Jam session mid-tempo songs with lyrics?

[wakyct]

Hello all, I'm looking for song suggestions for the jam session I've been going to for the last few months. I've found some on the Cafe here in the SOTM threads but the well is starting to run a bit dry as I have some specific things I'm looking for, mainly:

* style is jazz, blues, American songbook and adjacent.
* mid-tempo songs (as we already have a lot of ballads) with a good melody.
* with lyrics (as we often have a singer).
* with lead sheets that aren't too hard to find (preferably with the lyrics already arranged).

It's kind of a rehearsal band setup where we have a set list of about a dozen songs that we put together the week before. It's been running for about a year biweekly so there's a good sized book already; we do recycle songs but I've been trying to find new ones as well. The level is beginner to intermediate and we usually have keyboard, guitar, bass, drums, several horns and a singer.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Pete Thomas]

I’d just go a bit more left field outside of American Song Book and more blues or R&B that imo is more fun for that era, Louis Jordan, Louis Prima, Cab Calloway. The audience will love as will the band.

 

[PiccoloPirate]

Mo Town tunes
Chess Records hits
Dixieland hits
Chuck Berry's best
Good opportunity for you and the band to get more arranging skills, as opposed to just doing it as recorded.

 

[Colin the Bear]

https://www.jazzstudies.us/

 

[JayeNM]

Heading a band which does exactly that kind of material ...I am gonna actually slightly disagree with the suggestions of moving things more towards pop, early rock, blues, Cab Calloway stuff. Why ? That's a different band signature. Different band idea.

Then Motown, IMHO, is SO different a genre, quite honestly, you probably lose band identity by trying to mix Motown in with Ella Fitzgerald, etc.
That's a VERY different band, there, it is not, as some folks would euphemistically say "we play a VARIETY of music, something for everyone". It ends up looking like a garage band with no clear identity.

Great Songbook material is really popular to listening audiences these days. You don't 'need' to go outside of it in order to be 'more popular' or crow-pleasing. So much material there, and it now has been covered by so MANY contemporary artists (Amy Whinehouse, Lady Gaga, Buble, etc) that it IS in the popular consciousness of music listeners.

Has been for a good 20 years now at least.

(Now if you want folks to dance, then maybe do the above suggestions, but honestly, an in-the-pocket 'jazz classics' band is quite marketable unless you are out in the sticks somewhere).

My suggestions to you @wakyct :

Bye, Bye Blackbird
You'd Be So Nice to come Home To
L.O.V.E.
Fly Me to Moon
Dream a Little Dream of Me
Sunny Side of the Street
All of Me

Bluesy:

Route 66
Everyday I Have the Blues
Black Coffee
Travelin' Light

Hokey, but crowd-pleasers:

Mack the Knife
Why Don't You Do Right ?
What a Wonderful World
La Vie en Rose

May I suggest you throw in a few Latin Jazz tunes just to change pace ?

Ipanema, despite it being overplayed to death, is always gonna make listeners happy, for example.

And for fun, throw in a few 'modern' tunes in a Jazz style ? My all-time fave is probably Karen Souza's version of "Creep", but there are so many others....Post Modern Jukebox takes some over the top , they become annoying, but the idea is there and open to a lot of potential....

 

[wakyct]

https://www.jazzstudies.us/

I don't know how you did it Colin because that site displays a random song every time you refresh the page, but the first time I clicked it showed "All the Way", the Sam Cooke version is perfect, and then my streaming service played "I'll come running back to you" which also is good. 😀

 

[wakyct]

And for fun, throw in a few 'modern' tunes in a Jazz style ? My all-time fave is probably Karen Souza's version of "Creep", but there are so many others....Post Modern Jukebox takes some over the top , they become annoying, but the idea is there and open to a lot of potential....

Thanks Jaye! I would love to do more recent tunes as well, with how easy it is to find Real Book charts etc. it's a bit of a trap...

I should clarify we are not playing for an audience, it's a practice/rehearsal kind of jam.

 

[Dr G]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkJLZWKbRK4

 

[Colin the Bear]

I don't know how you did it Colin because that site displays a random song every time you refresh the page, but the first time I clicked it showed "All the Way", the Sam Cooke version is perfect, and then my streaming service played "I'll come running back to you" which also is good. 😀

I think you're listening to the advert.🤔

 

[wakyct]

I think you're listening to the advert.

Not this time, I looked up the song on Wikipedia. The Frank Sinatra version was too slow, so I tried the Sam Cooke.

