The Ultimate Broadway Fake Book Plastic Comb – May 28, 1997

This is a good buy for a pro pianist like me who might get requests for tunes I've never heard of from shows I've never seen. It has three indexes: by tune, by show, and by composers and lyricists.One of the best things in the book is an alphabetical show-by-show synopsis, containing information about each show's history, its major personnel, and its plot.However -- and it's a BIG however; in fact, several howevers: an awful lot of the songs are second-rate and I can't imagine getting requests for them, or even wanting to play them myself.The book proclaims its inclusion of "great songs" from several more recent shows such as "Rent"; gimme a break -- these songs are barely listenable, much less "great."Throughout the book, many of the chord changes are incorrect (this is a musician's constant complaint about ALL fake books).Most of the songs do not include the verse (and for Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, and Kern these are often essential parts of the song). And there are inexplicable omissions.For example: (1) Some of the included shows are lacking some of their best songs: "The Nervous Set" omits "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," "Finian's Rainbow" omits "Necessity." "The Merry Widow" omits "The Merry Widow Waltz." "Mack and Mabel" omits "I Promise You a Happy Ending." (2) Some excellent shows are missing altogether. No "L'il Abner." No Cy Coleman's "I Love My Wife." And Leonard Bernstein is represented only by two songs from "Wonderful Town"; no "Candide," no "On the Town," no "West Side Story."And of course there are many songs I already own in other collections, although the book is useful as a one-stop source for all of these, and there are about fifty to a hundred decent to superb songs that I own nowhere else.There is ample representation of Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kern, Gershwin, Porter, Frank Loesser, Jerry Herman, Harold Arlen, Lerner & Loewe, Andrew Lloyd Webber, et al.In the end, despite its flaws, to me the book was well worth the price.

I've always been a broadway buff, and I bought this book just for casually toying with my autoharp at home; I'm not a professional musician.For my purpose, this book is wonderful: I can easily play the songs from the listed chords, and there's a huge variety. I think it has done a great job of picking out the most classic songs from the early through mid 20th century, although by necessity as it gets closer to the present it gets a little more sparse, fleshing out the more popular shows a the expense of some of the excellent but less known ones.While some reviewers have correctly complained that the book doesn't include everything... if it did, it would look like an encyclopedia, and cost as much. It has a well selected set of music given that they have to cram it into a book you can carry in your backpack. Also, keep in mind that they can't necessarily get the rights to publish everything at a price that would make the book affordable. I accepted before I bought it that I'll need to supplement it with a few more song books, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper to buy this than to buy a songbook from every musical I'd want one for.The indices are very useful: notice the plural, indices. It's indexed by song title, by show title, and by composer.I'm rating this book 4 stars instead of 5 primarily because of the binding: I hate plastic comb bindings. I know it's a big book and they want to bind it cheaply so it's affordable, but even a wire spiral would be better... marginally, anyway. I'm convinced the pages will eventually tear along the binding, so I know that I'll eventually have to figure out a way to re-bind it.My other complaint, and it's fairly minor, is that some of the songs are a bit sparse on chords: I ocasionally find myself wanting to pencil in a few extra chords... but hey, it's my book now, I can do that. If you're really helpless with music you'll have a problem with that, but then, if you're that helpless with music you probably wouldn't want a fake book, now would you?

This book has some interesting good and bad points. First, the good: It's a fake book in the Hal Leonard style, in original keys, of a wide selection of the best known Broadway songs. Lots of good stuff. And unlike The Ultimate Fake Book (which is great for other reasons), the songs are conveniently organized by Show rather than by Title. A nice addition is a synopsis of each show and its relevance at the beginning of the book.But the bad... first, like other very large Hal Leonard books, the binding is a plastic tab that is hard to turn relative to spiral bindings and tends to come apart over time. Second, many (but not all) songs have what appear to be guitar chord charts, which are distracting to everyone else. And third, it doesn't have all the songs you expect.For example, it doesn't have songs from the movie versions (which you may not realize weren't part of the broadway version) or songs from updated broadway versions. The play "Grease" is represented, for example, but lacks the theme song (Grease), Hopelessly Devoted to You, Greased Lightning and other big hits from the show. Similarly, Starlight Express in its original incarnation was not that big a hit. "The New Starlight Express" was. Amazingly, there are only a few songs from the latter in the book; it's missing "He'll Whistle At Me" and "Next Time You Fall In Love", along with about six others. This means, of course, that after seeing the (current) broadway production, you won't be able to pick up this book and play the tunes; they're not there.However, there are a LOT of great tunes that are there, the organization is great, and as always Hal Leonard did a great job of arranging them.

This book has got me out of some (solo piano) scrapes and saved me a lot of time. (I didn't have to transcribe Hakuna Matata, thank goodness).My criticisms are thus:The notation and chord symbols are too small. For any pianist who frequently plays from lead sheets on the fly ,you'll know exactly what i mean.Also the spiral binding isnt strong enough to hold the weight of the book.Lastly, despite this book being a Hal Leonard product, the harmony is still stuck in that musical theatre time bubble. Refusing to recognise fundamental and by now accepted jazz harmony, you'll still have to translate and recognise A13#11 from F#dim - Bless.Having said all this, its still the best publication around for musicals, and is a large volume, indexed by song and by musical

As a kid, I lived every day playing through the earliest edition of this classic bible of Broadway. It's great to see the more recent editions being updated with more recent shows. I suspect that due to copyright, there is no Maltby & Shire, Ahrens & Flaherty or any significant amount of JRB or Adam Guettel. However, it remains the greatest collection of the Broadway repertoire collected together in one easy-to-carry edition.

usual fake book errors but content very good a bit more effort when proof reading I would have given it 5 stars

Excellent and comprehensive selection of music from the great musicals.

A great selection of show music with lyrics. It's a large book with a plastic binder that could be a little more robust to take the number of pages and weight of the book.