A Method for Evaluating Reed Cane

The December 2012 issue of The Clarinet (my favorite quarterly) has an interesting article by Michael J. Montague and Tina Ward: "Reeds: Good or Bad? It's in the Cane - An Inside View of Arundo Donax L." The article describes a method of evaluating reed cane by magnifying a cut cross-section of a reed or a piece of cane, and examining its visual characteristics.

All reed players dream the impossible dream of always having wonderful reeds to play on, so this is potentially valuable information for us!

If you hold a reed up to the light, you will see "fibers" of darker material running lengthwise. These are "vascular bundles." Each one is a sheath ("fiber ring") containing tubes that carried water and nutrients when the cane was a living plant. The butt end of a reed is a cut cross-section of the cane. By sanding and polishing this surface, one can see (with a magnifier) a cross-section of every fiber ring. According to Montague, unbroken rings make for good cane, while a high proportion of broken rings would signify cane with poor potential. Anyone can perform this examination, using a glass surface, sandpaper, and a 40x magnifying lens.

See this article by Marilyn Veselak for a picture of a clarinet reed cross-section, showing the fiber rings.

Montague cites two previous scientific studies that found a correlation between intact fiber rings and cane quality ("good reeds"); one of this article's contributions is the "anyone-can-do-it" method of evaluating cane.

Montague notes that after examining three boxes of Vandoren V12 clarinet reeds (2.5, 3.5, and 5+), he discovered that "softer reeds have more discontinuous rings. The average was 17.4%, 10.9%, and 3.9%, respectively, for strengths 2.5, 3.5, and 5+." Thus, if one uses commercial reeds, it might be better to start with a stiffer strength - which would give better odds of quality cane - and then adjust the reed to one's preference.

Or by taking a few minutes to examine the reeds, one could eliminate those with poor potential (i.e., those with discontinuous, or broken rings).

I haven't worked with this method yet.

As the article notes, commercial reeds are apparently all cut with the same machines, to the same proportions, regardless of strength. They are then graded for flexibility ("hardness"), and boxed accordingly. Montague states that "hardness is a property of the cane itself." My own impression is that harder reeds tend to have thicker fiber rings; the fiber rings (and the bark) are the hardest components of the cane.

Over the last few years, I've been trying to develop my reed-adjusting skills, and it's going well. I've improved my percentage of playable reeds considerably. While I've been working on single reeds of all sizes, I've put the most time in on tenor sax reeds. The tenor mouthpiece I've been using is a Jody Jazz 8*. It blows much more easily than than the 8* designation would suggest, for whatever reason. To find reeds that work with this setup, I usually start with a batch of Vandoren Java 2.5 or 3 reeds, then put them through a 4- or 5- day adjustment procedure (see this article). Starting with harder reeds than that has not worked well - when I thin a hard reed as much as is necessary to make it playable on this setup, the tone suffers. I don't think that starting with #5 reeds would work for me. I'd say that more factors are at work than just thick, or continuous, fiber rings.

But I'll certainly buy myself a magnifier, get out the sandpaper, and check out this method. I'll report back.

This article is not accessible online. If you are interested in joining the ICA and receiving The Clarinet, here is the link. Members can access back issues.

And here is an absolutely terrific article on cane, by James Kopp. It's aimed at bassoonists, but has info relevant to all reed players; includes another fiber ring closeup.

Update: I got the magnifier and worked with it a bit; here's my report.

"The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten

Carter, who has been playing bass in one of my combo classes for a couple of years, is moving from the Bay Area to Pennsylvania to take a university teaching job. As a going-away present, he gave each member of the group a copy of Victor Wooten’s The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music. The publisher classifies it as “Music/Inspirational.” This book contains a wealth of good advice, and is quite entertaining. I can recommend it to any musician. Wooten is a great bass player; it's worth paying attention when he offers us a "Music Lesson."

I’ve been hearing about Wooten’s book for several years, but hadn’t read it until now - Thanks, Carter!

"The Music Lesson" is a novel describing a series of encounters between the narrator (a stand-in for Wooten, or for the reader) and several guru-type figures, who bring him enlightenment regarding music and life. The main teacher, “Michael,” informs him that music is made up of ten interrelated elements. Ten of the book’s chapters cover these elements. Each of these 10 chapters is a story elaborating upon, and elucidating, one of these elements.

Following is a list of the book’s chapters. I’ve included short quotes or comments to give you some idea of the points he covers, but Wooten's discussions are much deeper, frequently going beyond nuts-and-bolts music, and into a more cosmic realm.

