Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. Itâs delightfully homemade-lookingâlike it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunesâalso known as jazz âstandardsââall meticulously notated by hand. Itâs called the Real Book. But if you were going to music school in the 1970s, you couldnât just buy a copy of the Real Book at the campus bookstore. Because the Real Book... was illegal. The worldâs most popular collection of Jazz music was a totally unlicensed publication. The full story of how the Real Book came to be this bootleg bible of jazz is a complicated one. Itâs a story about what happens when an insurgent, improvisational art form like Jazz gets codified and becomes something that you can learn from a book.