There are over 12,140 songs in this aggregate index, which is compiled from the contents of the 50 U.S. fake books shown in the table below. Together, these books included 21,000 entries. As you'll see in the song index, many of the more popular songs are found in several books. However, over 8,000 songs are available in one, and only one, of the books listed below.
A fake book is a collection of musical lead sheets intended to help a performer quickly learn new songs. Each song in a fake book contains the melody line, basic chords, and lyrics - the minimal information needed by a musician to make an impromptu arrangement of a song, or fake it. Commercial Music Fakebook. EMBED (for wordpress.com hosted blogs and archive.org item tags).
The table lists the fake books included in index sorted by the abbreviations used in the alphabetical song indexes provided here. A shorter, 2-letter abbreviation is also shown. This abbreviation is used in the keyword field of some of the MusicFinder Databases (MFDs) available elsewhere on this site.
Many of these books are covered in the previous Fake Books section, although some of them, like Richard Wolfe's Legit Professional Fake Book, are out of print now and may only be available via E-Bay. These books are marked with a '-NA-' for the publisher. You can click on titles that are commercially available and the link will take you to Amazon for current pricing information.
I have also created Music Finder Databases for each of the fake books included in our master fake book index. Download them from our Fake Book MFDs page in the Lessons section.
Abbr | Ab | Fake Book Title (Publisher) |
---|---|---|
50Cntry | C5 | Fifty Years of (Country) Hits (-NA-) |
54Stan | 54 | Real Chord Changes For 54 Standards (Hal Leonard) |
Beatles | BT | The Beatles Fake Book (Hal Leonard) |
Berlin | IB | Irving Berlin Fake Book (Hal Leonard) |
BestEver | BE | The Best Fake Book Ever (Hal Leonard) |
Blues | BL | The Blues Fake Book (Hal Leonard) |
Celtic | CL | |
Chicago | CH | |
ClassicRock | CR | |
Disney | DS | |
EarlyJazz | EJ | |
EarlyRock | ER | |
Elvis | EL | |
Fantastic | MF | Most Fantastic Fakebook In The World (Warner) |
Favorite | MF | |
FirstTime | FT | First Time Ever Fake Book (Dover) |
Folksong | FS | |
Gershwin | JG | Just Gershwin Real Book (Warner) |
Gospel | GG | |
Hymn | HY | |
Jazz50s | J5 | |
Jazz60s | J6 | Jazz Bible: Jazz of the 60s (Hal Leonard) |
JazzStand | JS | |
Jumbo | JU | 1001 Jumbo Song Book (-NA-) |
JustJazz | JJ | Just Jazz Real Book (Warner) |
JustStanR | SR | Just Standards Real Book (Warner) |
Legit | RW | Richard Wolfe's Legit Professional Fake Book (-NA-) |
Movie | MV | |
PerfComp | PC | Performer's Complete Fake Book |
PianistF | PP | Professional Pianist's Fake Book (Hal Leonard) |
PianistX | PX | Professional Pianist's Christmas Fake Book |
R&B | RB | |
RealBook1 | R1 | The New Real Book, V1 (Sher) |
RealBook2 | R2 | The New Real Book, V2 (Sher) |
RealBook3 | R3 | The New Real Book, V3 (Sher) |
RealJazz | RJ | |
Sinatra | SN | Frank Sinatra Fake Book (Hal Leonard) |
SingerCty | SC | |
SingerPop | SP | |
StandReal | R0 | Standards Real Book (Sher) |
SwingEra | SE | |
TV | TV | |
UltBrdwy | UB | |
UltCnty | UC | |
UltFake | UF | |
UltJazz | UJ | |
UltPopRock | UP | |
UltXmas | UX | |
Wedding | WL | |
WorldsGr | GF | World's Greatest Fake Book (Sher) |