Prelude: Wooten sets the stage by introducing his narrator and “Michael,” his mystical guide.

Groove: This is important enough that it rates first mention, over and above the following 10 “elements” of music. “Never lose the groove in order to find a note.”

Notes: “Notes are overrated” (by "notes," he means viewing music as chords and scales).

Articulation/Duration: “Notes are alive and like you and me, they need to breathe. The song will dictate how much air is needed.” And, comparing animal tracking to listening to music: “...the tracker, if he is a good one, can see right into the soul of whoever left the tracks...A good musician should be able to do the same.”

Technique: “Your technique should be at such a high level that you can forget about it.” And, “We practice our scales, modes, and techniques over and over...I propose a different path.”

Emotion/Feel: Here he discusses the ability of music to emotionally affect the listener, and the necessity of using this power responsibly. “Strive to make Life better, and you will have all of Life’s power backing you.”

Dynamics: This chapter offers a lesson in using dynamics to change the focus of the audience - for example, playing quieter as a way of quieting an inattentive audience (I’ve used this technique, and it sometimes works).

Rhythm/Tempo: Here he describes some exercises to improve one’s sense of time and groove, using a drum machine; he extrapolates his points to a larger view: “Music is alive, and if you treat her that way, she will speak to you. You will feel her pulse.”

Tone: “If you want your audience to dance, you should use a certain tone. If you want them to quiet down and listen, another tone may be necessary. If you want them to be healed, an altogether different tone...”

Phrasing: “All the elements of music can be phrased, not just the notes.” And, “You can phrase your life, too.”

Space/Rest: We should “play the rests.” “Learn how to make a rest speak louder than a note.”

Listening: “I found that when I listened to the other musicians more than I listened to myself, I played better.”

The Dream?: The narrator has a summing-up conversation with Music, herself.

Coda:  The narrator/Seeker becomes a Teacher.

Many of Victor Wooten’s points will already be familiar to experienced musicians: for example, the limitations of “notes,” playing the rests, and the absolute importance of groove. But it’s always good to be reminded, and it’s done in an entertaining way. The “New Age” stuff might or might not work for you. You don’t have to buy in to all of it to benefit from (or otherwise enjoy) this book.


I have some opinions about the genre of inspirational books.

First, let me say that I am not much of a New-Age acolyte. I was raised in the rationalist tradition, and the only problem I see with an entirely rational worldview is that honest rationality compels us to realize its own limits. So I am not quick to accept magic, or for that matter New-Age spirituality, if it contradicts rationality.

There’s a fair amount of magic in “The Music Lesson,” but I don’t think we are expected to literally believe those stories. As Wooten writes, “[Michael’s] stretching-the-truth style was new to me, but once I understood how and why it was used, I added it to my own teaching method.”

“The Music Lesson,” like many inspirational books, is a dialogue between Teacher and Seeker. The Teacher imparts extraordinary knowledge to the Seeker, who will then be empowered (or not). For example, Don Juan Matus with Carlos Casteneda; Plato’s Socrates with his questioning students; R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural with Flakey Foont. Wooten is on the less mystical side of this genre, and approaches it with some humor.

A basic contradiction, inherent in this genre, is that the Seeker is generally cast as someone who is lacking, and in need of help. The Seeker thus begins from a disempowered position. The Teacher then imparts knowledge that will fix the problem. This dynamic always reminded me of mass advertising, where the ad tries to convince you that you have a problem (bad breath, dirty collar, etc.), then sells you a product that is supposed to fix it.

Take, for example, one very popular inspirational book, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Each of its 12 chapters is titled, “Recovering a Sense of Safety,” “Recovering a Sense of Identity,” “Recovering a Sense of Power,” “Recovering a Sense of Integrity,” and so forth. Obviously, the reader is being asked to buy into the premise that he or she has lost these things - then the book/Teacher will help the reader/Seeker recover them.

Of course, if Seekers did not think they need help, we wouldn’t have these books. And I’m sure that most of these authors are sincerely motivated by the desire to help their readers. I’m just suggesting that this dynamic is an inherent contradiction, in works purporting to empower the reader/Seeker.

The way to rise above this disempowering dynamic is to “Think for yourself,” and “Be your own teacher.” Wooten makes this point repeatedly, as any good teacher should.

This book offers a lot of great perspective. But don't forget, we all still need to know our chords and scales.

