This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book.

It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky 70s style logo, and black

plastic binding. It is delightfully homemade looking, like it was printed by a bunch of

teenagers at Kingos.

And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes, also known as jazz standards,

all meticulously notated by hand.

It's called The Real Book.

When I started playing jazz, I remember the first thing

my guitar teacher said was, well, you gotta buy a real book.

That's producer, Michael McCaffinoff.

Everybody had one.

It just felt like something you were expected to own

if you were a serious musician.

My high school jazz teacher, Mr. Leonard,

had stacks of real books on his desk.

And he told me that he actually got his first real book

at the place where they were originally published,

Berkeley College of Music in Boston.

He had just arrived for his freshman year.

I heard people talking about the real book, the real book.

It was just all around Berkeley.

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