Obama-Monk Inaugural Suite

I offer you this musical mash-up of the great Thelonious Monk's Straight No Chaser combined with excerpts of Barack Obama's 2013 Inaugural Speech. I am not making any political statement here. Please just consider this a commemorative audio souvenir of this historic event, and an interesting fusion of Jazz and the spoken word.

Click here for the 
Obama-Monk 2nd Inaugural Suite.

Thelonious Monk  piano; Barack Obama – voice; Thad Jones – cornet; Sam Jones – bass; Charlie Rouse – tenor saxophone; Art Taylor – drums

The Microscopic Septet Plays Big Monk

The Microscopic Septet was active between 1980 and 1992 and came back together in 2006 on the occasion of the re-release of their original recordings.  Both the re-release and the reunion are very good signs for the state of modern jazz.  I will still lodge a complaint.  The re-release-Seven Men In Neckties-doesn't seem to be available for download.  There is no excuse for this!  I would have downloaded it tonight if I had found it.  

What I did download was Friday the Thirteenth: the Micros Play Monk.  It occurs to me that if I had a dollar for every album devoted to Monk compositions, I'd be able to buy more albums devoted to Monk compositions.  There is no such thing as too many.  This one is delicious.  Here is the lineup:

• Alto Saxophone – Don Davis (3)
• Baritone Saxophone – Dave Sewelson
• Bass – David Hofstra
• Drums – Richard Dworkin
• Piano – Joel Forrester
• Soprano Saxophone – Phillip Johnston
• Tenor Saxophone – Mike Hashim* 

That's obviously a horn-heavy band, with almost a big band feel at times.  It excels at texture and drama.   The sound of each instrument is exquisite.  I just can't get enough baritone sax.  Sewelson's sax adds enormous muscle when all the horns are playing together. 

Each solo is a little gem.  Each piece sparkles with dozens of these gems.  There are no weak links in the chain, but I have to single out Forrester's piano and founder Johnston's soprano sax.  For heaven's sake and Monk's memory, get this one.

I am playing 'Brilliant Corners' and 'Misterioso'. 

Monk's Patron Saint

The British Guardian has a wonderful piece on Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarte, who abandoned her husband an four children to spend her life attending to Thelonious Monk.  Here is a bit of it:

Nica, who was born in 1913, grew up at Tring Park (Tring is now a school; Waddesdon Manor, though administered by a trust under the chairmanship of Hannah's father, Jacob, was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957). There, she wiled away her young days in a starched white dress, sewing and playing the piano; her parents did not approve of education for girls and running and hiding were forbidden lest her frock be ruined. Life was monotonous and dull but, knowing nothing else, she did not think to kick against it.

In 1934, she was duly presented at court and her marriage in 1935, to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, a handsome French diplomat, was predictable, if not the soaring match her ambitious mother had dreamed of. If he was controlling, well, she was used to that.
In 1948, however, something happened. On her way to the airport after a visit to New York, Nica stopped to visit a friend, the jazz pianist Teddy Wilson, who played her a recording of "Round Midnight" by a then unknown jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk. Unable to believe her ears, she listened to it 20 times in a row and was bewitched. Having missed her plane, she never went home again.

Abandoning her husband and five children, she moved into a suite at the Stanhope hotel and set about trying to meet the man who had made this extraordinary record. Naturally, it took a while to track the erratic Monk down. It wasn't until 1954 that she finally laid eyes on him, having flown to Paris for the privilege. Did he live up to her dreams? Oh, yes. He was, she said, "the most beautiful man she had ever seen". From that moment, there was no going back. For the next 28 years, Nica devoted her life to Thelonious Monk. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. He was a genius, pure and simple, and there was nothing she would not do – no money she would not spend, no place she would not go – to make his life easier.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a jazz story.  Monk is indeed the most beautiful man.  His compositions revolve like Jupiter in the heavens.  It is easy to see how powerful the gravitational pull is on bop and avant garde.  It is easy to forget how powerful it is when a single soul is involved.  I have felt its pull, but not so much as the Baroness. 

Monk's story is tragic.  He was a towering genius, but he suffered from a mental illness that eventually silenced him.  It is one of God's graces that he had someone to take care of him at the end.  God bless Monk.  And God bless Nica. 

I am playing 'Round Midnight' from Thelonious Monk at the Blackhawk.  This is not the version Baroness  Pannonica de Koenigswarte heard.  It's just the one I landed on when I scrolled down my iTunes menu.  Here is the lineup:

• Bass – John Ore
• Drums – Billy Higgins
• Tenor Saxophone – Charlie Rouse, Harold Land
• Trumpet – Joe Gordon

Essential Monk Recordings

Here are some suggestions for the collector wanting to get some essential Thelonious Monk recordings.  You can hear a lot of this music right now at Jazz Note Radio on Live365.  See the link top right. 

