Realbook Real Book Changes Chords

[engelbach]

Well.... I am a very experienced Jazz player and I hang out with very experienced jazz players. There are a few bass players out there that get away without the books because they hear the chordal movment (if they're good) I don't know any melody players that have all the books memorized. We can all fake it for sessions but when it's a paying gig it needs to sound like everybody is on the same page.
There was a time when I played Joy Spring and Ceora often enough that they were memorized but I'm not working with those guys anymore and I'd need the book for it and I would want to be sure my rhythm section had the same changes as the book.

Sure, there are plenty of jazz tunes in the Real Books that one rarely plays. But jazz standards and Tin Pan Alley are pretty ... well ... standard, and kind of important for everyone to know. Joy Spring and Ceora included.

I found that most professional bass players can play just about anything. My bass player, Ed Fuqua, knew the changes to far more tunes than I, but he was easy to follow. The only time we used music stands on a gig, with sheet music, was when we had special requests in advance for tunes we were unlikely to know, like movie themes or pop tunes.

These days I don't have as big a repertoire as I had when I was gigging every week, so, in addition to tunes I know, when I play I keep a loose-leaf book with about 50-100 tunes that I like that I'm too lazy to remember or learn.

I'm not knocking the Real Books. I learned songs years ago from the old fake books, which had all the wrong changes, and the Real Books were an improvement on those. But for reference I still keep the old fake books 1000 Songs Volumes 1 and 2, and 500 Songs, Volume 3, and the old Modern Jazz Fake Books 1 and 2.

Cheers,
Jer