Here are some links if you’d like to know more about Victor Wooten:

A bunch of Victor Wooten videos on truefire.com - includes a bio.

The Music Lesson website, with further links to Victor's other sites

For a couple of stories about student/teacher dynamics in the jazz world, see these previous posts:

Lessons with Joe Henderson

Mike and Tom Take a Lesson With Charles Lloyd

A Review of Benjamin Schwarz's Book Review in "The Atlantic"

A friend sent me a copy of Benjamin Schwarz’s review of Ted Gioia’s "The Jazz Standards," in this month’s The Atlantic magazine. I reviewed Gioia’s book myself, in a previous post. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a few minutes to review Schwarz’s review. His article is titled “The End of Jazz: How America’s Most Vibrant Music Became a Relic.”

The title is kind of a red flag, isn’t it?

First, please read the article. Schwarz is an excellent writer. I’d expect no less from The Atlantic’s literary editor and national editor.

In his first two paragraphs, Schwarz lavishes praise on Gioia, and on Gioia’s book. The second paragraph concludes, “The value of such a work, of course, depends on the acumen of the author. In virtually every instance, Gioia delivers.”

In the third and fourth paragraphs, Schwarz examines Gioia’s writeup of “Lush Life,” and finds it praiseworthy: “...Gioia’s entry, in its own way definitive, is but one of a quarter-thousand assessments in this monument to taste and scholarship.”

In his fifth paragraph, Schwarz discusses four songs that he thinks Gioia should have included: “Where or When,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Begin the Beguine,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” I’m sure that anyone who reads Gioia's book will have some opinions of this sort. I guess Schwarz is partial to Cole Porter. That’s all right with me.

In the sixth paragraph, Schwarz briefly touches on the line of thought that relates to the article’s title:

The great overlap between the [Great American] Songbook and the jazz catalogue largely explains a fact that troubles Gioia—that his book can enshrine “few recent compositions”—and raises doubts about his assertion, supported by passion rather than by argument, that “the jazz idiom [is] a vibrant, present-day endeavor.”

The seventh and eighth paragraphs develop the idea that the “jazz catalogue” and the “Great American Songbook” are closely intertwined, and the ninth paragraph describes Frank Sinatra’s role in establishing “Great American Songbook” titles as essential jazz repertoire.

The tenth and final paragraph continues the argument that jazz is closely identified with “Songbook” compositions - but at the very end, Schwarz takes a sudden turn:

...despite Gioia’s ardency, there is no reason to believe that jazz can be a living, evolving art form decades after its major source—and the source that linked it to the main currents of popular culture and sentiment—has dried up. Jazz, like the Songbook, is a relic—and as such, in 2012 it cannot have, as Gioia wishes for it, an “expansive and adaptive repertoire.”

This, then, leads us back to the article’s title, “The End of Jazz: How America’s Most Vibrant Music Became a Relic.”

Well!

I’d have to say that the content of the article does not support the assertion in these last two sentences, or the shallow sensationalism of the title. I could charitably imagine that someone else at The Atlantic besides Schwarz is in charge of creating titles for articles.

The “End of Jazz” is an idea that is meaningless to those who are actually involved with the music.

Here are a few more comments on the subject. I’ll keep it short; a rant isn’t worth the effort.

What do we think “jazz” actually is? I might say that it is improvisational music with a particular history and a self-referential vocabulary; it is creative and exploratory by definition.

Or as Louis Armstrong supposedly said, “If you don’t know, don’t mess with it.”

It’s not limited to straight-ahead performances of "Great American Songbook" tunes - far from it - although I love that stuff.

As my wife put it, “Improvisation isn’t going to die until people stop thinking.” (Thanks, Patricia!)

Let’s let it go at that.

For some further thoughtful comments and some ranting by others, have a look at the comments at the end of the Atlantic article.

Review: Hal Leonard Real Book Vol. 4

A couple of months ago I purchased a copy of the Vol. 4 Hal Leonard Real Book, and I’ve been checking it out. To evaluate this book, let’s start with a brief review of what came before:

The original, “old” Real Book was produced in 1975 by a couple of Berklee students, and succeeded wildly in the jazz world. The music calligraphy is quite good, and the harmonies are mostly (not completely) accurate. The tune selection (400 or so) is well-considered, including many of the greatest “Great American Songbook” tunes, as well as some by jazz composers that were cutting-edge in 1975 (e.g., Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson), with only a few less useful tunes. The old RB reflected the basic repertoire of its time and place, and in turn became a strong influence in defining (some might say “ossifying”) the basic repertoire of the present.

