If you are not already familiar with JazzStandards.com, you should check it out. Jeremy Wilson, who runs the site, has ranked the top 1000 jazz standards according to frequency of inclusion in currently-issued CDs by 700 jazz artists. Each song has a page; the first 300 song listings include notes on the song's origin, historical information, and analysis. Recently, Jeremy has added Youtube playlists of approximately 6 versions, for each of the first 300 songs.
A couple of years ago, Jeremy invited me to write some theory pages for the site. I wrote up seven: Theory Overview, Performance Practice vs. Composer's Intention, Harmony and Form, Blues, Rhythm Changes, Modal Jazz, and Bossa Nova. The theory pages are getting some great page view counts, and I hope they are proving useful to readers. I tried to write them in a way that would be useful to musicians but at least somewhat understandable by non-musicians (i.e., not overly technical).
A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy wrote to ask me if I'd like to come up with some video playlists to enhance the theory pages. Criteria, as per Jeremy's suggestion, were: live performance if possible, good camera work, good sound, and of course interesting performances. So far I've come up with playlists for the Performance Practice vs. Composer's Intention, Blues, Rhythm Changes, Modal Jazz, and Bossa Nova pages, with 6 videos per list. It's been fun researching the video selections, and I'll be doing the remaining two theory pages soon.
Check out the playlists! I've discovered some outstanding performances on the pages that Jeremy curated, and in the process of putting together my own five playlists. The home page of the site is here: JazzStandards.com; the theory pages start here: Theory Overview.
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