 

[PiccoloPirate]

Best to define the BPM that you consider Mid-Tempo.
Here's two versions of Chuck.
Arrange it at a tempo you want.
Doable with most tunes
I like the chords from Legrow.
But Emmylou is, as Willie Nelson said,
There are two types of men. Those who fall in love with Harris, and those who have not met her.
❤️🎶❤

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWlvZ91kto

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv6fdib3GBI

 

[PiccoloPirate]

I sent my guitar playing brother, most of my Guitar Player and Frets magazines, from decades ago.
He especially thanked me for the Garcia interview one.
So he sent me this tune, as he knows I like Branford's playing.
This tune might be mid-tempo? 🧐

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LyvL_6kU6Q&t=67s&pp=2AFDkAIB

 

[JayeNM]

You gonna keep driving the Chuck Berry stuff for a Jazz band, aren't ya ? 😉

 

[JayeNM]

Thanks Jaye! I would love to do more recent tunes as well, with how easy it is to find Real Book charts etc. it's a bit of a trap...

I should clarify we are not playing for an audience, it's a practice/rehearsal kind of jam.

Ah, very good, sounds like fun.. yes it was actually Pete's reply which planted in my head this was a performing band, sorry.....all of my suggestions certainly apply to that as well, and who knows ?...

....maybe someday take the best 4 or 5 players and go get a gig someplace, even if just a coffee shop, outdoor market busk, assisted living facility, place of worship, house party, whatever...when you feel confident enough. That would be the logical extension of a standards jam group...

MOST of the songs I listed are in Real Books, so you have the melodies written out there.

For the modern ones turned into Jazz...you can find the chord changes often on guitar or piano tabs websites.

*This CAN get laborious because oftentimes there will be like 4 or 5 versions of the tabs based upon a particular version of the tune or based upon how lazy and not steeped in basic theory or ear-training the tab creator was...I mean, I swear...people who wouldn't know a m7 chord if it bit them in the bum.....but you can eventually find a decent tab which you can use - or alter slightly to make work. Helps here when YOUR chords player is fairly intermediate (so they can recognize by ear things like dim and half dim, 9th chords, 6 chords, Aug chords, Sus, etc.)

(I usually first try to search out NOT tabs, but "sheet music" (type in the song - "Creep radiohead sheet music" etc., ....because if you find images of those, the sheet music tends to be a little better tightened up that a chord tabs site - where anyone can contribute and it is never checked over by the site host)

The melodies.....if not present, .just transcribe them and write them out...great practice. Then you literally have created your own fake book chart.

 

[JayeNM]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkJLZWKbRK4

EVERYTHING she did with that lineup of recording session playersin that period of recording - was PURE GOLD. GREAT example of mid-tempo Jazz standard material.

This one is equally fantastic:

 

[Pete Thomas]

You gonna keep driving the Chuck Berry stuff for a Jazz band, aren't ya ?

And why not? Be great if horizons get opened up, or even broken.

 

[JayeNM]

And why not? Be great if horizons get opened up, or even broken.

My band throws in some Blues tunes as well as the aforementioned pop tunes rearranged in a jazzy vein...but I would argue that for a band which plays Great American Songbook...Chuck Berry isn't 'expanding' any musical horizons for any of the members, really. My 2 cents.

On the other hand, if one were trying to reach out to a non-jazz audience, make yourself more marketable, it might be one way to go.

 

[turf3]

I’d just go a bit more left field outside of American Song Book and more blues or R&B that imo is more fun for that era, Louis Jordan, Louis Prima, Cab Calloway. The audience will love as will the band.

You don't know that the band will love it. If I joined a band expecting to play a buch of standards and the bandleader decided midway to convert to a jump and jive band, I might be quite disappointed. OP didn't indicate the band wants to expand stylistically, just to get more material in their current style. It might well be that an expansion in that direction would be welcomed by the band, but there's no evidence as yet.

 

[skeller047]

EVERYTHING she did with that lineup of recording session playersin that period of recording - was PURE GOLD. GREAT example of mid-tempo Jazz standard material.

Carmen McRae is my favorite singer of all time. So musical, so tasty. I had the pleasure as a teenager of introducing her to my Dad, I took him to a concert of hers. He was enthralled, he hadn’t known of her. After she sang “I’m Always Drunk in San Francisco”, he turned to me and said “She can wash her socks in my coffee any day of the week!” A treasured memory, RIP Dad.

 

[PiccoloPirate]

You gonna keep driving the Chuck Berry stuff for a Jazz band, aren't ya ? 😉

I'm sure you know why I posted, using two Chucks, as an example, but for those who didn't, here's why.
Hungry for mid-tempo tunes, is like hungry for food, it's never ending. You can give them a fish, or teach them how to fish.
Those two versions, are an example of fast to mid, so they might learn how to do that, as well as slower to faster.
They're beginners to intermediates.

I just happen to be currently using those tunes, for a strumming and chord arrangement, for a large ukulele orchestra, as one of the members, asked me for some material.
Rather than everyone strumming with the same pattern, and singing, I'm giving them some Counter Strumming, to liven it up.
In 4/4 and one in 3/4, because,
Love is a Waltz.
Changing tempo and time signature, are useful skills.
Didn't Riddle write big band charts of Chuck, for Frank? Must have one to many tequilas, as I remember seeing Frank,
Duck Walk, in old Vegas. 😵‍💫