Old RB Vol. 2 followed, around 1985. Another bootleg, from different anonymous compilers. The format is similar, the production/accuracy not quite as good. It presents another 400+ tunes, most of them useful to jazz players.

Old RB Vol. 3 came out in (I think) the early 1990s. Another bootleg, from anonymous compilers. It swept up still more standards, most of them useful. Each successive volume of the old pirate RB strove for usefulness (and hence saleability), but to come up with yet another 400 or so tunes, the compilers had to dig deeper towards the bottom of the barrel.

Meanwhile, starting in 1984, Sher Music put out a series of "New Real Books" Vols. 1-3, as well as a "Standards Real Book," a "Latin Real Book," and more. These were nicely researched and produced, with a high level of respect for the jazz musicians that would be using the book, and for the music itself. The tune choices, however, are what one might call eclectic - genres in each of Sher RB Vols. 1-3 range from standards, to fusion, to soul.

There have been a number of other useful collections of tunes over those years: Aebersold volumes, the two Dick Hyman books, and so forth. But the old RB remained the standard of the industry, until...

Beginning in 2005, the Hal Leonard Corporation (the “world’s largest print music publisher”) came out with its own series of “Real Books,” basically replicating the old bootlegs, with mostly the same tune selections, and with a format that mimics the the bootlegs. The name “Real Book,” of course, had never been copyrighted, so was up for grabs.

HL’s Vol. 1, the so-called “Sixth Edition,” was a bit disappointing to me (see this earlier post). HL’s obvious intent was to take control of the “Real Book” franchise, an effort that has mostly succeeded. I felt that this product could have been better in both repertoire and accuracy, given Hal Leonard’s resources. A number of important tunes from old RB1 were omitted, a number of mistakes in old RB1 were corrected, and some new mistakes were introduced. Copyright was respected - that was an improvement.

HL Real Book Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 followed, attempting to replicate the old bootleg RB Vols. 2 and 3. Like the first HL book, these were useful enough, better in some ways than the bootlegs.

Against this background, let’s consider HL RB Vol. 4.

There never was an “old” Vol. 4, so this one is entirely a Hal Leonard creation.

First, let’s look at the tune choice. I’m imagining a meeting of the production team. The team leader says, “I want each of you to come back in a week with 100 tunes that didn’t make it into the first 3 volumes.” A week later, they have a collection that includes a sampling of virtually every style that has been called "jazz" in the last 100 years:

• some “trad” dixieland tunes (e.g., "Cakewalking Babies from Home," "Aunt Hagar's Blues"), 
• some 20s and 30s pop that could arguably perhaps be called "jazz" (e.g., "Across the Alley From the Alamo," "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along"),
• some third-tier standards,
• a handful of important standards that were for some reason left out of the HL Vol. 1 “Sixth Edition” (e.g., "Days of Wine and Roses," "Just Friends," "Night and Day"),
• some interesting but often obscure bebop ("Goin' to Minton's," "Bags' New Groove"),
• some Beatles, Ray Charles, and James Brown,
• some fusion and smooth jazz (Bob James, David Sanborn, Marcus Miller),
• various good tunes that may have been chosen because Chuck Sher had included them in his fakebooks ("A House is Not a Home," "After the Rain," "Mr. Lucky"),
• some more recent jazz originals (e.g., Chick, Wayne, Bill Evans), and
• Some Christmas jazz tunes (Mel Torme, Vince Guaraldi).

The resulting collection is quite eclectic - or, one might say, unfocused.

Second, let’s consider usability. The chords are reasonably well done. As with the first three HL books, the look and feel mimics the old bootleg books, with a nice, readable, “handwritten” music font, and a comb binding that opens flat on a music stand. However, I don’t see the book as being particularly useful on gigs - it’s not worth hauling it around for the few tunes that one is likely to select from this book for a jazz gig, in whatever genre.

The content, as scattered as it is, would be a useful addition to an electronic collection, for those musicians who have dozens of fake books on their tablets, in pdf form.

As well, the book might be interesting to people like me, who enjoy checking out even some of the more obscure repertoire.

It wouldn't be the first fakebook to buy for your collection; it might be the sixth or seventh.

