Standard standards:

[Cogs]

What particular version do you think typifies a particular song? Not your favorite version per se, or the most technically proficient, but the one that you feel sets the "standard" for the tune.
For instance: I like Herb Ellis's version of "Time After Time". It is pretty straightforward & that is the one I will think of when I think of that song.
So what are some standard standards in your opinion?

[Doc W]

That is a really interesting question. How wide are you casting the net for "standards"? I think of standards as popular Tin Pan Alley songs, from Broadway to Hollywood, from about 1920 to 1960. Are you leaning toward jazz standards?

Most of Fats Waller's songs are best played by him. You can find clips from the film "Stormy Weather" on youtube and his version of "Ain't Misbehavin'" is the best by far.

[Cogs]

I'm speaking mainly of jazz standards; you know, most of your basic "fake book" stuff.
For instance, I really like Kenny Burrell's version of "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You" but I think of T-Bone Walker's version first. It's probably the go-to version I would play if someone called it at a jam. I may augment it w/Kenny's ideas (the few that I know, lol!) but mostly it would be based off T-Bone's.
I guess I'm really just asking folks what they think are the definitive versions of jazz standards like:
On Green Dolphin Street
Misty
Time After Time
Alfie
Autumn Leaves
etc.-

[pc]

For Standards such as show tunes that were later done by Jazz artists as instrumentals, at least in this neck of the woods, if Miles recorded a version of it, that's the definitive version. I'm not necessarily endorsing that one way or another, just saying it's the case here.

I also find that when I go hear a group doing Jazz Standards, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson versions are very often used as the model version.

Anything that sort of became a Standard although originally written and recorded by a Jazz instrumentalist, that artists version is the de facto version. That seems to stand to reason, but for instance a TON of great musicians have redone Coltrane tunes, but if you're getting together as a pickup gig, you'd want to do Coltrane's version of his own tune.

Again I'm answering this question based on your posit that the tune is being called blindly at a Jam or a pickup gig. Otherwise I fully endorse groups working up more obscure (or of course their own) arrangements of the standards.

[Cogs]

So whose version of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" are you gonna go with?

[pc]

Heh. We definitely do the original Mingus version as a general rule, but there are a ton of great covers of that tune.

[jerryjg]

I think Johnny Mathis does the best Misty, is that what you mean? Like, the singer, or the composer or something?
I also like the Mahatten Transfers version of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy better than the Andrews Sisters original.
Wouldn't 'On Green Dolphin Street' probably be Dave Brubeck as the best? I'm just guessing.

[Cogs]

Dave Brubeck recorded a version of On Green Dolphin Street?

[Skip]

Take Five...has anyone else really done that? Fantastic.

[jerryjg]

Dave Brubeck recorded a version of On Green Dolphin Street?

I'm sorry. I googled it and even though I thought I knew the tune, I hadn't actually ever heard it before that I can recall. I had also thought I recalled seeing a Brubeck album entitled "on geen Dolphin Street"< but I guess not.
However, while Googling , I did discover a '58 recording of Miles Davis doing "OGDS", and Thats the one I'm going to submit, simply cause I don't see how anything could ever possibly be any better. It was done masterfully.
You probably know the one I am talking about.

On the subject of Brubeck, did anyone else cover "Take Five"? I'm sure Brubecks' famous version has still got to be the essential one, correct?

EDiT_ RE; Brubeck. Just saw the post above me done about simeltane..smilutane...done at the same time.

[Offshore Angler]

Just get the Fake Book and the Real Book. That's pretty well the catalog.

[Cogs]

Somebody gave me both of those & even others, so many I can't shake a stick at them. In fact, that's what kind of prompted the question to begin with. I have all this music but I don't know where to begin w/a lot of them because I don't have any point of reference such as tempo & rhythmic feel & whatnot.
Right now I'm listening to Martin Taylor & Dave Grisman tearing up Autumn Leaves & will certainly learn it & practice it like that (& then move it inot a bunch of other keys) because it seems pretty straight ahead, but I'd like to know if I'm playing it "right" in the generic sense. For instance I'm not going to be learning Crazy the way Bill Frisell does it, lol!