I'll show you mine if you show me yours...

Lango-Django

Below you'll find a list some of my most favourite-ist tunes...

Now mind you, I don't actually play every single one on the list yet, which is kind of the standard thing for lists like this... but these are the tunes I'd choose to play in an ideal world where I was the front guy with my own backup group.

(In real life, I play a few solo gigs a year and have a lot of these tunes on backing tracks.)

Anyway, if you'd like to share a similar list of beloved tunes, then I'd like to read it... I'm sure I've omitted some really great ones!

Will

****************

Ain't Misbehavin'
All the Things You Are
Almost Like Being In Love
Among My Souvenirs
And I Love Her
Are You Lonesome Tonight
As Time Goes By
Autumn Leaves
Begin the Beguine
Beyond the Sea (La Mer)
Blue Bossa
Blue Room
Blue Skies
Both Sides Now
Broadway
But Not For me
C'est Magnifique
C'est Si Bon
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Cast Your Fate to the Wind
Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
Claire
Crazy
Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup
Dream a Little Dream of Me
Embraceable You
Everybody's Talkin' at Me
Fine Romance, A
Foggy Day, A
For Sentimental Reasons
Georgia on My Mind
Getting Sentimental Over You
Girl From Ipanema
Godfather Theme
Green Dolphin Street
Green Eyes
Here's That Rainy Day
Honeysuckle Rose
I Get a Kick Out of You
I Have Dreamed
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
I Only Have Eyes for You
I Will Wait For You
I Wish You Love
I'll Be Seeing You
I'm Beginning to See the Light
I'm Confessin'
I'm in the Mood For Love
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
If I Had You
In My Life
Isn't It Romantic?
It Don't Mean a Thing
It Had to be You
It's the Talk of the Town
Just in Time
Just One of Those Things
Kiss To Build a Dream On, A
L-O-V-E
La Vie En Rose
Laura
Let's Do It
Lover Man
Mad Love
Man and a Woman, A
Man I Love, The
Manhattan
Meditation
Michelle
Misty
Moon River
Moonglow
Moonlight in Vermont
Moonlight Serenade
More
My Cherie Amour
My Funny Valentine
Nice Work if You Can Get It
Night and Day
Nightingale Sang in Berkely Square, A
Nuages
On the Street Where You Live
Opus One
Our Love is Here to Stay
Out of Nowhere
Polka Dots and Moonbeams
Red Roses for a Blue Lady
Robbin's Nest
S'wonderful
Seems Like Old Times
September in the Rain
Slow Boat to China
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Someone to Watch Over Me
Soon
Stardust
Stealin' Apples
Struttin' With Some BBQ
Sukiyaki
Summer Samba
Summertime
Sunny
Sweet Lorraine
Swing 42
Swing That Music
Swinging On a Star
Tea for Two
Tenderly
Tennessee Waltz
There's a Small Hotel
These Foolish Things
They Can't Take That Away From Me
This Could Be the Start of Something Big
Time After Time
Undecided
Unforgettable
Watch What Happens
Wave
Way You Look Tonight, The
What a Wonderful World
Willow Weep for Me
Witchcraft
Yesterday
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
You Don't Know Me
You Took Advantage of Me

billyshakes

Hey Will,

Do you actually do Tennessee Waltz in a GJ-style ballad? Or was that an aspirational song in 2012?

I saw a user called @pdxdjazz uploaded a chart on ireal of a simple version. Don't know if that it someone on this board under a different handle here, but just curious if anyone plays this tune and how it goes over? Pee Wee King was from my grandpa's hometown, a little farm community along a railroad track in the middle of nowhere. Its a nice song! Lots of famous covers.

Lango-Django

Hi Billy,

It’s a great old song and I have been neglecting for it too long.

Interesting history of it here:

http://popmusic.mtsu.edu/Homeland/waltz.html

I’ve never heard the Pee Wee King version. I’ll have to listen.

****

The late Jesse Winchester wrote a song called “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz” which I had the pleasure of hearing him sing and play at the Riverboat Coffee House in Toronto in the fall of 1970.shortly after I arrived in Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQiWsNx8m7s

Robbie Robertson was the producer of Jesse Winchester’s first album including thks song and there is a funny story about that in Robertson’s book Once Were Brothers…

Robbie and Jesse are both gone now, along with the guy who played guitar with Jesse on that record, a guy named David Rea who came from my ex-hometown of Akron OH.

Sniff. How is it possible for my musical heroes to be mortals?

Will

billyshakes

Thanks for sharing the Jesse Winchester version. If I understand from the comments on the video below, you aren't the only person who isn't familiar with Pee Wee King's version. I guess because he was famous in the area I grew up in, I was aware of this first. He came back to his hometown in the 70s and he produced a sort of thing they now call a "tour book", though it was really just some glossy pages with a bunch of black & white photos of him and many celebrities of music and screen, often playing golf, sometimes on stage performing. It was almost like a "look how well I've succeeded after growing up in small Abrams, WI" sort of an affair. Kids these days might have said he was "flexing", but I suspect he was just sharing a different world to these people in his hometown.

Their version has a sprightly tempo, which I prefer to some of the dirges that have been recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePwI5KEd8D0

Buco

I hope we start playing this one along with Crazy. It's another song I played with a different local band and loved it ever since but it never occurred to me to just play it ourselves. I love that lift in the beginning of B section, so good.

Lango-Django

Yeah I’ve never been one to play much country music on gigs but there are a lot of nice melodies.

My late jazz violin partner Murph used to love to play “San Antonio Rose”

And you can hear some pretty cool jazzy chord changes in tunes like “Crazy” or “You Don’t Know Me” or Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again”

I don’t know… I used to try to play stuff like this and Beatles and Stevie Wonder because I thought they were more commercial but it turned out that nobody really gave a shit so I might as well just play all the tunes I love best.

Except for Christmas carols, you’ve always got to have Christmas carols.

And luckily, most of them sound real nice on acoustic jazz guitar… though I do like to bring out my old banjo for the kiddy tunes like Frosty and Rudolf and Jingle Bells…