From Tin Pan Alley to Broadway and Hollywood, The Great American Songbook: The Stories Behind the Standards tells the stories of our most popular songs with humor, drama and insight. This is timeless music written in unique ways that is constantly being reinterpreted by each generation. Isaac Stern made this distinction between talent and genius: A person possesses talent; genius possesses the person. This is a book about singers, musicians, lyricists and composers taking their talent into the atmosphere of immortality. They are fascinating, and they set the standards by which popular music is measured. They may not have lived easy lives, but their creativity drove them to new heights and they changed the face of American music forever.Music by a wide variety of artists is covered. Some chapters tell the story of just one song; others sketch the life stories of the artists. Music lovers will find new facts and deeper understanding about old friends in The Great American Songbook: The Stories Behind the Standards.