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Author Topic: Thelonious Sphere Monk  (Read 5337 times)
the captain
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« on: July 18, 2014, 07:58:04 AM »

Thelonious Monk Trio is as good an album as any to begin immersing oneself in the music of Thelonious Sphere Monk, and his solo performance of "Just a Gigolo," recorded in 1954 and the second song on that album, may be the specific track with which to start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yELFzMQ1pyM

The casual listener could be forgiven for mistaking Monk for a shaky amateur in the earliest seconds. Monk is tentative with tempo, and certainly there are clunkers in the chords, aren't there? A stride pianist in slow (unsteady) motion, rushing now, excited about this part! Dragging now, finding what comes next and landing on some chromatic leading tones in the inner harmony voices. The first run through almost--almost--could be a fifth-grade piano recital.

But those missed notes aren't. Focus on them shows they're absolutely intended, following coherent lines that bring tension and release into the music--just not the expected ones (V7-I) or at the expected times. This, for a first-time listener, demands attention. This is interesting.

Perhaps it's at :23, when, between lines of the melody, Monk belies his total control with a throwaway left-hand harmony run to fill space. Dah dah dah (bee bom). At the minute mark, he swings, a new mood for the piece. But don't start dancing because he won't swing long for you, not without interruption.

Time--at least in music, but one suspects in general…--means something different for Monk than it does for you or me. The beat needn't be steady as a heartbeat. If a run needs six beats instead of four, godamnit, that's how long the measure will be. And if that pause is 10 months pregnant because the next chord just demands it, then we'll wait until Monk is good and ready to birth that baby. From 2:37 to 2:39, we're waiting for the last syllable of a would-be word. Three seconds, it turns out, is a long, long time to wait for a harmonic resolution … and it isn't even the ultimate resolution of the tune, which eventually shows up as a single note over an already played chord, the release of a suspension (followed by an upper register, "Jingle Bellsesque" reiteration of the melody).

Coming from an era of virtuosos, Monk was an anomaly. The guy could play, make no mistake, but those weren't Bud Powell's or Art Tatum's fingers; the rare rapid runs were risky, never quite at ease. Much is made of Monk's use of space and silence, and it's a fair point: the pauses are as much a part of his technical brilliance as the notes.

That's not true. The notes are his brilliance, but not in their speedy succession--rather, in their architecture. Especially when playing with sympathetic rhythm sections, Monk built and built, a game of Jenga using multiple towers balanced on obscure foundations, the tall ones always swaying just out of time. "Bemsha Swing" debuts on Thelonious Monk Trio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoUXPyFBvOE

It's a simple song, just two chords just coming out of the bop era, when a chord per beat wasn't unusual. Drummer Max Roach plays with Monk, not in the obvious sense of being in the band running tunes with him, but literally plays with him, two inventive kids showing off while complementing one another, bassist Gary Mapp the only one playing the game by its rules (thankfully, keeping a sense of grounding to the whole incident). The other two are mad scientists, Monk singing the praises of his own work in the background, as was his wont and Roach punctuating his approval in polyrhythmic hits.

If Monk wasn't a Tatum or a Powell--and he wasn't--he was an Ellington. His work, even when performed solo at the piano, was orchestral, although thankfully he did work in larger ensembles as well, including trios, quartets, and even bigger bands such as the 10-piece Thelonious Monk Orchestra as heard on the …At Town Hall album. Not just a composer and player, bout also like Ellington he was an arranger, revisiting the same relatively small body of work over the decades again and again on albums, personnel and style wholly different. How many "Round Midnights," how many "Bemsha Swings," how many "Blue Monks?" His catalogue is a master course in arranging, in technical possibilities.

But no matter the absurdity, the uncertainty, and the myriad presentations, Monk's tunes stand as singable entities--as real tunes. They're long since staples of the American jazz songbook.

Thelonious Monk sits at the highest level of American music, no one looking down at him. He has company on the plateau, but is second to no one.
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« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2014, 08:13:13 AM »

10 out of 10.
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Lowbacca
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« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2014, 08:37:36 AM »

Discovered Monk through a Jazz history seminar at university. So far I've heard Brilliant Corners, Criss-Cross and Thelonious Alone In San Francisco.



