The Repertoire - Part I

by George Warren

Once there was a classical guitarist who made a good living, and could even raise a family, playing the standard repertoire -- Bach, Sor, Giuliani, Ponce, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and so on. He had a lucrative and open-ended recording contract with a major firm which had connections with the record outlets and which let him record anything he chose, from Britten to Brouwer and back again, and which promoted everything he played as if it were as marketable as rock and roll.

Of course by now you realize I'm telling a fairy tale. If there ever was such a guitarist, I don't know who he could have been. The second time I heard Segovia play, only 45 years into his career, it was in a movie theatre in Columbus, Georgia and you could barely hear him for the fidgeting and coughing. The pay could hardly have been worth the bother; he was wasting half his life sitting in drafty air terminals waiting for planes.

If there's such a person alive today, his name is probably Kazuhito Yamashita ... but no, I'm wrong. Even Yamashita, who played to full houses all around America on his recent U.S. tour, doesn't have that kind of recording contract, and more than two-thirds of his huge recorded output is unavailable in the United States. As I write this his chef d'oeuvre, sixteen CDs containing the complete works of Fernando Sor, goes begging on this side of the water. Only fairy tale worlds make sense. The real one's crazy, take my word for it.

Be that as it may, the real world is the one we have to live in and the average guitarist who has bills to meet must play casuals, club dates, and a great deal of what I can only call cocktail guitar repertoire. In a word, pops program stuff -- Gershwin and Cole Porter and Lerner & Loewe and Hoagy Carmichael and the Beatles. Unfortunately the average guitarist's education hasn't included a course in the arrangement of pop standards for the instrument. So what is one to play?

Thus I offer the present guide for the use and edification of that average guitarist. When I was doing casuals a few years back, I developed a repertoire of an hour or two of pop standards I'd arranged and worked up: nice, full-sounding versions of the kind of song the job calls for, properly harmonized with good bass lines. Was this enough for the job? You have to be kidding. Midway through the second set I'd run out of material and have to repeat myself; the club or restaurant owner would shoot dirty looks at me and the audience would drift. It was obvious that my own arrangements wouldn't do the trick on their own. I had to scour the underbrush for the work of others.

But once I started I found some wonderful things! To be sure, I had to do a staggering amount of digging through the available books before I found arrangements that suited my fancy. (These are the only kind worth playing, the kind you like, yourself; the audience can tell, after all.)

Most people are familiar by now with the four books John Duarte published over the past few years in England. At one time or another I've read through all of them and there isn't a clinker in the lot; Jack knew what he was up to when he was working these pieces up years ago. (You should hear what he's writing now!) But I have my favorites. Try these:

From Jazz & Popular Songs (Wise Publications; via Music Sales): Spanish Harlem, with its irresistible baion vamp, not quite as easy as it looks, but effective enough to justify the extra work; Faraway Places and The Girl Next Door, a pair of lilting waltzes; and Basin Street Blues and Ain't Misbehavin', two timeless relics of the Age of the Blues.

From Classic Jerome Kern (Musical New Services Ltd.): the whole book -- particularly the Show Boat tunes. Kern lends himself to instrumental treatment better than just about anybody, and Duarte's harmonizations of Kern are uncommonly fine. Yesterdays and They Didn't Believe Me in particular have lovely countermelodies, and either would work nicely as an encore in a traditional program (as would Long Ago and Far Away).

From Classic Cole Porter (Musical New Services Ltd.): all the beguine numbers in particular, including I've Got You Under My Skin and Begin the Beguine. I usually play my own arrangements of Porter, but if Jack had published this book earlier I might have played his instead and saved myself the bother. They're that good.

From Classic Gershwin (Musical New Services Ltd.): all the up-tempo numbers, plus Love is Here to Stay and The Man I Love.

I wish I could steer you to some published Jorge Morel. I've been a fan of his for thirty years, and if there's a better idiomatic arranger of North American pops than Morel I don't know who it might be. However, the few things I have are pirated versions, imported from Hawaii, and you'll have to ask elsewhere as to how to get them. When you do learn, ask about his wonderful West Side Story medley. (And if you land a copy of his matchless arrangement of Laura, pirate me a copy too.) [Editor's Note: Jorge Morel publications are now available. See below for details.]

Meanwhile, you can get three priceless books of Laurindo Almeida arrangements. One of them -- Broadway Solo Guitar (Big 3 #B3-4805) -- has a matching cassette available from the artist himself. Almeida's strongest suit in a motley bag of talents is his extraordinary skill as harmonist and arranger. If you can't find anything to like in this book, you probably don't like American pops.

Very little here is idiomatic in the way Morel's work is; Almeida arranges more like a pianist than a string player. But the harmonies he's found for these Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, and Fritz Loewe songs are lush in the extreme, and the pieces sing as few other arrangers' work does. Try As Long as He Needs Me and My Funny Valentine; learn the cadenzas last, or leave them out if you like. Work your way up to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

Another treasure trove is Almeida's Contemporary Moods for Classical Guitar (Robbins-Big 3 #B3-4839). It includes a few fairly easy arrangements (Ma'mselle, Blue Moon, On Green Dolphin Street, and Deep Purple, which are sight-readable). More difficult, and lusher fare includes Laura and that other even darker David Raksin number, the theme from The Bad and the Beautiful. The only pop song I know with richer harmonies is Lush Life, which Almeida wisely avoids here.

