There are certain sacred texts. Some are religious, some get made into movies, some offer wisdom or get associated with rights of passage. The volume I’m thinking of is nothing short of the soundtrack to life in this country. It’s essentially a Bible of unforgettable melodies, parables with lyrics and musical notes. Praise the Lord!

“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free, let us all be grateful for a land so fair, as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.” This lovely line is the preamble to “God Bless America” written by Irving Berlin. I never knew it; in fact, I probably never heard this lyric until shortly after 9/11 when Ronan Tynan (he the stout, majestic-voiced member of the Irish Tenors) walked out to the pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium, and in place of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” sang the preamble before a tear-inducing version of the song. I have no problem being the first person to call Irving Berlin an American badass. He penned “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade,” and over a 60-year career wrote 451 hits, 282 top 10 songs, and 35 number one hits. “God Bless America,” composed originally in 1915 and revised to its current form in 1938 and Irving Berlin get me to thinking about the “Great American Songbook.” This so-called Songbook represents everything that is great about America and everything that is magical about music and songs and singers and songwriters.

The Great American Songbook is a group of about 300 songs, all written between 1920 and 1950. Today they are simply known as American standards. A standard is defined as “a musical number whose popularity (and quality) has withstood the test of time.” Defining the Songbook can get rather analytical, and suffice to say it’s not a literal book, but if all these songs were placed in a single text it would rival the Bible in terms of holiness.

Linda Ronstadt said the standards in the Great American Songbook are “maybe the greatest gift of American culture to the world at large.” By way of example, consider the song “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Written and composed by George and Ira Gershwin in 1926, the song has been recorded 1,868 times. The Great American Songbook was mostly written in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley, one city block in Manhattan at West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Using the early Tin Pan Alley model, a lyricist got paid a flat fee—for life—and for many years that fee was $5. Kids will surely call these songs old-fashioned, but though they may be old, they never get old if you’re the kind of person who chooses to leave some parts of life to the imagination or if you believe that music is that thing made with instruments and human voices.  

The Chairman of the Board is essentially synonymous with the Great American Songbook. Sinatra cut plenty of sides of contemporary tunes, but no one was more standard than The Voice. Sinatra recorded more than 70 albums—1,307 songs between 1939 and 1995, nearly all beauties like “The Summer Wind” and “If I Had Three Wishes,” a song that included the lyric, “Oh, if I had three wishes, my first would be for you, and if you became my love, I’d return the other two.”

The Great American Songbook will never die, because songs live forever, and songs like these, that have been born and nurtured in an era when a kiss on the cheek was a highly successful end to a date, offer a kind of hope, and when I hear one, it makes me feel that the human experience is worthwhile, that there are still safe places, that a kind word or a tender thought can momentarily change the world … or at least your temporary view of it.