A jazz standard is a composition so widely known that jazz musicians can play it together with little or no rehearsal, and that listeners recognise across countless versions. There is no official list and the repertoire shifts over time, but fake books and reference works give a good picture of its core.
Many standards began as popular songs from Tin Pan Alley, Broadway musicals and Hollywood films, the repertoire often called the Great American Songbook. Body and Soul, by Johnny Green, was introduced in 1930 and became a jazz landmark through Coleman Hawkins’s 1939 recording; All the Things You Are (1939) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II is a long-standing favourite of improvisers. Others were written by jazz musicians themselves, such as Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight (1944) or Caravan (1936) by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol. Their rich, familiar harmony makes standards a natural starting point for jazz-minded lo-fi producers.