Double Bass Pop songs for a jazz gig?

[Greg Scheer]

I play a weekly gig at a restaurant/bar with a jazz trio (piano and bass with violin/flute/guitar). Generally, we play jazz standards/great American songbook. It seems the owner has suggested we add some more popular or modern songs. The pianist has a soft spot for Broadway (Le Mis), Billy Joel, and crossover stuff like Josh Groban. As pretty as some of those tunes are, they really don't allow for improvisation, and frankly, I'm worried that too much of that will turn it will turn into a GB rather than jazz gig.

So I come to you, my esteemed colleagues, with a repertoire request: What pop tunes could we add to our sets that would be recognizable by average patrons (ie. those who don't come specifically to hear jazz) but would work for a jazz trio?

Common fake books include Steve Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "This Masquerade," and "My Favorite Things" (Thank you, Ariana Grande!). Are there others I'm missing? But I'm ideally looking for more up-to-date songs. Disney's "You've Got a Friend in Me" came to mind. How about funk/pop tunes like Harry Styles' "Watermelon Sugar"? Any TV themes or older songs that have come back into circulation after being used in a movie? (Thank you, When Harry Met Sally!) Beatles or classic rock that lend themselves well to jazz improv?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[Sam Reese]

"Wagon Wheel" seems to get 'em every time. Why? Hell if I know...
EDIT: and "I Feel Good", James Brown

 

[vanderbrook]

Blackbird (Lennon/McCartney).

Also, google BeatleJazz.

 

[Ed Fuqua]

“It seems the owner…”, so where’d you get the word from?
Well, on one hand, it IS a restaurant gig, right? This isn’t a listening room venue that serves food - Birdland, Dizzy’s, Smoke, etc. So nothing wrong with aural wallpaper gigs, that’s pretty much my bread and butter since I left NYC.
But given the pianist’s pop predilections, are you 100% sure this isn’t coming from him? If it is indeed the owner, how often is the owner in the joint? All night, every night or only occasionally? If it’s the latter, all you really need to do is find out two or three of the owner’s favorite tunes and learn those. Then play one or two of them whenever you see them come in. They’re happy, you’re happy, end of story. It gets a little harder if the owner’s there all the time.
But generally I’ve found that anytime the owner or manager of a joint starts talking about repertoire, they’re just worried about the cash register. Has business been slow?

 

[bassmanbrent]

The Beatles are a good place to start, IMHO. I hear you though - it's hard to add pop tunes without changing the nature of the gig.

 

[westrock]

I was going to suggest “This Masquerade” or maybe Moon Dance, It don't come easy, Mercy Mercy mercy, Imagine, Stormy Monday, Wicked Games and Good By Pork Pie Hat UZEB style.

 

[AGCurry]

The pianist has a soft spot for Broadway (Le Mis), Billy Joel, and crossover stuff like Josh Groban. As pretty as some of those tunes are, they really don't allow for improvisation, and frankly, I'm worried that too much of that will turn it will turn into a GB rather than jazz gig.

What's "GB"?

I'm having a hard time understanding why they "don't allow for improvisation." A good number of what we think of as jazz standards began life as pop songs.

 

[Steven Ayres]

From my perspective jazz has always been about spinning popular tunes into the jazz idiom. That's where the majority of the standards come from, so it's not a stretch to use more recently popular stuff. What you're looking for, though, are tunes that have enough melodic and harmonic meat to work with. Also, when a venue asks for "popular," they usually mean "familiar to our customers," so you have to look at who's in the seats. Dinner audiences around here tend to be older, so YMMV. Be confident that good work can come from the stuff you already know and like, just apply your jazz imagination and say thanks for the tips.

As Brent pointed out there are many good prospects in the Beatles catalog. I'll add as examples:
Alison
Blue Velvet
Chances Are
Crazy
Colour My World
Don't Know Why
Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'
The First Time Ever I Saw your Face
How Sweet It Is
The Look of Love
Moondance
On Broadway
Sir Duke
Spooky
Still Crazy After All These Years
Sunny
You Don't Know Me

 

[ThudThudThud]

Slip some 'Mingus' or 'Shadows and Light' era Joni Mitchell in there, or some Joan Armatrading piano tracks ('Willow' comes to mind). A drop of pop feel with some jazzy chord changes.

 

[james condino]

Remind them that every one of those "jazz" songs were once pop tunes.