EDIT: What's pretty neat as well is his collaboration LP with Sonny Rollins!
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the captain
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« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2014, 09:05:26 AM »


EDIT: What's pretty neat as well is his collaboration LP with Sonny Rollins!

They have several albums together. I'll be writing about some of that at some point in the future.
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« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2014, 09:55:29 AM »


EDIT: What's pretty neat as well is his collaboration LP with Sonny Rollins!

They have several albums together. I'll be writing about some of that at some point in the future.
Oh, okay. I was referring to the one that's simply named after both of them. That's the only one I know.

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the captain
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« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2014, 10:32:00 AM »

"Ruby, My Dear" is a masterpiece. Monk's simple verse melody descends by steps and a skip three successive pleas over what is, behind its embellishing extensions, the simple base of almost all pop music, the ii-V-I, with each successive reiteration a whole step higher than the last. The verse repeats. The B section toys with short ideas dancing around repetition by half steps before finding its inevitable way to the verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6liAgg4SN88

A-A-B-A primarily over ii-V-I progressions. The "difficult" "musician's musician" delivers an deceptively simple love song that tricks the ear into thinking it's off kilter.

How do we know it's a love song? What else can the plaintive melody be, each successive statement implying an urgency as it climbs the keyboard for ever-higher perches. What else can cause the confused stumbling through the B section but love, working back to the ultimate question, of course, but afraid to offend? "Ruby, My Dear" is a love song.

(Lyrics were eventually written, well after the song was composed, interpreting it as a solace after lost love. I don't consider them here. Or at all.)

This version is from 1957 and features John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums (with Monk on piano, of course). As always, Coltrane's tone is dominant and forceful. The man often described as playing "sheets of sound" could (with all due respect) be accused of bleats of sound for the brash, nearly vibrato-less presentation. It's not an insult, but a compliment of interpretation, or at least a serendipitous match between tenor soloist and material.

Coltrane doesn't overplay: it's almost an R&B solo in spirit as opposed to a jazz master famous for bursts. His solo begins hinting at the framework of the melody but dances upward and then around in both directions until it finds temporary landing spots, testing each platform with tasteful turns.

He nods gracefully to Monk who shows a thorough comprehension of every nook and cranny of his own creation. Playing the changes is nothing; playing the architecture is another. To press the analogy already well worn here, if the melody walks the staircase and Coltrane's solo skips and runs it, Monk's solo reveals that there were other back staircases one can take to reach the same landings.

The melody returns for the B section and plays it out straight. On that thought, Ware and Wilson play it straight throughout, a classy rhythm section letting their soloists shine. Wilson's brushes circle the snare, ride, and hat with as steady and understated two and four you could want. Ware is spare, filling in few runs, adding drama in moments when, paired with Wilson, he implies a double time for a few bars, but mostly walks it in the pocket of quarter notes leaving note doubt as to the roots.

"Ruby, My Dear," you see, isn't a jazz tune to dizzy or spin a listener. Monk, a founder of bop, isn't a bopper--at least not here. He is a tunesmith here, and this is the Great American Songbook. This is a song you should sing along (even if there aren't any words). This is a song to be known and played, a song in which to participate.

You'll find it here, on Thelonious Monk, with John Coltrane. You'll find a 1959 solo version on Alone in San Francisco that shows Monk abusing the very concept of tempo and building out the harmonies in spots well beyond that aforementioned quartet version. You'll find it with Coleman Hawkins, or a 1940s trio version. Just find it.
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« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2014, 04:57:23 PM »

about time we got a Monk discussion going...!

my favorite song on that Monk/Rollins album is "Work" which doesn't feature Rollins at all. what a tune.
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« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2014, 08:57:25 AM »

Twelve-bar blues. Three chords on which is built most of the popular music of the past century or so, ranging from secular to sacred and back again. Because every beginner, amateur, or hobbyist starts there, one can easily, mistakenly assume that real musicians--composers or instrumentalists--move beyond the form.

Forms need never be moved beyond; the greatest find ways to move within them.

