The Chicago Fake Book Paperback – June 1, 1999

I had bought another Chicago fake book before, but it only had maybe 20 or 30 songs. THIS volume though has just about everything you could want. As far as I can tell, it has every song from the debut album up through "Chicago Twenty 1". This means that if you exclude some of the one-off non-album songs that showed up on compilations, B-sides, and cover songs (as on the Xmas album or on Chicago Night & Day Band), you basically have every Chicago song from the 1960s through the 1990s.A few of the low-rating reviewers here seem absolutely clueless as to what this book is. Read the book title. This is NOT a piano book. This is NOT a guitar tablature book. This is NOT a complete score transcript for all instruments. This is what's known to musicians as a "fake book". That means it contains the standard minimum amount of information for a musician to reproduce the song: the chord changes, under which you find the melody transcribed to the standard treble clef notation, under which you find the lyrics, all of which are structured out to match the structure essentially heard in the recording. And all transcribed to standard concert-C, not shifted for clarinet or something. If you have no clue how to read a chord chart or are hopeless without little guitar fretboard diagrams, then you should first learn how to read books like this for musicians before buying them. Anyway, back to the book.Personally, I would have preferred it if the songs were in track order by album, instead of all in alphabetical order. This would make it much easier to follow along multi-song suites like "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon". I've also been kind of spoiled by the nice, big, easy-to-read style of The Real Book. Still, the material is quite readable, and seems accurate (which is more than I can say for some of the free but painfully dumbed-down or flat out incorrect transcriptions you might stumble across online). There's such a wealth of songs here to make it worth buying for any musician who's a fan of Chicago.

Lots of songs, but the print is so tiny it’s hard to see. Also many of the songs are in awkward keys as far as the chords , with 4 flats or sharps. Many of the songs are not in the original key so can’t play along.

I used this book to learn enough music for a Chicago Tribute show in Branson. Decent price good info. There were a couple small errors but it pointed me in the right direction very well.

Every song so far! This book is for Chicago fans who know the songs and can read chord changes. Does not have guitar chords but just buy a chord book which you should have if you are a guitar player!

My expectations were that I should have the complete scores, but it only contains the lyrics line and the guitar chords.I don't recommend this book to musicians, arrangers, or composers..the explanation in the page is not enough to understand that the book doesn't have the complete scores

Just to address some of the negative or Ill-informed reviews on this book: they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. No, you can’t find better, more accurate chord charts ‘for free’ on the internet. For one thing, good luck finding many of the deep album cuts this book has. For another, it’s all in one place here, alphabetically organized. For another, the chords here are nearly perfectly correct. SO many times on the internet, they’re either flat wrong or dumbed-down versions that miss key elements of the necessary structures. $25 bucks for Chicago’s ENTIRE 70’s-80’s catalogue is a STEAL. They are basically handing it to you. Also, the person who played “Color My World” and said it didn’t even sound like the record must have only 3 fingers on each hand. Stop it. Please. It’s literally a note-for-note transcription. If you know your instrument and how to play the chords listed, you will kill it with this fake book. I’m only an intermediate piano player and I could probably sit down with the band on some of their songs because of this book lol. Great, invaluable resource for pennies per song.

in key..good reference

While the book gives the basic melody and guitar chord, I was seeking a book that showed me the treble and bass cleff chords and notes, which this book does not. This is my fault for not knowing what a Fake Book provided.

bon d'abord, il faut savoir ce qu'est un "fake book"...en simple ce sont les morceaux de musique avec en indication les principales parties donc, de toute façon les vocaux et harmonies avec certains passages bien particuliers qui font l'originalité des morceaux.Là, on est assez comblé... on a à peu près tout de Chicago avec surtout la période avec Terry Kath (la meilleure... mais comme ce sont d'excellents musiciens, cela donne un peu envie de s'y intéresser plus...).Quelques manquements comme le "Prélude to Aire" ? et après le Chicago 9 plusieurs titres n'apparaissent pas comme "Prélude for litlle one" , "little one".. etc... allez donc savoir... parce qu'ils n'ont pas été composés par les membres fondateurs ?le seul truc qui me dérange, comme pour tous les autres recueils de ce genre, c'est que les morceaux sont classés par ordre alphabétique, alors que moi, j'aurais préféré le voir classés par album, cela aurait été plus commode...mais bon... et si on veut aller un peu plus loin, je vous conseille les 2 recueils des "complete scores" dans lesquels on peut avoir les transcriptions complètes de certains morceaux. (possible en import avec Amazon usa (ce que j'ai fait)et si vous êtes comme moi, (j'adore le faire avec mes partitions classiques, style "Symphonie pour le nouveau monde", le "boléro", etc...,) on peut suivre la musique avec la partition tout en écoutant le morceau... ce qui est, musicalement, super intéressant...