When standards work best they have that uncanny ability to tap deep into the very essence of a jazz mood, beyond the music itself somehow, far into a dream, and somehow you forget yourself lost in the song and sail away somewhere new beyond your own experience.

Sometimes you hear a standard with new ears the more you come across it even if it is a subtle tweak here and there, a shift in emphasis, a deeper understanding of the words perhaps, and certainly hearing ‘My Foolish Heart’ this year sung in a marvellous live version by Ian Shaw, has made me approach the song with new ears. A song that dates back to the late-1940s and to a long forgotten fairly soppy film of the same name adapted from a JD Salinger short story first published in The New Yorker, Martha Mears sang the title track in the very conventional manner of films of the time.

The mood of the song is night time mournful and melancholic, the lyics begin to explore a sense of reverie, a fear of embarking on a love affair because of past bad experiences, the ever popular moon and the night itself almost advisers to the wary protagonist who muses, in the best line of the whole song “There’s a line between love and fascination” that hovers between the thought of the intended kiss and the consequences of a full blown passion.

More than 200 jazz flavoured versions of the song exist and within the last decade alone Keith Jarrett, Don Braden, the late Cedar Walton and Houston Person are among the top tier instrumentalists who have interpreted the song. Among the many live versions you can find on YouTube the sublime Kurt Elling version (top) is one of the most noteworthy in taking the melody to new places, the words to renewed places of insight.

Like many of the best Great American Songbook songs the piece works equally well as a vocal or an instrumental.

This 1990s version, above, by the Ray Brown trio is strong on subtlety and possesses a sensuous Gene Harris piano line and deftly unfurling bass figure, Jeff Hamilton’s brush strokes invoking a steely sense of calm.

Much further back to the 1960s there is a glorious stillness to this Johnny Smith guitar treatment and a stately patience too delivered by his bandmates bassist George Duvivier, pianist Hank Jones and drummer Don Lamond. The song opens up more fully harmonically, blessed with a pristine clarity to it, than on any of these instrumental versions.

Many people’s favourite, going further back to the beginning of the 1960s, is Bill Evans’ poetic take on the song from A Waltz For Debby, which was recorded live at the Village Vanguard club in New York in 1961, the pianist in trio mode performing with the ill-fated bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian.

As for vocals and silky croon, maybe not everyone’s taste, yet the version of the song on Tony Bennett’s Long Ago and Far Away is a schmaltzy must, the song by this stage in the jazz repertoire for less than a decade.

Finally, Billy Eckstine’s wonderful version, mannerisms and all, this being from 1950, taken into account, again like the Bennett this might be a marmite choice as styles and tastes have long since changed but well worth your patience nonetheless to draw out the essential artistry contained within the interpretation. Take yourself back. SG