The Real Book is a compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards. It was created in the mid-1970s by two students at the Berklee College of Music. In its original form, it was an illegal publication made at local copy shops. It quickly became a standard reference for musicians. Two additional volumes were bootlegged in subsequent decades.

In 2004, Hal Leonard released legal versions of the three Real Book volumes.

Background

Jazz is largely an aural form where musicians learn music and improvise by ear. Much of the music was not expressly written down. When a song was notated, it often employed the sort of shorthand notation familiar to continuo players in the Baroque era: a melody would be accompanied by numbers and symbols to indicate the harmony. Jazz notation would typically include a song's melody and an outline of its chords. This shorthand notation became known as a "lead sheet". By the 1940s, lead sheets were being collected into books and marketed to musicians in trade journals. Because a musician could credibly bluff their way through a song they did not know by playing off a lead sheet, these collections were called "fake books". Each Tune-Dex card included publishing information on one side and a lead sheet on the other. Goodwin began marketing Tune-Dex to musicians as well, even though he was breaking his licensing agreements with music publishers by doing so. Eventually, Tune-Dex cards were bundled into fake books and sold widely.

In order to legally print music, the copyright holder must give permission. In the 1960s, the United States Code Section 104 of Title 17 allowed for a punishment of a year in prison or a fine of $100–1,000 for each instance of copyright infringement for profit. Fake books with hundreds of songs created massive criminal liabilities for their publishers. The FBI took notice and prosecuted some of the more egregious distributors of such books. The first prosecution under the law took place in 1962. This coincided with the rapid decline of sheet music sales. Recordings had long displaced sheet music as the most lucrative profit center in the music industry.

A music publishing sea change was underway in the 1960s as musicians gained a general understanding of how it worked. Composers frequently lose out on income by signing away or being tricked out of maximizing their publishing rights. Duke Ellington was exploited by people like Irving Mills, who would make dubious writing claims to siphon off part of the publishing income from a song like "Mood Indigo". Ellington established the publishing company Tempo Music in 1941 to control his intellectual property. In the 1960s, more musicians began to create publishing companies as they possessed a more sophisticated understanding of the business. Jazz musicians also realized the benefit of writing their own tunes, however inane, in order to earn publishing fees from their performances and recordings. Jazz standards written by other composers began to lose market share to original compositions. Metheny recalls the students as "funny guys" who loved the joke of dubbing their fake book The Real Book.

Their primary motivation was to pay for their Berklee tuition. Their teachers briefly wrestled with the legal issue of allowing their songs to appear in the book. However, as the project picked up steam, the students noticed that there was a need for more accurate charts than the ones found in most fake books. Berklee faculty discreetly pitched in to help with the project. Both Steve Swallow and Herb Pomeroy edited charts for the book. In The Real Book, there are two chords per measure.

Creating contemporary charts required painstaking transcription of recordings. Unfortunately, editorial errors were legion in the book. Even though it was an improvement on its competition, there were often inaccurate chord progressions or melodic errors.

Because it was a bootleg product, its creators had no way to protect it. Copy shops quickly realized they could bootleg the bootleggers, which helped fuel the rapid dissemination of The Real Book.

Hal Leonard released The Real Book, Volume II, Second Edition in answer to the Real Book, Volume II. This was followed by The Real Book, Volume III, Second Edition (July 2006), The Real Book, Volume IV (December 2010), The Real Book, Volume V (June 2013), and The Real Book, Volume VI (June 2016). These books contain much of the same material as their counterparts, and in most cases charts from Hal Leonard books are compatible with the Real Book charts. In some cases, compatibility issues occur where corrections have been made to some of the mistakes in the 5th edition charts; in other cases, 6th edition charts reference changes on different recordings from those cited in the previous edition.

In 2025, Berklee Press partnered with Hal Leonard on a branded The Berklee Real Book. The 300-song book imitates the bootleg original that began as a student scheme half a century earlier.

Selected editions

Further reading

  • Berman, Jonah. "The Real Story: How Fake Books and Real Books Became, Well, Real Books," Jazz Education Guide 2004/2005 (special supplement to Jazz Times, circa December 2004 ), 34-40.
  • Ferguson, Tom. "An Inside Look at the Real World of Fake Books," Jazz Educators Journal 31, Jazz Educators Convention issue (1989): 51, 53-56.
  • All Hit 1001 Songs. An example of a Tune-Dex fake book at the Internet Archive.

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