Some of Almeida's finest work as an arranger, however, comes to us from Japan in an album from Chuo Art Publishing (available from Guitar Solo, San Francisco). This includes the wonderful head-structure Almeida did for the LA 4's recording of Misty, with its gorgeous modulation from E major to C major at the end of the first verse. There are big, luscious versions of Stardust and Holiday for Strings (the latter with its effective imitation of a string orchestra playing pizzicatto) and what is arguably the best medley arrangement of the three songs from Black Orpheus ever put on record. As a bonus the editors include Almeida's 35 year old work-up of Nono, by Romualdo Peixoto, a staple of the old Almeida Quartet of the fifties.

If you are interested in Beatles arrangements, again the pirated Morel versions stand out. But there are legal, and easy to play tunes available as well in Sittin' Back Pickin' (Mel Bay MB 93825; cassette available) by Nashville player John Knowles, whom Chet Atkins calls "the laziest really good guitarist I know." The Beatles works are Blackbird, Lady Madonna, Yesterday, and a cheerful, surprisingly effective and easy version of Eleanor Rigby.

Look too, in unlikely places. In Rick Foster's More Hymns for Classic Guitar (Mel Bay; cassette available) you'll find two of the best walking-bass arrangements you'll ever hope to hear or play: Peace Like a River, which moves like an express train; and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a gorgeous arrangement full of blues notes which, like the Kern tunes cited earlier, would make a wonderful encore for a more serious program. Foster's best arrangements are very, very good indeed.

Mario Abril's best work is probably a pair of medleys published, like all his pops work, by Charles Hansen. My own favorite is the one from Fiddler on the Roof (#13084), with the opening numbers and their reprise aptly framing the two classic waltzes (Sunrise, Sunset and Matchmaker, both of which Abril also published in easier, but equally beautiful arrangements in album T620). The other is a well-chosen suite from Porgy and Bess (Album J 2009), capped by a jaunty version of the banjo song I Got Plenty of Nuttin'. Both of these were recorded--splendidly, too--by Abril on a now out of print recording from Hansen, along with two good Scott Joplin arrangements.

Also out of print, unfortunately, is Abril's Popular Songs for Classical Guitar, an overflowing cornucopia of popular song marred only by the fact that Abril all too obviously wasn't offered the chance to read the proofs. You have to correct misprints by ear; but when you've done so you have a huge archive--74 selections--of works ranging from show tunes (Once Upon a Time) and movie tunes (Valley of the Dolls, Never on Sunday and Stella by Starlight) to jazz standards (Tenderly) and country-western tunes (Green Grass of Home). My own favorite, for no reason I can name, is Somethin' Stupid, which seems just about right. How can a Cuban like Abril understand our music so perfectly? (But then how can a Brazilian like Almeida, or an Argentine like Morel?) Hunt for this one in the second-hand stores--or bother Hansen about reprinting.

Gregg Nestor has a wonderful book of Gershwin arrangements called By George! from Warner (#GF-0323) with a nice, abridged version of Rhapsody in Blue which will do fine for the club date. Also included is a splendid medley of Gershwin tunes which opens with a lovely setting of I Got Rhythm.

Many of the same tunes are to be found in Best of Gershwin by Stan Ayeroff (Warner #GF-0324). Ayeroff was once a guitarist with Danny Elfman's Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (a magically gifted musical mime troupe which, to the despair of its fans, turned into a rock group in the '80s). He is a man with one foot in the plectrum guitar camp and the other in the finger-style camp; I find his arrangements need tinkering before they come alive in my hands. But he knows harmony and the guitar as few arrangers do: try for instance his setting of Jeepers Creepers (quick and bouncy) and As Time Goes By (cocktail guitar) in Play it Again, Stan (Warner #GF-0235). This is a book worth looking at.

This list could go on a good deal longer--but it'll get you started. If you play through all of it and little by little find your own favorites, you'll soon have a very full repertoire at your fingertips, one that will pay a lot of bills in the long run. But if you've got a trace of adventurousness it may also get you started investing in fake books and making your own arrangements.

This is the first in a series of articles adapted from "the repertoire" columns by George Warren, published in Guitar Review. This article first appeared in Guitar Review #79, Fall 1989. George Warren, a Carmel Classic Guitar Society member, has written music reviews for American Record Guide, Record Review, and Guitar & Lute.

The following section contains Web references for books and artists mentioned above. (Note: Linked pages will open in a new window.)

Web links for purchasing the arrangements:

John Duarte: Jazz And Popular Songs (pdf order form)

Jorge Morel: Composing & Arranging For The Guitar
Jorge Morel: Additional videos and books available at Frets Only

Laurindo Almeida: Broadway Solo Guitar
Laurindo Almeida: Contemporary Moods for Classical Guitar

Rick Foster: More Hymns for Classic Guitar

Stan Ayeroff: arrangement of As Time Goes By in Guitar Songs / Great Standards

Other related links:

Kazuhito Yamashita

Jorge Morel

Guitar Review

To The Repertoire Part II >>
<< Previous Sep. '02 article		Next Sep. '02 article >>