Ever play jazz? Jazz ensemble in high school maybe? Then you’ve likely encountered The Real Book. Wikipedia backgrounds:
An underground series of books transcribed and collated by students at Berklee College of Music during the 1970s. It got its name to distinguish it from the widely available fake books which printed only chords and lyrics of standard songs, to avoid copyright issues. The Real Book included melody lines, thus infringing music copyright, and the older versions were pirated – that is unlicensed – publications that paid no royalties to song authors. In 2004, Hal Leonard published a licensed edition, which pays royalties to song authors.
Which means the one we had in high school was contraband. Cool. Back then, it took real doing to hear real versions of real book songs. No longer–thanks internet and thanks industrious Spotify playlist makers. And a one, and a two…
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