The Best Jazz Standards Ever (The Best Ever Series)

Yea! It came today as promised "Prime". The first piece I played was Stella By Starlight--an oh what a surprise! It was so beautiful I almost cried. If all the songs are as beautiful as Stella By Starlight--this one will be always favorite. I am new to Jazz Piano though my husband was and is a Jazz musician. He played for the Lawrence Welk show in the 50s and for other great musicians and you can find him on the Net under Woody Guidry. He guides me but does not teach me piano--my teacher has a pile of young pianist but she tolerates my ambition that awakened in me in year 2009.This book is the best I have seen for the standards. I have reached intermediate level and so, can play most of the songs if my fingers don't have to do acrobatic abnormal positions. I am breathless over this book. It has opened the door to more Jazz. I don't think my piano teacher is a fan of Jazz as I have brought a Jazz book to her for help and she turned me on to another book. Some Jazz is too strong for the average music lover. I have just gotten my toes wet with this book. I can hardly wait to see what other pieces are in the Best Jazz Standards Ever that can play an appreciate. I love this book!

I found this while searching for the music to one of the many songs included in this massive collection of jazz pieces. After reviewing the contents, I was interested in a sufficient number of the songs to justify purchasing the book. Being an acoustic guitarist, I found absolutely nothing lacking. If anything, I have to say it's a bit too much information, at least for an intermediate guitarist. All the lyrics, all the notes, all the chords, and even 6-string chord diagrams are provided for every song in the book. I purchased the paperback edition (not sure if there's a hardcover), and was pleased to find a durable binding/spine. That can sometimes be a problem with hefty songbooks such as this (it's 303 pages of music for about 70 songs). As for the selections that comprise the collection, I don't think it would be fair for me complain about what isn't included. Although there are several songs I consider among the best jazz standards ever written, I can't imagine that any collection of 70 songs is going to include everything any one person would want included. It's rather bold to declare any collection of music to be "The Best … Ever," but, hey, that's called marketing. This is jazz, so… make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, I Ching, whatever man* … (With apologies to the movie "Collateral" :) )

Arrived on time and in good condition

This too is a great book. But I think my gold standard is for a book to include every song off the John Coltrane/Johnny Hartman classic recording. Pure magic. Coltrane somehow lifted Hartman from a good singer to a great singer. It's sad that Johnny never hit that mark with any other recording. And as I've said before, if a book doesn't have Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," it can't have five stars. But that's my bias.

Basically a good anthology but like any of these books you might not be interested in some of the songs. You might also want to change some of the harmonic arrangements.

This is an awesome book of the jazz classics. I had it spiral bound so it's easier to keep open.

Good companion to the one they printed afterwards. Easy to read, good page turns, lays fairly flat. A lot of good old tunes from the past.

This is a good book of songs. I will be using it for sight-reading training, so, unfortunately it is a bit too hard for me right now. But I do look forward to it.

Can pretty much sit down and sight play MOST pieces if you are at least an intermediate pianist. Some pieces might need a bit of practice, but if you play regularly you will enjoy this book. Good arrangements. Easier than the Funk book which has some crossover songs, and just as melodic and fun to play.