Thelonious Monk's blues standard "Blue Monk" is an example. It is nothing more than those components listed above: 12 bars, three chords, in this case in Bb, with a melody reminiscent of phrases from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

The song debuted on Thelonious Monk Trio, with Monk backed by Percy Heath and Art Blakey, recorded in 1952.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4X5folutT8

That appearance--the first of many by Monk himself as well as virtually every jazz musician to follow--shows the blues as a versatile shell for, well, anything. And form notwithstanding, if the blues inspires Monk's playing, it does not direct him. Heath's impassioned, pocketed walking is the deepest blues to be heard. Blakey finds other rhythms well beyond what's here. Monk, as usual, finds other planets. He runs through the head once, and not quite straight even there, before taking tangents.

A representative, if stellar, version of the song is found on the At Carnegie Hall album done with John Coltrane, recorded in 1957. Like Monk, Coltrane isn't a blues man, though of course it's an element of his repertoire. And like on Trio, the result is more jazz atop blues than blues itself. Trane takes the first solo and within his first chorus, he's gone. Far gone. Unlike his performance on "Ruby, My Dear" referenced prior, he does not show restraint, but rather seems out to show a saxophone can play chords if need be. The sheets of sound blue blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f-eUXJSlAc

For those new to Monk, this 1958 trio performance will be revelatory, as it is a chance to watch the unique master--it's from a televised performance rather than just audio. Here you see his unorthodox posture, his flattened hands, his percussive approach. You see his whimsy, his humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUWtrgTpcs

You also hear more blues in the work, even gospel, as his solo calls to mind shout choruses when he goes chordal, bigger. Still, he explores in tentative tickles, too. One suspects in-jokes everywhere.

The bluesiest rendition in which I can recall Monk's participation is from a1958 album with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, With Thelonious Monk. The tempo is slower, the swing deeper, the Johnny Griffin's sax and Bill Hardman's trumpet soulful. Monk's blues tended to be a New York phenomenon, understood and toyed with. Blakey and his group reintroduced "Blue Monk" to blues, unsurprising as The Jazz Messengers were formed as a reaction to the "cool jazz" form often called West Coast jazz, intentionally loading their work with soul, funk, what they considered the depth of emotion and feeling of eastern and southern black musicians that was essential to jazz (as opposed to the "cool" intellectualism of often-white west coasters).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98CuS9zFoWQ

Merits of categorization and subgenre aside, here "Blue Monk" drips with funk, an almost raunchy sex to its sound. Griffin, who himself played in Monk's groups as well as with Blakey, absolutely wails. His wails totally differ from Coltrane's. The latter was always desperately inquisitive, while Griffin's wails are wholly of this earth.

Monk's solo (and Blakey's drumming beyond keeping time, actually comping for Monk) deserves its own essay. Suffice to say it lacks some of his oft-repeated ideas for the tune and instead seems almost wholly inspired by the setting. It is heavy-handed and resonant, intentional and deep. And for the first time, blues. He goes on to comp beautifully for Hardman, prominent to the point of duet.

Perhaps the bluesiest version of the song I know is from 1965, with a Wes Montgomery and Johnny Griffin led quintet. Slower and duskier than those other versions, if Griffin wailed in 1958, the thesaurus fails us in 1965. What surpasses wailing, anyway? Of course, this is also an opportunity to hear one of the absolute masters of jazz guitar, with Montgomery typically virtuosic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0C-tzaXbuc

There are no shortages of examples of the song, from high school jazz bands to the giants of the style. One of the glories of jazz is that, unlike most of modern pop music, tunes that work their way into the songbook stay there and everyone interprets them at some time or another. (There is no shame in not writing all of--or any of, for that matter--one's own material. And in fact as a jazz musician, one is composing with every performance.) To compare Monk on Day A to Day B or Day Z is instructive, as is comparing Griffin to Coltrane to Rouse to whomever else.

Further, or rather to reiterate, "Blue Monk" and the many performances thereof is a wonderful example of how the simplest structure doesn't have to be left behind. There is no achievement in complicating a structure, or throwing it away. That isn't experimentation or progress so much as lack of discipline. The genius is in working within and around the structure immediately familiar to everyone, finding ways to surprise, amuse, or confuse a listener without abandoning him.
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« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2014, 01:32:33 PM »

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the captain
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« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2014, 03:06:07 PM »

Just the youtube clip cuts off.