1. Brilliant Corners (Monk's best single recording and one of the best albums in modern jazz)
2. Misterioso & Thelonious in Action (Two albums of Monk live at the Five Spot)
3. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk
4. Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane Live at Carnegie Hall
5. Monk's Music
6. Underground
7. Live at the It Club
8. Monk in Paris
9. Alone in San Francisco
10. It's Monk Time

That's a pretty good basic Monk collection.  You can add a lot by investing in two box sets.  One is The Complete Blue Note Recordings, which gives you most of the early Monk recordings.  I can't remember what I paid, but I seem to recall that it was a bit pricey.  Alternatively you could get Thelonious Monk: Genius of Modern Music.  There are two or three discs sold separately, and they're affordable.  

The second box is Thelonious Monk: Original Album Classics, which includes five Monk albums made for Columbia.  They come in sleeves with the original covers, so its five albums for a very reasonable price.  I paid about $18 for it, but you may not get that good a deal.  

Monk Show Playlist

Here is a playlist of the current show running on Live365.  You can see a link to the show on the right.  The playlist is in order.  I identify the players on the show.  If you want to check out the Monk tunes, go to the wonderful Jazz Discography Project.  

Japanese Folk Song/Monk/Straight No Chaser/1966

Round Midnight/Monk/Misterioso/1958

Blue Monk/Monk/Thelonious Alone in San Francisco/1959
Rhythm-A-Ning/Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk/1957
In Walked Bud/Monk/Underground/1967
Evidence/Monk/Live at the It Club/1964
Nutty/Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall/1957
Ruby My Dear/Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane/1957
Epistrophy/Charlie Rouse/Epistrophy/
Friday the 13th/Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins/1953
Straight No Chaser/Mulligan Meets Monk/1957
Round Midnight/Charlie Haden/The Montreal Tapes/
Brilliant Corners/Paul Motian and the EBBB
Well You Needn't/John Stetch/Exponentially Monk/
Four in One/Anthony Braxton/Six Monk's Compositions/1989
Round Midnight/Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron/Live at the Dreher Paris 1981
Pannonica/Steve Lacy/5xMonk5xLacy/
Let's Cool One/Steve Lacy with Don Cherry/Evidence/
Bemsha Swing/Cecil Taylor/Jazz Advance/1956
Trinkle-Tinkle/Alexander Von Schlippenbach/Monk's Casino/2004
Boo Boo's Birthday/Alexander Von Schlippenbach/Monk's Casino/2004

Bright Mississippi/Alexander Von Schlippenbach/Monk's Casino/2004

Thelonious Monk & Sam Rivers.

My Thelonious Monk tribute show is almost done.  I am hoping to launch it tomorrow night (Saturday) at 10pm Central Time.  I'll post here if there is a delay.  The United States Congress told me not to post a playlist in advance, but I will post one after the show gets going.  Not quite half the show consists of Monk recordings, and the rest of other jazzmen covering Monk's compositions.  If you have read this blog in the past, you will have some idea of the mix.  I have several bop treatments of Monk, and some other avant garde treatments.  Steve Lacy is well represented.  

Meanwhile, I have been listening to a new box set: The Complete Blue Note Sam Rivers Sessions.  It is three CDs including four of River's early recordings as leader.  Rivers is best known as an avant garde sax player, but this bundle of music is very accessible and it is utterly delicious.  The box is a little hard to come by.  You might find it easier to get Fushia Swing Song, Dimensions and Extensions, A New Conception, and Contours.  You won't be disappointed by any of them.  Rivers is the real thing.  Let the River flow. 

Upcoming Monk Show

My first show is running.  I like to think it's a good mix of music: some classics that are very well known, but a lot of music that the average jazz fan might not have heard yet.  Live365 has been a good experience over all, but it does have its irritations.  Most of them are due to the Digital Age Communications Act.  For example, I cannot play more than four pieces by one artist or one album in a three hour period.  I understand the album thing, but why the artist thing?  That makes it a challenge to do a show on one artist like Miles or Monk.  I am not allowed by that law to publish a playlist.  I gather that the intent is to prevent Online Radio stations from turning into sources of free music.  All of this makes it harder to turn new listeners on to the music I love. 

The other irritation is the frequent ads.  I don't mind commercials.  It kinda makes this seem like real radio.  I just get tired of the same commercials over and over.  

