Welcome
to the 2021 version of our annual Holiday Advent Calendar.
We
are going to keep this Advent Calendar up into January,
so you can revisit any days you might have missed or
want to visit again.
The theme this year is "The Great American Songbook,”
focusing on the composers and lyricists who created
it.
As many of you know, there is no official physical book
called The Great
American Songbook. It’s an expression that
refers to songs from the 1920’s through the 1960’s that came
from Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, and have
achieved eternal popularity. Songs that are considered
“Standards.”
It was jazz musicians who first created “Standards.”
They found that songs by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George
and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, among others, were the
perfect springboards for jazz improvisation.
We have Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to thank for
making “The Great American Songbook” available to mass
audiences with their best-selling LPs of standards in the
50’s and 60’s. They made it cool to sing oldies.
Even the rock ’n roll generation of performers often find
their way to the standards - in the last several decades,
artists such as Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, and Linda
Ronstadt have had popular albums filled with
standards.
And Lady Gaga is among those who have brought the Standards
into the 21st century through her recent collaboration with
the legendary Tony Bennett.
Each day, we put the
spotlight on a different composer, lyricist,
composer/lyricist, or composer/lyricist team.
We tell you a little bit about them, maybe relate an
entertaining morsel or two of gossip, and give you video
links to several of their songs.
And, because this is a website for doll collectors, each
day we feature 10-12 different doll-related items that
we have for sale on our website.
Just click on any of the Days below.
We hope you have a wonderful holiday season!
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