Teri Thornton

Song poem is a mid‑20th‑century American practice in which mail‑order studios invited the public to submit lyrics—often via magazine ads promising to "turn your poem into a hit"—and, for a fee, set those words to quickly arranged, professionally recorded music. The resulting recordings span pop, country, lounge, novelty, and early rock idioms, but share a hallmark of earnest vocals, stock chord progressions, budget studio sonics, and literal settings of idiosyncratic amateur texts. The best‑known performers developed a craft of instant arranging and sight‑reading that could transform even the most unusual submissions into fully realized songs. Long dismissed as “song‑sharking” vanity product, the song‑poem world has since been reappraised for its outsider charm, documentary value, and unfiltered glimpse into everyday American imaginations.

Vocal jazz is a jazz tradition in which the human voice is treated as an instrument—matching the phrasing, articulation, and timbral nuance of horns or piano. Singers often improvise melodically and rhythmically, including using scat singing (nonsense syllables) to emulate instrumental solos. At the same time, many vocal‑jazz performances favor traditional, pop‑leaning song structures and clear lyric delivery, reducing the overall role of extended improvisation compared with small‑group instrumental jazz. Repertoires frequently draw from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway standards (the Great American Songbook), rendered with swing, ballad, or Latin feels.

Jazz is an improvisation-centered music tradition that emerged from African American communities in the early 20th century. It blends blues feeling, ragtime syncopation, European harmonic practice, and brass band instrumentation into a flexible, conversational art. Defining features include swing rhythm (a triplet-based pulse), call-and-response phrasing, blue notes, and extended harmonies built on 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Jazz is as much a way of making music—spontaneous interaction, variation, and personal sound—as it is a set of forms and tunes. Across its history, jazz has continually hybridized, from New Orleans ensembles and big-band swing to bebop, cool and hard bop, modal and free jazz, fusion, and contemporary cross-genre experiments. Its influence permeates global popular and art music.