Researching the history of jazz standards
When I first looked into buying music to practice to, Dan Amores recommended that I go through the discount jazz section at music stores. At the time, my only reference in picking CDs was the song listings, and so I chose albums that had songs that I recognized. In other words, I looked for jazz standards.
Haydn posted on swingdjs about a great resource for researching the history of these standards: the Jazz Standards website. It gives a history of the standard, as well as a musical and lyrical analysis.
Look up famous songs that we dance to, like Honeysuckle Rose, Oh Lady Be Good, Sweet Georgia Brown.
