Great American Songbook

#120 / An Audio Extra

Fifty years ago, Ringo Starr surprised the public by releasing “Sentimental Journey,” an album of songs from the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, tunes that “were my initiation to music,” he said. “When my mother and my father came home from the pub out of their heads, they'd sing all these songs.”

That’s pretty much what we were thinking too as we put together our Great American Songbook playlist, the latest “special blend” in our free Radio Floodango music streaming service.

Featuring tunes and performances from decades worth of Floodifying, this show offers our take on more than two dozen works from great 20th century songwriters like Hoagy Carmichael and George Gershwin, Fats Waller and Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington and more.

Along the way, of course, we sometimes tease the tunes a bit. For instance, click the button below to hear Dave Peyton’s own introduction to one of these numbers during a visit to the late Joe Dobbs’ “Music from the Mountains” radio show:

The GASB Revival

While Ringo’s 1970 “Sentimental Journey” album was disdained at the time by critics, it nonetheless made the Top 25 on the Billboard charts, and it hit No. 7 on the UK album chart, with a half million copies in sales.

Moreover, Ringo inspired a rash of similar albums celebrating The Great American Songbook, starting in 1973 with Harry Nilsson and continuing into the 21st century with artists like Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and others, all reviving songs from great composers of the past century.

Particularly notable was Linda Ronstadt. Her 1983 “What’s New” was the first in a trilogy of standards albums recorded with the great arranger/conductor Nelson Riddle.

While it was wasn’t the first album by a rock singer to pay tribute to the golden age of pop, it was “the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania and the mass marketing of rock LPs for teen-agers undid in the mid-'60s,” Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times.

We’re happy to join the parade. Click here to check out The Flood’s Great American Songbook playlist.