"The Real Book Sicxth edition" trumps the Sher "New Real Books (Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4)"
"Hal Leonard has just released a clone of the original old bootleg Real Book and now calls it "The Real Book" Sixth Edition. It comes close to cloning the the original "old" Real Book.
The complete song list will be available online at
www.halleonard.com. Volume One of The Real Book is thought to have been created in the early 1970s by students at an Berklee college, who loaded the song list with cream-of-the-crop gems, but completely disregarded copyright law, paying no royalties to writers.
Many features of their fake book appealed to working musicians: songs with no page turns; the large, handwritten type easy to see on dark stages; the evenly spaced four-to-a-line measures; and the straightforward, sight-readable notation. Although illegal, the songbook flourished, with photocopies sold worldwide from car trunks, basements and beneath the counters of music stores. Since then, the various editions of The Real Book, Volume One – now numbering five – have become arguably the bestselling songbooks of all time; they are a mandatory purchase for first-year jazz students, and the lingua franca for gigging musicians.
Hal Leonard has been working on The Real Book, Sixth Edition for two years. The Business Affairs department has successfully licensed the majority of songs in the original edition. The few omissions of more obscure tunes are due in most part to the inability to locate the copyright holders. Dropped tunes have been replaced with exceptional standards that belonged in the book in the first place.
Editorially, project leader Jeff Arnold has painstaking reviewed all of the music in the new book, correcting errors from the original, and ensuring the most accurate, Real Book-style arrangement of every song. Hal Leonard has gone to great lengths to retain all of the stylistic elements of the previous editions, duplicating the handwritten notation, cover design, paper stock and binding.
Comments Hal Leonard Chairman and CEO Keith Mardak, “Music dealers have been clamoring for a legit version of this book for decades, because it is simply what musicians want. Although we’ve published many jazz fake books through the years, none of ours, or other publishers’, has been able to supplant The Real Book. We are very proud to be the company to bring this book to market, and the song writers and owners we work with are elated to be finally getting paid for the use of their compositions.”
Hal Leonard will bargain-price The Real Book, Sixth Edition at a musician-friendly $25, which is less expensive than the error-ridden, illegal version. The fake book will include a preface from the editors, a table of contents alphabetical by song title, and the finest 400 jazz songs ever assembled.