As far as the audience, sadly, the intelligensia was largely who always praised Monk. He's almost a Captain Beefheart of the jazz world, a writer's dream for the eccentricities and influence on musicians outside the popular world. (It's why several labels had him record standards in an attempt to make him mainstream.) I say "sadly" because I think--like Beefheart--he's entirely accessible if one wants to access him.
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« Reply #10 on: July 20, 2014, 09:43:50 AM »

'Round Midnight
In the early 1940s, Thelonious Monk wrote "Round Midnight," also known as "Round About Midnight." And like seemingly every song referenced in this series, yes, this, too, has come to be recognized as a classic.

And, again, as a jazz standard, it has been interpreted innumerable times, both by the composer himself and everyone else. To choose a definitive version, or even a starting point, seems hopeless.

The earliest recording of the tune I own is from June 1946, performed by Dizzy Gillespie's big band with Monk on piano (and an assortment of other great players filling out the ensemble). I can't find it on youtube, which might be for the best. It turns an admittedly dramatic, haunting, and even suggestive melody into a laughable period piece of melodrama. The liner notes of that album claim Monk didn't care for the arrangement (by Gil Fuller), and I can't blame him. The wrong arrangement leaves this tune as a B-movie soundtrack, rife for caricature. There is nothing of the risk or sex of midnight in it, only the background music for the promotional short intended to scare the parents of the day into avoiding the risk or sex of midnight. "Keep your children safe, or…" [Cue the music.]

"Round Midnight" should smolder, not squirt lighter fluid.

Here is an apparently earlier Gillespie sextet version with a similar, but obviously scaled back, arrangement idea and Al Haig on piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPsYcbmujDw

It claims to be from February 1946, though I don't have it and am trusting the youtube notes. It includes the great Milt Jackson on vibes, though his solo is nothing particularly exciting, somewhat by-numbers and almost frustratingly understated. Tenorist Lucky Thompson sounds like Coleman Hawkins with his classic tone and wide vibrato. It's ironic that it's the would-be Monk, Haig--instead of the bandleader Gillespie (reel it in, Diz) or the great Jackson--whose brief solo stands out as best up to the standard set by this standard.

The earliest Monk-led recording I have is from 1947 and is by what was then the Thelonious Monk Quintet: Monk, George Taitt on trumpet, Sahib Shibab on alto sax, Bob Paige onb bass, and Art Blakey on drums. Common for the recordings of the time, it's a brief take, just over three minutes, and it features the tune itself, with Monk soloing over the horns' arranged backgrounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zre0u5XyNfY

After a half-minute introduction, the minor-key masterpiece melody enters on piano. The prominence of the horns, though, overshadows it somewhat, creating a duller experience in their elongated chordal duet. It's a matter of mixing more than anything.

Maybe to find the understatement, the cool, and the sensuality the tune needs, one has to go to the master thereof: Miles Davis. This performance is a duet between Davis and Monk from 1955's Newport festival. Of those versions iterated above, this is the only one with so much as a hint of romance. This is the only one your daughter shouldn't listen to.

Monk respects his own song here, and more importantly, his soloist. His personality comes through not just in the composition but the comping, but he restrains it throughout Miles's melodic statement and solo, laying down chords with relatively few fragmented interjections. Once he begins to solo about three minutes in, he focuses on his melody while highlighting the inner voicings of his song's brilliant chords. There are a few tickles, but no jokes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ2HGyKSZyc

This is the proper vein for "Round Midnight," how it should be performed and heard. Other great examples by Monk are out there, but Miles may have adopted this tune and made it his own, though he had questionable attempts as well. A 1967 live rendition by his second great quintet--Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Davis--opens as a duet but goes into a hard, fast bop that is confusing, though certainly not bad. (Is anything by that quintet bad?)
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« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2014, 04:15:14 PM »

The Captain, some incredible posts, thanks for taking the time to make them.

I hadn't seen the 1958 footage of Monk playing Blue Monk before (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUWtrgTpcs). I love Coleman Hawkins' reaction at 2:24, if that's the realtime reaction to what he just heard.

