However honorable the creators’ intentions may have been with regard to copyright law and royalty payments, their Real Book was nonetheless illegal. “We knew we could have made a pile of money had we continued,” says ‘anonymous,’ “but we weren’t in the business of selling fake books-we were headed for careers as musicians-and we were definitely concerned of the legal ramifications.”Ĭoncerned enough, in fact, to visit a couple of copyright experts in Boston in an attempt to legitimize the book however, in the end they found it cost-prohibitive and proceeded to “publish” the book at local copy shops. Word of this new compendium spread quickly in music circles, and demand grew exponentially, with the Real Book finding its way into the hands of jazz musicians all over the world. “It was first and foremost an attempt to reinvent the concept of what a fake book was, to raise the bar for all such books to come.”įrom the time the Real Book creators first walked into the school’s lobby holding their copies fresh from the printer, the book became a runaway success. “The book was not conceived to finance our education,” says one of the Real Book’s anonymous co-creators, in an email published at the web site of jazz educator Barry Kernfeld.
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