That was quick.

That was quick: Well, I had pretty much made up my mind I was going to go ahead and buy the Ella Fitzgerald complete songbooks. My logic, most of which I outlined before in the "dilemma" entry, was reinforced by 30-out-of-30 5-star reviews on amazon and Mrs. S's general attitude that collectible sets of music and movies are worth having, if it's really what we want. The more I looked through The Real Book and the more I thought about my piano playing, the more I thought how useful it would be to have at least one version of every song written by guys like Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern, etc. I had basically resolved to buy it, and being able to get the set brand new for $112 on a music web-site, I thought the price was right, especially knowing that most of the amazon reviewers who gave the set 5-stars mentioned it was worth what they paid, even when they probably paid $200 or more for it. So, it was incredibly coincidental to find a brand new set on ebay, that when I found it, was at $51 with only about a half day left. It being a weekday, and the CD set not being exactly mainstream, I felt pretty confident I could get the new set at a price that would even be discounted compared to the club price. Well, I was right, and I ended up spending only $83 for the set, including shipping (just a little over $5 per disc). I couldn't be happier. Now, I'm just going to go through my real book and figure out how many songs I don't have a recorded version of yet but will have after the set arrives. Then I can chart a course for building my repertoire.