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“The world’s most popular collection of Jazz music was a totally unlicensed publication.”

99% Invisible99percentinvisible.org ↗

Two Berklee students photocopied the jazz canon in 1975 and paid nobody. Then bootleggers copied the bootleg. The book became the de facto textbook in the same conservatories that train professional musicians. Publishers fought it for 30 years, lost, and finally sold a legal edition in 2004.