The importance of The Real Book cannot be overstated.
Its ubiquity as a musical tool has shaped generations of jazz musicians
the same way that the distortion pedal has shaped rock and roll, or the sampler shaped hip-hop
The identity of its authors is a trade secret so tightly kept
it might as well be the secret formula to Coca Cola
So then, what is The Real Book, and why is it so important,
and, what does it mean?
Now to answer this question, we need to take a look at the history of something called "fake books"
Compilations of sheet music put together for the benefit of a working musician
If a musician didn't know a particular song, a fake book was an easy way for that musician to
fake a performance, or flesh out an arrangement on the spot.
Many fake books were boot-legged, Zerox compilations of 3" x 5" cards called Tune-Dex
which were a popular form of mail order sheet music for radio stations in the 1950's
These Tune-Dex compilations were technically illegal, since the publishing companies and composers
never received any dime in royalties from the sales of them
Even, still, these compilations were so common that in 1964 the FBI field office in Cleveland observed that:
Tune-Dex stopped being printed in 1963, and so those 'fake books' stopped being made
However, the need for fake books still persisted
This spawned imitators which were of... significantly poorer quality
Often these were simply cut and paste jobs from piano sheet music
Besides looking kind of crappy, the poor quality mainly comes down to chord symbols
Chord symbols can sometimes be a little bit tricky, because you can interpret the same group of notes in multiple ways.
Is this grouping of notes E♭, G, A, C a C minor 6th in 1st inversion?
Or an A minor 7 ♭5 in 2nd inversion?
It's ambiguous, we don't actually know until we have the proper context
For this reason we say that these chords are, homophonic
Because piano sheet music publishers generally did not care about the context necessary for a musician to 'fake' a piece of music,
they wrote whatever chords they felt like, and those chords ended up in the fake books
Because of this, all of these fake books were generally seen as completely useless by performing musicians.
So in the mid-70's a small group of students and faculty at the Berklee College of Music in Boston
decided that they would try and fix the problem with fake books by creating... the...
Real... Book...
transcribing famous recordings of jazz musicians performing American song book standards
the group put together another unlicensed fake book compilation meant to update the repertoire
It was an immediate hit.
Bassist Steve Swallow was faculty at Berklee at the time and in a conversation with jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld
He said:
Just like that, the standard repertoire of jazz music was set in stone.
If a tune wasn't in the Real Book, chances are it wouldn't be called at a jam session, or at a gig.
It opened up the vast world of jazz improvisation to many hungry, young students looking to see
how jazz was performed and how to do it accurately
The demand for the Real Book spread quickly, far beyond Boston
Enterprising entrepreneurs printed copies as fast as the copyist's printer would print them
Buying them was an illicit activity, and many people bought them out of the back of somebody's trunk.
There... were... problems, though, with the Real Book that still persist to this day 40 years later.
For all of the 'authority' that Berklee brought to the Real Book, it was still laden with many errors
which were listed in long correction ledgers in later editions
Popular American song-book tunes were kind of...
dumbed-down to an extent, and
simplified down to a level far beyond what they were originally performed or written.
There were also some omissions of popular jazz standards, like Lover Man, or Willow Weep For Me
In lieu of these important standards there were a lot of these contemporary jazz songs written
by faculty members at Berklee at the time, like Gary Burton, and Steve Swallow
Still though, these problems did not stop the ascent of the Real Book as it influenced multiple generations of jazz musicians.
In 2006, Hal Leonard purchased all of the licenses necessary to use the music in the Real Book
and released their own copy 'legal' version. They called it the "6th Edition" and sold it for less than what the illegal books were going for
This... shrewd business move not only drove all the illegal books off the market,
but it also further expanded the reach of this fantastically useful tool.
And, like anything that makes life easier, many people felt that it was making life.. too easy.
That it was simplifying things so much that the music was becoming watered down, souless, and generic.
This leads us to the crux of this particular video:
Let me explain.
About a year ago, I was at a jazz jam session at a bar in Washington D.C.
actually not too far from where Duke Ellington was born and grew up
Jazz jam sessions sometimes have a reputation for being what are called 'cutting sessions'
Hyper competitive matches of musical ability
This sort of session wasn't nearly that intense, it was very welcoming, but there was still a sort of..
I don't know... vibe to it...
When the standard, Autumn Leaves, was called, somebody asked, 'What key?'
The house bass player replied, 'Yea, we'll do it in the usual one.'
Now, I knew what he meant, he wanted the song to be played in Gm, the key in which Bill Evans and Miles Davis recorded the song.
Because of that, there's also an intro bass riff that you're supposed to play if you're playing the song in Gm
For somebody raised on the Real Book, however, you might not actually know these details
In the Real Book, Autumn Leaves is in the key of Em, so somebody might think that Em is the usual key.
The bass intro riff isn't written in either.
The house bassist could've said 'Gm'
...but he didn't.
Because it was a test.
Another time, a few years earlier, a friend of mine was barred from playing at the Fat Cat late-night jazz jam session here in New York City.
He made the mistake of bringing a Real Book with him, and he was told he couldn't play
because the Fat Cat jazz session was a "Professional Jazz Environment"
and he should come back when he was ready.
Dickish, I know, but older jazz musicians are extremely protective of the traditional culture of
learning music by ear off recordings.
It's because of this, knowing the proper key of a jazz standard is "Shibboleth" to many jazz musicians.
A shibboleth is a word distinguishing an 'in' group from an 'out' group.
It comes from The Bible, and instead of reading it to you, I think President Bartlet should explain:
You may recount the scene in Inglorious Basterds where Lt Hicox uses the English symbol for 3, verses the German one.
Or in The Wire, for example, where Chris figures out that a drug dealer is a rival from New York City
because he doesn't know who Young Leek is.
It seems ridiculous to make this comparison between these life and death situations and the performance of jazz music
but in certain communities the Real Book is certainly treated as such.
People can be extremely protective of something as personal as art
and the Real Book is seen as a dilution of it.
The rise of the Real Book coincided directly with the rise of higher jazz education in the 1970's and the 1980's
and so the two of them are inexorably linked.
There's a lot of cultural resentment to the rise of the jazz academy, and towards the commercialization
and commodification
that it might represent.
This is why I use the term, Shibboleth, because there is a religious connotation here.
Some things in the realm of music are sacred, and...
heh..
the Real Book is not one of them.
-sacred sounding music-
Blasphemy!
The Real Book is kind of like jazz... tableture
it can be an amazing learning tool at first, but can very quickly develop into a crutch.
I do share... some of this trepidation towards the Real Book
I think it's important for young jazz musicians to ween themselves off of it as soon as possible
Amy Nolte has a great video explaining how she left her Real Books behind after learning this from John Clayton
but at the same time, I'm a little on the fence here.
I got started with a Real Book
The illegal kind.
And it was immensely useful for me when I was first learning how to play jazz.
When you read a letter on Barry Kernfeld's website from one of the original authors of the Real Book
you get a sense of how earnest they were in the pursuit of learning about jazz music.
They weren't looking to dilute the music, they were simply looking to help their fellow musicians
understand it better.
This... is the complex legacy that the Real Book has left.
By the way
if you want to be taken seriously and still have a Real Book on the band stand
be sure to cover it with coffee stains.
Maybe if my friend had one of these, he would've been taken more seriously, and allowed to sit in
at the jam session
at Fat Cat
Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching, my name is Adam Neely, I have a new video coming out
every Monday. If you enjoy what I do, please consider joining my Patreon, because it's through my patrons
over at Patreon that I'm able to do this every week.
So thank you so much for watching, and, until next time
-inhales deeply into the mic-
BASS