American Popular Songs ... ! Lead Sheets !

To learn to play jazz you need to know the songs, inside out, upside down and every which way ... !

Wonderful American Popular Songs from the first half of the twentieth century have become established as the indispensable framework for jazz. They have a structure and characteristics immediately identifiable as 'Our Kind Of Music', they all go 'the same old way'!

Our collection of 'Dixieland Standards' in 'Band-in-a-Box' format which are part of the tradition of early jazz is here!  We've reached another milestone there are now over 3750 songs!! ... but there are still many missing gems ... [and there are also a few you might not expect!]

  Song collections associated with some individual early jazz pioneers are here! 

Have a look and let me know which of these great songs you're interested in learning to play and we will e-mail the lead sheets to you ... hoping for swaps in return ... 

Send me a listing the songs you want ... here!

NB 1  Our songs are all in 'Band-in-a-Box' format and have been collected as simple lead sheets giving the chord sequence and straight melody line aimed at teaching the basic structure, they are not musical 'arrangements'.

NB 2  This growing data base is incomplete and needs your contribution!

NB 3  The songs are not directly downloadable because we want to respect copyrights of the 'songsters' and we also want to encourage 'swaps'. But all is not lost we will happily email any songs you want to learn !!

The 'toon' challenge !  

What are they playing ?

The song you are looking for is not listed?

We may be able to find it for you ... email me ... here! 

Simple lead sheets but ... with the application of a little magic, wizards like my mate alan marchand can transform a simple 'Band-in-a-Box' lead into a musical wow! ... have a listen to Alan's arrangement of Maceo Pinkard's song 'livin high' - (Midi arrangement ©2005 Alan Marchand)

   Reminder - our songs are stored for retrieval and study in the excellent 'Band-in-a-Box' format which provides -

* visual and aural playback with scope for endless analysis and experimentation with tempos, keys, harmonies, solo lines   

* endless realistic musical styles generating backing tracks for practice and rehearsal

* printable lead sheets with key, transposition and clef change options for all the band

* thriving internet community with small files for easy communication

and much more to help with -

* learning songs and learning instrument parts

* song writing and transcriptions

* discovering better chords, better harmonies, better melodies and improvised lines

* audio recording track

* dumping to midi sequencers or audio recording

* enhancing live performance

* jamming and fun !!

   If you are not an enthusiastic owner of this unbelievable software then get it now from -   here! 

Then try this !!

Get a bunch of 'Band-in-a-Box' songs which you think might be fun to play ... select the 'Juke Box' and a suitable Dixieland 'style' and go !! ... listen while you're washing and for any toon you like there will be an instantly available lead sheet to get you started ... !!  

Many many books have been written about these songs and the song writers ... details of some of the best are here!