As with the previous bootleg and HL Real Books, no lyrics are included. This, I think, is unfortunate. Quite a few of the songs in this collection really only come off well as vocals ( e.g., "I Saw You," "Waters of March," "Compared to What"). In addition, horn players are - or should be - interested in the lyrics to standards; knowing the words helps us to come up with more appropriate phrasing when playing the heads, and helps us to understand the original meaning of the tunes. The Sher books are better in this regard, although even in that series, the words only appear in the concert key editions.

I suppose that you can always look up lyrics somewhere online. But you shouldn’t have to.

HL RB Vol. 4 is not really a “Real Book,” in the Real Book tradition of providing resources that address the everyday needs of jazz musicians. It’s actually more of an eclectic, fairly interesting collection of tunes that is packaged under the saleable name, “Real Book,” in a visually similar format. (HL has a number of other publications that exploit the name and use the same format.)

Far be it from me to question the financial imperatives of the business world.

Another HL "Real Book" -  Vol. 5 -  is scheduled for release in April 2013.

"Must-Know" Blues Tunes: Comparing Lists

For various reasons, my "consensus" list of must-know jazz standards (see my post from Sept. 9, 2012) turned out to be short on blues. This was partially because of the nature of the lists I was comparing, and partially because there are so many blues heads, most of them using generic blues chord progressions. (We are talking about "jazz blues" here, of course - not Mississippi Delta, Chicago blues, '50s rock, etc.)

In this post I will try to find a consensus on which are the most essential blues tunes to learn. This time I have a few additional lists of "must-know" tunes to compare.

Madisonjazzjam.org has a page with 7 "must-know" lists, from 1) The author of the page, 2) Jamey Aebersold, 3) Nick Drozdoff, 4) Pete Thomas, 5) Manhattan School of Music, 6) University of Oregon Jazz Studies Department, and 7) A group of Maryland colleges.

For the present discussion, I have compared 6 of the lists from madisonjazzjam.org, as well as the 6 sources I used in my September 9 post, extracting only blues tunes. Pete Thomas' list was one of the 6 that I had already used, so I didn't count it a second time. Also, one of my sources (Bert Ligon's list) itself incorporated suggestions from "several" jazz educators. So I suppose I'm comparing "must-know" lists from at least 14 different sources.

The results are below. Nine "hits" means that the tune showed up in nine of the lists, eight "hits" means it showed up in eight lists, etc. I don't find too much to disagree with in these results, at least down through the two-hit list. Personally, I'd only vote for about half the tunes on the one-hit list.

Jazz students (that's all of us, right?) should probably try to know most of these blues heads, all the way down to the two-hit list, and a few more besides.

How did these particular blues tunes become "must-knows"? I'd say through a process that involves these factors: 1) inclusion in some landmark recordings, 2) inclusion in well-known fake books, 3) status as popular jam vehicles, 4) the quality of the tunes, 5) if they are easy to learn, 6) currency in the world of jazz education. Of course, these routes to popularity overlap, and influence each other.

9 hits: Billie's Bounce 

8 hits: Mr. P.C. 

7 hits: All Blues, Blue Monk, Tenor Madness 

6 hits: Footprints, Now's the Time, Straight No Chaser 

5 hits: C Jam Blues, Things Ain't What They Used To Be, Watermelon Man 

4 hits: Stolen Moments 

3 hits: Au Privave, Blue Train, Cool Blues, Cousin Mary, Misterioso, Sandu 

2 hits: 

Bags' Groove
Birks' Works
Blues for Alice
Blues Walk
Equinox
Freddie Freeloader
Night Train
One O'Clock Jump
The Sidewinder
Some Other Blues
Sonnymoon for Two
West Coast Blues 

One hit: 

Beale St. Blues
Bessie's Blues
Blue 'n Boogie
Blue Seven
Blues for Alice
Blues On the Corner
Cheryl
Eighty-One
Isotope
No Blues
Red Top
Royal Garden Blues
St. Louis Blues
Society Red
Tin Roof Blues
Walkin'
West End Blues

A Tune-Dex Fakebook, Continued

This is an addendum to my previous post, "A Tune-Dex Fakebook and Some Schillinger Symbols." You may want to read that post first.

There is some more information to be gleaned from Dr. K.'s Tune-Dex fakebook.

On some loose sheets inserted before the Table of Contents, Dr. K. had made a tally of the number of songs that various composers had "contributed" to the fakebook. He had made three lists, each organized alphabetically: One showed composers with 10 or more songs; the second list showed those with 5 to 9 songs; the third showed those with less than 5 songs. The lists showed the page numbers for each song. For example, the first list began with :

Arlen     60, 73, 104, 108, 127, 142, 156, 182, 189, 216

Perhaps Dr. K. had made these lists as a way of 1) seeing which songwriters were more successful, and 2) making a quick guide to looking up those songs. For me, those lists were food for thought. Following are a few thoughts.

