I've done Bernies Tune for years. The only change we made is we do it as a fast samba. Around here anyway, you MUST show up with the original and usually correct Real Books 1, 2 & 3. No Hal Leonard or any of those copywritten crap things. Those are commercial books for students, not for gigging. The Real Books are 'supposed' to be accurate transcriptions of the original recording that made the song famous in the first place. No copyrights, the original Real Books have always been illegal until recently. Now they're available on Amazon for about $25. Just get the Real Books and be done with it.

Mel, it sounds to me like your guitarist was right. It doesn't matter if the chords are exactly correct or not. When everybody has Real Book 3 and it's Bernies Tune, everybody is on the same page.

It's also correct that these are Fake books. You're supposed to at least know how the tune goes and have some idea of what your part sounds like even if you don't have it memorized. When there's a note at bar 16 of the piano chart that says "Latin Feel" you should know if that's pure rhythm or a montuno. If I really don't know I tend to do both, play some latin clave rhythm with some montuno thrown in. Some Real Book charts do say montuno.

No unrehearsed casual jazz band does newer versions that another big name made a hit from, just the original one by the legendary original players like Bird, 'Trane, Silver, Brubeck, etc. If a bandleader has a different arrangement of some standard tune then it's his responsibility to hand out the charts to everybody. If he says it's stock then that means it's out of the Real Book and he'll just call out Book 2 page 273 or whatever. You better not have shown up with some other books. The only exception is occasionally someone will tell me to bring the Latin Real Book. No problemo.

As an aside, I have never, not once, worked with someone guitar player or no, who didn't understand this. But, I'm in LA there's so many solid players around here it's in every musician's DNA I guess.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 11/13/12 04:09 PM.
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