Ok, I'm gonna call a couple of you guys out, Mac, Ray others. This thread is basically about the Real Books and you guys are saying a good player should have this stuff memorized. There's approximately 500 tunes in each book.

I'm pretty you guys are talking about the top line "classic standards" like Autumn Leaves, Misty, Green Dolphin, As Time Goes By, the Sinatra, Duke, and Parker stuff, My Funny Valentine, Embraceable, things like that. Fine, I agree I know most of those too. But, when I say everybody in LA has to show up with the Real Books it's because of tunes like these from Book 1: Eighty-One pg 134. 502 Blues, pg 153. Forrest Flower, pg 158. Inner Urge, pg 229. Lucky Southern, pg 276. The Sorcerer, pg 398. Trieste, pg 435. Windows, pg 466. Book 2: Be Bop, pg 21. Dindi, pg 75. Groovy Samba, pg 130. In Pursuit Of The 27th Man, pg 167. Mr. Clean, pg 227. This I Dig Of You, pg 367. Watersign, pg 386.

These are just a few I saw going through the indexes that I've played more than once with various pick up bands over the last 10 years or so. There's a lot more. Some of those groups died and I haven't played their tunes for at least five years like Mr. Clean or The Sorcerer. There's others that I did one time and that's it. If you guys can tell me you have all 1,500 songs memorized, somebody can call Book 2, 408 Lunar Tune and you say, no problem I know that, I'll bow and scrape in front of you and allow myself to be thrown off your stage.

See, the thing is around here those classic standards we all know nobody wants to play any more, they're too boring and unless your crowd is over 75 they don't want to hear it either. I can do Ipanema or How High The Moon in my sleep. I'll certainly do them as requests of if the gig was specifically booked with those tunes in mind but otherwise, guys are liable to just open a book at random and say "Oh, Song For Bilbao, I heard this once, it's cool" and start playing. And that's another one, I've done it maybe 10 times in five years. Got it memorized?

Bob

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