OUR KIND OF JAZZ

(This is a nod to Zaks Nkosi: his 1950s vinyl big seller album was entitled exactly that)

Trombonist, drummer, comppser, arranger & band leader Jannie “Hanepoot” van Tonder, Jasper Cook’s predecessor in the African Jazz Pioneers, has published South African books in the “Real Book” tradition: Cape Jazz Song Book, and South African Jazz Real Book, Vol 1.

If you long for new material to perform or practise, or while away the hours, navigate to Hanepoots online jazz bookshop.

While driving, Maeder bursts into song frequently, especially when the travel stories remind him of songs. He, along with Tony Voss, apparently remembers the words to every pre-Beatle song from 1920 onwards. They are like Juan Fangio, a five-time F1 champion, though they drive a lot slower. When asked what went through Juan’s mind while his car was flying in the air at 200mph, he said

I sing the old songs, the good songs.

When times changed, & Jazz left dance behind & morphed toward be-bop, the new style became the ‘lingua franca’ of (international) jazz. A tradition began of jazz musicians venue-hopping around town to jam with other bands, armed with a book called a REAL BOOK.

What is a ‘Real Book’? From Widipedia:

A Real Book is a compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards, in particular the first of a series of books produced by students at the Berklee College of Music in the 1970s.

The name is derived from “fake books”, so called because they contained only rough outlines of music pieces rather than fully notated scores. Early fake books were often used by professional bands who performed mostly standards, often more geared to society and dance bands rather than jazz ensembles, and devoted much space to show tunes, novelty tunes, traditional jazz, etc. The first three Real Book volumes, in contrast, contained many bebop and other jazz standards that were likely to be encountered on jazz gigs at the time. For this reason, the books were quickly adopted among jazz players in the 1970s, particularly on the East Coast of the United States.

Real Books could be found in versions by clef (treble clef, bass clef) and key (C, Bb, Eb).