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Just digging around and found this...
Sing, sing, sing! B. Goodman Orch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mJ4dpNal_k

Here is another musician of today who is able to do music the way it used to be done...
Wynton Marsalis--- trumpet playing son of Ellis Marsalis. Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k605DBgJpic

The band in the Marsalis link is Lincoln Center Jazz Orch. and the tune was Symphonic Raps.
A good description is given by the person who submitted the video file to youtube.

Hi again. I am the guy who posted the initial message on this thread.

Was at my music lesson today and played a piano score for "Stomping at the Savoy" written by Benny Goodman.

My second piece was "Till the End of Time," a pop song of the 1930s (I think) based on a melody from a Chopin polonase (sp?).

It was fun to play a song actually written (with others) by Benny Goodman himself.

I was out of town on a five-day trip, so could not practice for much of the week. Even so, the teacher thought that "Savoy" went very well.

Usually more practice time buys me more speed and more smoothness. I don't have to slow down for the hard parts.

Only disappointment-- I play at home on a beautiful 5'8" grand, and have to go to the lesson and play on a Young Chang upright. I will say this -- they do keep it properly tuned.

Keep the good postings flowing--

Best--

I like this thread and love the old standards. I really like it when an artist puts a new twist on a familiar song.

Can I add a favorite of mine?
"You Go To My Head": Words & Music by Haven Gillespie & J. Fred Coots

I just LOVE the chord progressions. Can't get enough of that song.

"I just LOVE the chord progressions. Can't get enough of that song."

When you play these popular songs, you get a much better idea of the structure, and how they go together, and how they achieve the effects they achieve.

Gillespie & Coots also wrote "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town".

I love the lyrics on "You Go To My Head".

I continue to find this thread topic enjoyable;
there are just so many great songs from the Am. Songbook. I can't pin down a favorite song.

Ella swinging "I Won't Dance" at youtube... B&W vintage.... I love this tune!! Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EmqxZW9-OI

Time to give it a bump...
too cool a thread to let it linger in the nether regions. Here are some links to make this post sort of legit/on topic etc.

Easy Living--- youtube piano lesson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JoJ0x3BqU

Prelude to a kiss----youtube piano lesson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmrXKflz84k&mode=related&search=

Does anyone know if many of these old classics are still in print?

I know there are books of arrangements (collections) of old show tunes, film themes, and the like. But oftentimes they may not be the original scores. I'm thinking of something that is more similar in appearance to the original sheet music. Or even and internet source for download. I am not adverse to paying something.

Right now, I would like to find "Deep Purple," which was available as a piano score in days of yore. In fact, it is advertized on the back cover of my copy of "Stomping at the Savoy."

I have an actual transcription from a recording in a Billie Holiday Collection of "Easy Living"

Ella Fitzgerald was discovered in 1934, when she competed on Amateur Night at the Apollo theatre. The first song she sang was "Judy", written by Hoagy Carmichael. The Boswell Sisters' rendition of the song was one of her late mother's (died 1932) favorite songs.

Saxaphone great Benny Carter was playing in the house band that night, was impressed with her singing and approached her. They became close friends, and Benny introduced her to key individuals who helped Ella start her professional career.

Growing up, Ella's favorite vocal group was the Boswell Sisters. Connee Boswell was her idol and primary singing influence.

Here are the Boswell Sisters singing "Heebie Jeebies" in 1932, with Martha Boswell on piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Afn3Z-BWI

The Boswell Sisters singing "Sleepy Time Down South" (1932):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwByDFAHB74

Touching slide show, with the Boswell Sisters singing "Goin' Home" (1934) as background music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIZ4XvCNfw

Music Lover knows
The one key to my heart now,
Ella, a queen of swing

Ella with her sweet voice
Ella melts my heart, pulls its strings
Makes me wanna just sing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnG9dCx9YuI
A rare clip of Art Tatum playing at the 3 Duces!

Song Title: **Tiny's Exercise**
Written By: Tiny Grimes, Connie Hayes
Year Recorded: 1943
Archival film: Outtakes from a March of Time newsreel

Art Tatum's Diatonic Devices... lesson at the tUBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEl87kax7_Y&NR

I checked the Lester Levy Collection (at Johns Hopkins? - at any rate, just Google Lester Levy) for Deep Purple, and, not surprisingly, they have it. But the copyright dates are 1934 and 1939, so it's definitely not out of copyright yet, so they haven't posted the scans of the sheet music, tho goodness knows you can find a lot of stuff there - I got the scan of Black and White Rag, for instance. I don't know if anything is back in print, but the rag timers over at Elite Syncopations keep track of sheet music being sold on e-bay to find old originals, if that's an option. I've never tried e-bay for anything, Luddite that I am, but some folks have found some real treasures. I'm still haunting thrift stores, myself, and my friends' mothers' collections - that's the way I got Teddy Bears Picnic.

As for playing them and learning the chord structures and how they function, etc, I'm increasingly of one of my original opinions - there are no such things as wrong notes! But the inversions in which the chords are used, so that the base line walks, and the root of the chord is left out, etc, are most likely, it seems to me, figured out *before* a chord name/label is put on for the guitar/mandolin/uke tabs above! Not that I think Leroy Anderson in Blue Tango didn't know exactly what he was doing, but I suspect he heard it before he formalized the chord names, if in fact he was the one that put the chord names in, rather than a copy editor of some sort. But it sure is fun to figure it out -

Cathy

<-----still has his Verve! label albums.

But while on the subject, who can forget the classic sounds of the incomparable Jonathan and Darlene Edwards doing their unique rendition of "Autumn in New York?"