad playlists to expose yourself to different styles, recordings, and artists that you wouldn’t normally listen to. @TactfulCactus and @Micke have shared some awesome playlists for this above.
Another common recommendation I give to students is to create playlists around the specific tunes we are working on. For example here’s a playlist I have created around the tunes “There Will Never Be Another You” which gives me inspiration every time I want to work on that tune:
A few others here too:
We should do more sharing our playlists as I’m sure we can learn a lot from each other’s ‘record collection’
thks sharing it Christian ! 
