Drawing from FBI files, newspaper accounts, court records, and oral history, this book reveals the stories of the origins and prosecution of pop-song fake-book bootleggers, and of the emergence of the definitive jazz fake book, "The Real Book".

Bootleg fake books - unauthorized anthologies of songs notated in a musical shorthand - have been used for decades by countless pop, jazz, and country musicians. Drawing from FBI files, newspaper accounts, court records, and oral history, Bootlegging Songs to Musicians reveals the previously unknown stories of the origins and prosecution of pop-song fake-book bootleggers, and of the emergence of the definitive jazz fake book, The Real Book.