I like best watching Monk's foot going. That's the time he's keeping right there Smiley

Abdul-Malik is an incredible bass player for Monk, but the drummer sadly is no Art Blakey.
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« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2014, 04:20:50 PM »

If you haven't seen "Straight, No Chaser" I highly recommend it  Smiley
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the captain
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« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2014, 06:40:44 PM »

The Captain, some incredible posts, thanks for taking the time to make them.

I hadn't seen the 1958 footage of Monk playing Blue Monk before (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUWtrgTpcs). I love Coleman Hawkins' reaction at 2:24, if that's the realtime reaction to what he just heard.

I like best watching Monk's foot going. That's the time he's keeping right there Smiley

Abdul-Malik is an incredible bass player for Monk, but the drummer sadly is no Art Blakey.

Thank you, Loaf, I appreciate that. I'm enjoying the respite from the raging debates over who is trampling whose right to an opinion about some yet-unheard music.

The drummer is Osie Johnson, and while he's actually a pretty accomplished jazz drummer, I agree it isn't the best fit here. In fact, I don't know whether he ever played with Monk anywhere else--I'm pretty sure he never recorded with him and I'm not aware of him as a part of any Monk ensemble. May have been a matter of availability? 
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« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2014, 04:23:05 PM »

…with Clark Terry

While he had begun his jazz career as house pianist at Minton's in 1941 (where he helped birth bebop) and went on to play with an assortment of musicians and record with Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk rarely played the role of sideman again once he began recording as a bandleader in the late '40s and early '50s.

A rare and fortunate exception is on Clark Terry's 1958 In Orbit, for Riverside Records. Terry's early career was far from Monk's bop beginnings, instead leaving his native St. Louis to play with the likes of Count Basie's and Duke Ellington's big bands from the late '40s through the late '50s. His lyrical style suited the latter, while his blues background, the former.

In Orbit goes 10 songs deep in the version I have, with the 10th song a bonus from the CD reissue. It is well worth your time, Monk fan or not, as Terry shines brightly throughout. He is the sound of pure class, a giant possibly under-appreciated, maybe because of his substantial time as a band member rather than combo leader, maybe because he isn't--I say isn't because he's still with us--an addict, an ass, or a gossip columnist's dream. He's just a virtuosic musician.

Throughout, Monk seems to be on his best behavior. It's still Monk--there are no conspiracy theories of swapped pianists--but he has checked his quirkiness at the door. At times, one gets the impression Monk is trying to reinforce his reputation as different, as difficult. (Is he trying to get punched?) But he's on his best behavior throughout this album.

Monk's gospel influences are apparent throughout Terry's "One Foot in the Gutter," a deep blues with no bop pretensions. He rolls through the tune softening the jagged edges one expects from him, and the harmonies embellishing the chords are entirely of the idiom.

http://youtu.be/sxFLZdaF95Y?t=4m37s

His comping for Terry's clean, agile solo in particular shows off his gospel background. (Monk played piano for a traveling evangelist during his late teens.) The turnarounds are of the church.

If Monk's gospel-tinged blues is surprising, his stunning work on the ballad "Trust in Me" is breathtaking. He shimmers the introduction to this standard, clearing the way for Terry's mellow flugelhorn to pine the melody. Again, Monk fails completely to steal the attention from his frontman, or to poke and prod him. Instead he compliments him as he complements him, assenting with answered runs here and there but most often offering the moral support of the changes in full-handed voicings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYfdnGHbf6U

His solo comes as Philly Joe Jones picks up the swing, livening things up. Monk opens with single-note runs, smoother than one expects from him and without much in the way of left-hand comping, though he builds as he goes. The playing is tasteful and--gasp!--pretty. Not pretty once you get to know it. Pretty. Conventionally pretty, right from the get-go.

Jones and bassist Sam Jones (no relation) are too damn good to go without mention. The former played in Miles Davis's first great quintet, while the latter was a much-sought after bassist probably best known for his work with Cannonball Adderly in the late '50s and through the '60s. They both take the role of good soldiers in these tunes, letting the two protagonists take center stage. Suffice to say that their sympathies to the tunes, their subjugation of their own skills, shows just how great they really both were.

