Once there was a classical guitarist who made a good living, and could even raise a family, playing

the standard
repertoire -- Bach, Sor, Giuliani, Ponce, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and so on. He had a lucrative and open-ended
recording contract with a major firm which had connections with the record outlets and which let him record
anything he chose, from Britten to Brouwer and back again, and which promoted everything he played as if it were
as marketable as rock and roll.
Of course by now you realize I'm telling a fairy tale. If there ever was such a guitarist, I don't know who he could
have been. The second time I heard Segovia play, only 45 years into his career, it was in a movie theatre in
Columbus, Georgia and you could barely hear him for the fidgeting and coughing. The pay could hardly have been
worth the bother; he was wasting half his life sitting in drafty air terminals waiting for planes.
If there's such a person alive today, his name is probably Kazuhito Yamashita ... but no, I'm wrong. Even Yamashita,
who played to full houses all around America on his recent U.S. tour, doesn't have that kind of recording contract,
and more than two-thirds of his huge recorded output is unavailable in the United States. As I write this his chef
d'oeuvre, sixteen CDs containing the complete works of Fernando Sor, goes begging on this side of the water. Only
fairy tale worlds make sense. The real one's crazy, take my word for it.
Be that as it may, the real world is the one we have to live in and the average guitarist who has bills to meet must
play casuals, club dates, and a great deal of what I can only call cocktail guitar repertoire. In a word, pops program
stuff -- Gershwin and Cole Porter and Lerner & Loewe and Hoagy Carmichael and the Beatles. Unfortunately the
average guitarist's education hasn't included a course in the arrangement of pop standards for the instrument. So
what is one to play?
Thus I offer the present guide for the use and edification of that average guitarist. When I was doing casuals a few
years back, I developed a repertoire of an hour or two of pop standards I'd arranged and worked up: nice, fullsounding versions of the kind of song the job calls for, properly harmonized with good bass lines. Was this enough
for the job? You have to be kidding. Midway through the second set I'd run out of material and have to repeat
myself; the club or restaurant owner would shoot dirty looks at me and the audience would drift. It was obvious that
my own arrangements wouldn't do the trick on their own. I had to scour the underbrush for the work of others.
But once I started I found some wonderful things! To be sure, I had to do a staggering amount of digging through
the available books before I found arrangements that suited my fancy. (These are the only kind worth playing, the
kind you like, yourself; the audience can tell, after all.)
Most people are familiar by now with the four books John Duarte published over the past few years in England. At
one time or another I've read through all of them and there isn't a clinker in the lot; Jack knew what he was up to
when he was working these pieces up years ago. (You should hear what he's writing now!) But I have my favorites.
Try these:
From Jazz & Popular Songs (Wise Publications; via Music Sales): Spanish Harlem, with its irresistible baion vamp,
not quite as easy as it looks, but effective enough to justify the extra work; Faraway Places and The Girl Next Door,
a pair of lilting waltzes; and Basin Street Blues and Ain't Misbehavin', two timeless relics of the Age of the Blues.
From Classic Jerome Kern (Musical New Services Ltd.): the whole book -- particularly the Show Boat tunes. Kern
lends himself to instrumental treatment better than just about anybody, and Duarte's harmonizations of Kern are
uncommonly fine. Yesterdays and They Didn't Believe Me in particular have lovely countermelodies, and either
would work nicely as an encore in a traditional program (as would Long Ago and Far Away).
From Classic Cole Porter (Musical New Services Ltd.): all the beguine numbers in particular, including I've Got

You Under My Skin and Begin the Beguine. I usually play my own arrangements of Porter, but if Jack had published
this book earlier I might have played his instead and saved myself the bother. They're that good.
From Classic Gershwin (Musical New Services Ltd.): all the up-tempo numbers, plus Love is Here to Stay and The
Man I Love.
I wish I could steer you to some published Jorge Morel. I've been a fan of his for thirty years, and if there's a better
idiomatic arranger of North American pops than Morel I don't know who it might be. However, the few things I
have are pirated versions, imported from Hawaii, and you'll have to ask elsewhere as to how to get them. When you
do learn, ask about his wonderful West Side Story medley. (And if you land a copy of his matchless arrangement of
Laura, pirate me a copy too.) [Editor's Note: Jorge Morel publications are now available. See below for details.]
Meanwhile, you can get three priceless books of Laurindo Almeida arrangements. One of them -- Broadway Solo
Guitar (Big 3 #B3-4805) -- has a matching cassette available from the artist himself. Almeida's strongest suit in a
motley bag of talents is his extraordinary skill as harmonist and arranger. If you can't find anything to like in this
book, you probably don't like American pops.