darquegk said: "Will it be a sensation though? The question I keep returning to is of what made Funny Girl popular and relevant. When it premiered, Great American Songbook music was still a vibrant thing. (Ironically, the only popular singer today who dabbles in it is indeed Lady Gaga.) Barbra in Funny Girl was singing the music of her time, music that could still sell records, fill concert halls and make people talk. It wasn't Sutton Foster suddenly breaking out as Millie Dillmount, it was a star of stage, screen and records being born, singing then-contemporary pop music in a Broadway show.
I don't know what your time frame is, since the great rush of contemporary vocalists to do albums of standards peaked quite a few years ago, But how many jumped on the bandwagon. I suppose Linda Ronstadt initialized this when she asked Sinatra arranger Nelson Riddle if he would work with her on one song, "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry." Riddle informed her that he only did albums, and she ended up doing three of them.
Perhaps it is Rod Stewart who really got it going when he was so successful with his album. I'll just mention some who I'm familiar with. Gloria Estefan, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Art Garfunkel, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Rita Coolidge, Merle Haggard, Aaron Neville, Leon Russell, Joni Mitchell. Before this grows too tedious I'll end with Bob Dylan, who released an album of ten Sinatra covers. "Visions of Johanna" anyone?
I suppose it is an open question whether "The Great American Songbook" is a discrete and now closed group of songs that represent a peak of American popular music, or if it is a living collection to which the best of popular songs will continue to be added after they had withstood a little test of time. With all the changes in the culture that have occurred and are still occurring since the Songbook was unveiled, the new songs will not be capable of easy comparison with the old.
But the Songbook has one distinguishing factor that is really quite remarkable. It was mostly written by Jewish composers, and of them mostly Jews of the first or second generation who had emigrated from Europe, and of those a large number who had fled Germany or Russia to escape racial persecution. And most of those who had arrived here were congregated in a small number of square miles centered on Manhattan Island.
The list is rather extraordinary:. Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Kurt Weill, Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, Jerry Herman, Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, Marvin Hamlisch, Frederick Loewe, Fred Ebb, Anthony Newley.
If the original Songbook songs continue to retain popularity when the biggest hits composed since have faded away, it will be much due to the presence of so many of the songs in musicals and films that the public will continue to enjoy.