There are many great examples of each of these four giants' genius, but In Orbit is a unique opportunity to find Monk and Terry not only together for the one and only time, but to find Monk joining Jones and Jones to serve Terry's muse. It's a special recording.
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« Reply #15 on: July 22, 2014, 07:18:42 PM »

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« Reply #16 on: July 23, 2014, 01:37:33 AM »


I hadn't seen the 1958 footage of Monk playing Blue Monk before (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUWtrgTpcs). I love Coleman Hawkins' reaction at 2:24, if that's the realtime reaction to what he just heard.

great footage! that's Count Basie.
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« Reply #17 on: July 23, 2014, 01:48:17 AM »


I hadn't seen the 1958 footage of Monk playing Blue Monk before (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUWtrgTpcs). I love Coleman Hawkins' reaction at 2:24, if that's the realtime reaction to what he just heard.

great footage! that's Count Basie.

So it is! That's not how i pictured Count Basie. I assumed he was the same guy at 2:41 holding the sax, but i guess not (that guy at 2:41 is coleman hawkins?) They do look similar wearing the same hat, and i thought the discontinuity of their posture and position was just poor 50s TV editing Smiley
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« Reply #18 on: August 01, 2014, 10:30:22 AM »

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the captain
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« Reply #19 on: August 01, 2014, 10:39:35 AM »

Now how about a Duke Ellington thread?  angel

Hmmm maybe. I had more Monk in mind but got sidetracked by real life a little.
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« Reply #20 on: August 02, 2014, 02:01:54 AM »

Last night I listened to the Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers & Thelonious Monk and Monk plays Ellington albums.

The one with Art Blakey is superb. Monk is still Monk but the Jazz Messengers have such a strong musicality of their own that it's like a meeting of the minds. An instance of a collaboration being more than the sum of its parts.

The Ellington album is also great, and, as the captain said about his playing on the Clark Terry album, there are moments of real prettiness, like thr first two minutes of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwfU3g_6rhU

The liner notes by Orrin Keepnews are on the mark when they say that the idea of an Ellington covers album was designed to allow an audience who were not raised on allnight bop jam sessions to appreciate how Monk can play around with melodies and themes by letting him play well known tunes.
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the captain
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« Reply #21 on: August 02, 2014, 07:02:46 AM »

Both of those albums you mentioned are spectacular, Loaf. And I totally agree about Blakey's groups.

With respect to the strategy of easing audiences into Monk through covers on the Ellington album, Riverside did that a few times early on. The Unique Thelonious Monk follows that same idea.
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« Reply #22 on: August 10, 2014, 02:13:23 PM »

I've been reading Stanley Crouch's new bio of Charlie Parker and so i've been listening to a lot of Bird recently. The bio only goes up to 1942. I don't have much by Charlie Parker, but i do have Bird & Diz from 1950 which has Monk on piano, and i love this album.

I'm pretty sure it was the only time the 3 of them played together (on record at least), but does anyone know if there are any other recordings with Monk & either Bird or Dizzy?
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« Reply #23 on: August 10, 2014, 07:03:34 PM »

I like vocal jazz but free/improvised music really bores me. Its an academic genre because it lacks immediacy. Classical too is like that. Maybe its because i know a lot academics/snobs listen to those two genres...

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« Reply #24 on: August 10, 2014, 07:57:55 PM »

I like vocal jazz but free/improvised music really bores me. Its an academic genre because it lacks immediacy. Classical too is like that. Maybe its because i know a lot academics/snobs listen to those two genres...



Free/improvised isn't really what Monk is doing. There is improvisation, obviously, but it is all always over a chordal foundation. "Free" would imply something more totally lacking structure, wholly improvised with no underlying tune.

It's interesting that you call the music combining an assortment of folk musics that rose out of bars an "academic genre." It became one, of course, just as rock n roll long-since did. There are kinds of jazz that fit that description. But as many others or more most certainly don't. Is blues academic? It's improvisation over a song structure, same as jazz, just easier. Check out some of the stories above: plenty of jazz musicians thought bop was too cerebral, then later that cool was. They responded with what they thought was more vital, vibrant, elemental.

Comparing it to classical music is really funny, especially since the aspect of jazz you mention not liking is improvisation, something (formerly common but long-since) mostly absent from classical.

If you're judging music based on people you know and what they listen to, I'd advise you to stop it. Don't blame the music for some idiots' tastes.
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