I’ve spent a lot of hours listening to the great Tin Pan Alley songwriters – the ones who composed the core of the Great American Songbook/jazz standards. Along the way, I’ve developed some strong opinions about the songwriters’ output. Here’s my ranking of TPA songwriters.
(Who did I select to include in this list? Simple – it’s any composer who merited an Ella Fitzgerald Songbook album, minus Duke Ellington, who is in a whole separate category to me. I also excluded Johnny Mercer, whose Ella Songbook featured his lyrics with multiple songwriters.)
- Rodgers & Hart
- George & Ira Gershwin
- Cole Porter
- Jerome Kern
- Harold Arlen
- Irving Berlin
To be clear – these, and a dozen of their contemporaries, all produced songs that could sit at the peak of twentieth century song. But for me, these six are the pinnacles, and in this order.