[seabre]

This brings up a lot of memories. I got lost on the way to jazz school and studied CS instead. Still went to school on a partial music scholarship. Wound-up playing so much anyway that it killed my grades. Worked out in the end, lol.

If you have a copy of the "illegal" Real Book you'll notice that there are a lot of Steve Swallow tunes in there :-)

There are definitely people that look down on using the Real Books/iReal as a crutch. IMHO it's not a huge deal. But, it is widely encouraged to learn as many commonly called tunes as you can though. You can find lists of those in various places: https://www.shermusic.com/1883217040.php and https://www.shermusic.com/1883217482.php for example. The reason for that honestly is that you will find yourself in a scenario where something called isn't in your book. Popular chord changes get re-used a lot, so the more material you know can help you "figure out" the unknown tune quickly. Called tune just rhythm changes? Blues changes? So What/Impressions changes? etc.