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- Artist: Steve Tyrell
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- Release Date: October 02, 2001
- Genre: Vocal Music
Review
Steve Tyrell has had a long journeyman's career in the music business, serving as record company executive, songwriter, and producer. But no one could have predicted the twist his career took in the late '90s. After he sang standards on the soundtracks of the films Father of the Bride (1991) and Father of the Bride 2 (1995), he was signed up by Atlantic Records to make an album of similar material. A New Standard (1999), his debut album, was a sleeper, such that Atlantic cut him loose, but it was still in the traditional jazz charts two years after its release. Tyrell had joined a new wave of retro singers like Diana Krall and Jane Monheit, reinterpreting the same batch of interwar songs that traditional pop singers have been performing regularly since the 1950s. Columbia Records scooped him up, and Standard Time is more of the same. Hailing from Houston, Tyrell has the same Deep South/Southwest accent and the same raspy vocal tone as Dr. John and Leon Russell. His performances, accompanied by a small jazz band occasionally augmented by a small string or brass section, are excuses to set up solos by a group of traditional jazz veterans -- Clark Terry, Joe Sample, Plas Johnson, Toots Thielemans, and, in his final recording, Harry "Sweets" Edison. Other than giving the songs a slightly bluesy edge, the singer doesn't bring any particularly new element to his interpretations, and the soloists, with their slight variations on the melodies, don't find anything much new to say either. But then, the retro-jazz movement isn't about the shock of the new, it's about the reassurance of the old, and Tyrell, who has stumbled upon success after years in the wilderness, can't be faulted for enjoying himself in the studio with so many venerable talents. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music GuideTracks
| Track Title | Composers | Performers | Time |
| It Had to Be You | Isham Jones, Gus Kahn | Steve Tyrell | (3:25) |
| Until the Real Thing Comes Along | Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin, |
Steve Tyrell | (3:27) |
| Ain't Misbehavin' | Fats Waller, Andy Razaf, Harry Brooks | Steve Tyrell | (3:54) |
| That Old Feeling | Lew Brown, Sammy Fain | Steve Tyrell | (4:11) |
| Baby, It's Cold Outside | Frank Loesser | Steve Tyrell | (3:20) |
| Stardust | Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish | Steve Tyrell | (4:55) |
| It All Depends on You | Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson | Steve Tyrell | (3:14) |
| As Time Goes By | Steve Tyrell | (3:58) | |
| I Wonder | Cecil Gant | Steve Tyrell | (2:55) |
| What a Little Moonlight Can Do | Harry Woods | Steve Tyrell | (3:44) |
| Why Was I Born? | Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II | Steve Tyrell | (3:09) |
| Let's Fall in Love | Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler | Steve Tyrell | (2:35) |
| Love Is Here to Stay | George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin | Steve Tyrell | (4:04) |
| Someone to Watch over Me | George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin | Steve Tyrell | (3:50) |
| Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye | Cole Porter | Steve Tyrell | (3:34) |
| Remembering "Sweets" | Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields | Steve Tyrell | (1:41) |
