Wikipedia:Peer review/List of 1920s jazz standards/archive2

List of 1920s jazz standards

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's been expanded quite a lot since the previous review, and I'm planning on nominating this at WP:FLC somewhere in the near future. Therefore any suggestions to help the list meet the featured list criteria would be welcome. Thanks, Jafeluv (talk) 14:00, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• 'The popularity of a song is not constant over time; some of the tunes listed were already well-known standards by the 1930s, while others were popularized later.' I'm assuming that this means the list is only of songs created in the 1920s rather than songs popular during the 1920s, but I'm not sure.
• The See also section is a bit silly.
• Needs more overview - the bit about increasing complexity and how record companies liked to dictate what to record is good, but more would be better. --Gwern (contribs) 23:12, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Yes, the list only includes tunes written in the 1920s (see the second sentence of the lead). So some of these tunes were next to unknown in the 1920s, but became standards later. I'm not sure how to make the sentence clearer, though. This came up at the last FLC nomination, and that's what we ended up with. (reworded, see below)

I've removed the see also section. I guess it makes no sense to have a section for just the portal link, and there's already a link to the jazz portal on the talk page banner. I'll try to expand the lead to include more overview. Jafeluv (talk) 09:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is an impressive list of wonderful jazz songs and a nice addition to the encyclopedia. I was a bit bothered by the sea of blue (both in the main text and the references), which I think should be reduced. Otherwise, it was mainly easy going and nice reading throughout. Here are a few suggestions for improvement.

• Overlinking. It would be worthwhile to go through the whole article to hunt down and remove redundant wikilinks. For example, in the 1924 listings, the Gershwins are both linked in consecutive entries as is the musical Lady Be Good; a bit further down Bix Beiderbecke is linked twice in quick succession. I would suggest linking each person and each song or musical just once in the whole article. The idea, I think, is to make each link special; multiple links to the same things or persons (such as many many links to Louis Armstrong) dilute the links' effectiveness because readers start to block them out. For the same reason, I would avoid multiple links to things like "chord progression" and "Carnegie Hall". Once these overlinks have been cleared away, you might see a couple of things like cornet that it would be useful to link on first use.
  • That is a good point. I've now removed quite a few unnecessary bluelinks.

Lead

• It might be that the troubling sentence mentioned by User:Gwern could be improved by deleting the first clause. "The popularity of a song is not constant over time; some of the tunes listed were already well-known standards by the 1930s, while others were popularized later" would then read "Some of the tunes listed were already well-known standards by the 1930s, while others were popularized later."
  • Done.
• Ain't Misbehavin' in the lead links to a dab.
  • Done.

1922–23

• "the composers were sued by Puccini's publishers in 1921 for $25,000 and all subsequent royalties." - Was the suit successful? I think it's important to note whether it was or not. You could just say "... were successfully sued by... " if it was.
  • Done.
• "Benny Goodman's 1935 recording revived interest in the song, and it was performed in Goodman's famous Carnegie Hall concert in 1938". - Delete "famous"? It implies that he performed one or more "unfamous" concerts at Carnegie Hall.
  • Done.
• "It is one of the most often played early New Orleans jazz pieces." A few too many adjectives in a row, perhaps. Suggestion: "It is one of the early New Orleans jazz pieces most often played."
  • Done.
• "Credited to Rhythm Kings band members on the original record, the tune has been claimed to be based on Joe "King" Oliver's rendition of "Jazzin' Babies Blues" by New Orleans pianist Richard M. Jones." - A bit awkward. Suggestion: Credited to Rhythm Kings band members on the original record, the tune may have been based on Joe "King" Oliver's rendition of "Jazzin' Babies Blues" by New Orleans pianist Richard M. Jones.
  • Done.

1926–27

• "Berlin responded with "Blue Skies", and on the opening night Baker was demanded 24 encores of the song." - I'd flip this to avoid the awkward passive voice. Suggestion: Berlin responded with "Blue Skies", and on the opening night the audience demanded 24 encores of Baker's song.
  • Done.

Notes

• A lot of names are wiklinked in the notes, but nothing happens when I click on them. For example, "Ruhlmann 2004" looks as though it links to something, but it doesn't. I'd unlink all of these that don't go anywhere so that only blue links are ones that work. Readers will realize that these names are related to entries in the Bibliography section; they don't need links.
  • I think that's a problem with the {{Harvnb}} citation template. It did work at some point... I'll try to figure out where it's broken. On second thought, I've gone ahead and removed the unnecessary bluelinks. The reader will know where to look anyway.
• The page range in citation 87 needs an en dash.
  • Done.
• A date in citation 89 should be flipped to yyyy-mm-dd format to match the others.
  • Done.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 04:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It's very useful. Thank you for your review. Jafeluv (talk) 08:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)