The lists show which composers were most successful in 1949 (date of publication), by the measure of the bootlegger who put together the book. Clearly, he intended to assemble a fakebook that would be as useful as possible to working musicians (profit motive). This would have entailed an effort to select the "best" (most popular) tunes for this purpose.

According to Barry Kernfeld's "The Story of Fake Books," Tune-Dex cards (the raw material pirated for this fakebook) were produced from 1942 until 1963. George Goodwin, the man behind Tune-Dex, produced about 100 new cards each month during this time, eventually leaving a total legacy of 25,000 titles. In 1949, the apparent year of the fakebook's publication, there would have been something like 7200 Tune-Dex cards for a bootlegger to choose from. For this fakebook, Mr. Pirate had narrowed it down to about 1000 titles.

I should note also that just 266 of the 369 pages were devoted to "Great American Songbook" titles. Dr. K. only tabulated songs from those first 266 pages. Below is the master index; you can see that the rest of the tunes are mostly "ethnic." These "ethnic" tunes were included because of their usefulness to working musicians.

Tune-Dex Fakebook Table of Contents

Just as with the Old Real Book in 1974, the choices made for the collection not only reflect the tunes that were deemed important by the compilers in that time and place; the choices would have also had an effect in shaping the repertoire of the musicians who used the book. And this repertoire choice would, in turn, have had an effect on the tunes deemed important by later musicians (the "canon"). It's just a thought - but that's definitely what happened with the old RB.

The book contains mostly "Great American Songbook" tunes (266 pages, or about 750 tunes), not including the "ethnic" sections. The "Blues and Dixieland" section is generally trad jazz and big band, and only 7 pages. There's no bebop.

The book, though it is a bootleg, does show copyright owners and dates for each tune - these notations were at the bottom of each Tune-Dex card, and were not deleted by Mr. Pirate. Glancing through the book, I didn't see any copyright dates later than 1949. That's a pretty good indication of the date of publication; it also shows that Mr. P. wanted his fakebook to be as up-to-date as possible. Another indication of the date is that Richard Rodgers' tunes include some from "South Pacific" (opened April 1949), but none from "The King and I" (opened March 1951). Kernfeld cites court records in a copyright violation case that set the publication date as 1949.

The end of the "Golden Age of American Songwriting" is often set at 1950.

Below is Dr. K.'s numeration of composer titles. He had originally listed composers alphabetically, but I have arranged the names in order of the number of songs in the Tune-Dex fakebook. I'm only listing songwriters with 5 or more songs in the book.


Richard Rodgers 32
George Gershwin 24
Cole Porter 24
Harry Warren 17
Richard Whiting 14
Jerome Kern 13
Buddy De Sylva 12
Walter Donaldson 12
Sigmund Romberg 11
Arthur Schwartz 11
Harold Arlen 10
Charles Henderson 10
Jimmy McHugh 10

Nacio Herb Brown 9
Vincent Youmans 9
Joe Burke 8
Hoagy Carmichael 8
Johnny Green 8
Rudolf Friml 7
Con Conrad 6
Victor Herbert 6
Ray Noble 6
Ralph Rainger 6
Spencer Williams 6
Milton Ager 5
Harry Akst 5
Harry Barris 5
J. Fred Coots 5
Noel Coward 5
Dave Dreyer 5
Duke Ellington 5
Burton Lane 5
James Vincent Monaco 5
Harry Tierney 5

A lot of the songs in this fakebook have fallen by the wayside. Popular tastes have changed. It was really a different world then. Jazz performers have preserved a narrow selection, mainly tunes that are good improvisation vehicles. Who nowadays can name 24 Cole Porter songs?

One would think that there must be some good tunes in this old book that have not been exploited much. On the other hand, I recall spending some time digging through songbooks looking for hidden gems by Jimmy Van Heusen, and ultimately deciding that the jazz world had already done that, and very well, too. All the good ones were already in the "canon." It was like I had been trying to reinvent the wheel.

One of my old professors had been a swing band trumpeter before becoming an academic. Once I said, "Gee, Professor Crowley, they sure wrote a lot of great songs in the old days." He replied, "Yes, but you have to remember, they wrote a lot of bad ones, too."