 

[sean_on_bass]

I play a weekly gig at a restaurant/bar with a jazz trio (piano and bass with violin/flute/guitar). Generally, we play jazz standards/great American songbook. It seems the owner has suggested we add some more popular or modern songs. The pianist has a soft spot for Broadway (Le Mis), Billy Joel, and crossover stuff like Josh Groban. As pretty as some of those tunes are, they really don't allow for improvisation, and frankly, I'm worried that too much of that will turn it will turn into a GB rather than jazz gig.

So I come to you, my esteemed colleagues, with a repertoire request: What pop tunes could we add to our sets that would be recognizable by average patrons (ie. those who don't come specifically to hear jazz) but would work for a jazz trio?

Common fake books include Steve Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "This Masquerade," and "My Favorite Things" (Thank you, Ariana Grande!). Are there others I'm missing? But I'm ideally looking for more up-to-date songs. Disney's "You've Got a Friend in Me" came to mind. How about funk/pop tunes like Harry Styles' "Watermelon Sugar"? Any TV themes or older songs that have come back into circulation after being used in a movie? (Thank you, When Harry Met Sally!) Beatles or classic rock that lend themselves well to jazz improv?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Really any song that you successfully can re-arrange to fit the jazz aesthetic. I'm a big fan of how Brad Mehldau tends to interpret alot of 90's alternative hits like Black Hole Sun. They don't just play it as a gimmick or as throwing the audience a bone. They turn it into a serious vehicle for improvisation.

 

[longfinger]

If you searching for some inspiration, check out PostModern JukeBox on youtube, click the links a dozen times and then let the Youtube algorithms guide your next up videos. (Though they have guest vocalists which gives focus to listeners)

Pretty much any pop tune can work for what you want. If you want to practice, do some jams on common pop progressions
I V vi IV
I IV V
I vi IV V

Take songs, pull them apart, rebuild them, experiment, have fun.


Get input from the violinist and flautist on what melodies they want to perform and "sell" to an audience. Ditto for guitarist and pianist, though they sometimes go for chords, riffs..

 

[oren]

I work with a singer and we sprinkle in a few poppier tunes in on occasion:
Yesterday
Don’t Know Why (Norah Jones)
You Are The Sunshine Of My Life
Havana (Camila Cabello)

 

[Ed Fuqua]

What's "GB"?

General business, also known as clubdate or a casual.

I'm having a hard time understanding why they "don't allow for improvisation." A good number of what we think of as jazz standards began life as pop songs.

. Because pop songs of today (generally) don't have the same sorts of melodic development and harmonic richness that popular music of the 30s, 40s, and 50s had. There's a period in the 60s, when you still had teams of actual songwriters working on pop tunes (think Brill Building) still had something going on.

 

[NG51]

Cedar Walton does a nice version of Stevie Wonder's Another Star:

Miles Davis doing a Cyndi Lauper(!) cover of Time after Time:

 

[statsc]

Stevie Wonder’s Creepin’, Golden Lady, and Isn’t She Lovely.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Cue damon smith in 3...2....

 

[lurk]

It's tough. Most of the tunes mentioned in the above posts are actually pretty old. I don't know the demographic at the joint, but chances are those Beatles and Stevie tunes, for example, are going to be as dated as Gershwin. Better off, maybe, to just find a way to put a backbeat, maybe with a vamp for blowing, on tunes you already got.

 

[BASSDROID]

David Bowie seems to be fertile ground for several contemporary artists. And of course there is Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen once being Brill building composers themselves. Neil Diamond as well. Not exactly contemporary, but certainly still recognizable to many.

But yes, look for melodic content. Lots of melodic content will provide more suggestions for reharmonization.

 

[Fat bob]

I remember playing a few tunes/arrangements from this Stevie Wonder aebersold, they were pretty hip! But without drums, hmmm.. I second (or third?) Beatles tunes can crossover pretty easy, there’s a Beatles fakebook that makes it pretty easy to play head, solos over form, head out…

Watching this thread, as I was asked to play some “jazz brunches” but to incorporate more pop tunes. I have mixed feelings about it, on one hand you either want jazz or pop, but on the other hand I think it is cool to play a 1 or 2 tunes a set that are more accessible and recognizable. Like when Christian McBride plays “car wash”. If every tune is med swing it can get old