Anyway, I am working on a Monk program.  I recently saw the biopic Straight No Chaser.  I cried.  Really.  My next show will feature a lot of Monk playing his own music and a lot of other jazz artists covering Monk compositions.  The covers will stretch from solid bop interpretations to the avant garde branch of Monk's church.  I will feature solos, trios, and larger bands.  Don't miss it!

Early Rollins

Sounds like a country singer: Early Rollins and the Out House Orchestra!  I spent nine days in Glacier National Park where I saw exactly nine bears, all but two of them on the same day.  None of them expressed any interest in jazz.  

When I got back, a prize was waiting for me: almost all of a Sonny Rollins box set: The Complete Prestige Recordings.  I say almost all, because when you buy a box set at a suspiciously low price, sometimes you get less than what you bargained for.  I got precisely four of seven discs in that set.  The whole thing new costs over seventy bucks, and I got the first four discs for well less than half of that.  

Oh, but jazz babies, here is proof that the Gods of Bop are smiling on yours truly.  The material on the missing discs was released as Work Time, Sonny Rollins Plus 4, Tenor Madness, Sonny Rollins Plays for Bird, and Tour De Force, and Rollin's magnum opus, Saxophone Colossus.  I already had all of those recordings.  By contrast, I had almost nothing on the four discs that I did receive.  He shoots.  He scores.  Nothing but net.  

The whole box contains (I believe) all Rollin's appearances for Prestige  between 1949 and 1956.  That is most of the early Sonny Rollins, and it tells a story.  Rollins was brilliant from the get go.  Slip one of the better pieces from this era onto a later album, fuzz up the more contemporary stuff a bit to allow for advances in technology, and the early recording will fit right in.  This says something about Rollins, but something more important about the organic history of jazz.  As the music evolves, new stuff gets added to the old stuff, but the old stuff isn't discarded.  What is brilliant and timely in 1949 lives on, alongside what is unprecedented in 1962.  I am not saying that Rollins doesn't develop or explore new avenues of improvisation.  He certainly does.  I am saying that, while he learns much, he forgets nothing of value.  

Enough analysis; here is a sample.  It's from a 1953 recording made in New York City.  The band: Julius Watkins (frh) Sonny Rollins (ts) Thelonious Monk (p) Percy Heath (b) Willie Jones (d).  It appears on the album Thelonious Monk/Sonny Rollins.  It is so damn good it makes the tomatoes ripen in my garden.  Here is about half the number. 

Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins/Friday the Thirteenth/

 Have fun with that. 

Charlie Rouse & Monk

This evening, while driving across my beautiful home town, I listened to a wonderful jazz show on the radio.   Night Lights: Classic Jazz with host David Brent Johnson.  To my extreme left, north of town, a thunderhead was flashing like it was trying to tell me something.  Coming out of my car speakers was a good bit of Thelonious Monk from one of his Columbia albums that I recently reviewed.  The soft voice of the host broke in with some compelling commentary about Charlie Rouse, Monk's own tenor.  David Brent Johnson must be a very shrewd jazz critic, because he agrees with me.  Rouse was twenty-four karat.  

He said something that had not occurred to me: that Rouse had to take the blame for any shortcomings that critics found in Monk's recordings.  After all, it couldn't be Monk's fault!  I think these recordings are exquisite, so I have no quarrel with Rouse or Monk.  It looks like you can listen to the shows on the website, so I am looking forward to hearing the Monk show in its entirety.  I also notice that one is posted on Lee Konitz.  I am not going to miss that one.  

I recently acquired Rouses' album Epistrophy.  It's a live date, recorded only seven weeks before Rouse passed away in 1988.  The program is pure Monk.  Listening to it, it occurs to me that I never get tired of Monk's music. 

Here is a sample.  I believe it is the first Monk composition I ever heard.  That was a good thirty years ago, and it turned the ground under me.  I cut out the piano solo following Rouse's solo.  You can get the album from eMusic for a few quid. 

Charlie Rouse/Ruby, My Dear/Epistrophy

Enjoy.  If  you do, drop me a line.  It's been really quite of late. 

Only Monk

I have been listening to a lot of Monk over the last few days, for reasons that are apparent from my last post.  Every now and then I hear a piece that grabs my heart and makes it pump double time.  It happened today when I listened to 'Japanese Folk Song' on Monk's album.  The sheer power of the melody is overwhelming (if not, noticeably, Japanese). 

Here is a cut from the number, including Rouse's solo followed by Monk.  Each is brilliant, but the sax part is to die for.  I have omitted Gale's solo.  Buy it.  

Thelonious Monk/Japanese Folk Song [Kojo No Tsuki]/Straight No Chaser

Have a good weekend, Jazz babies.  

A Mountain of Monk 4 a Molehill of Money

Happy Birthday Greg Osby!  

I have been enjoying a lot of newly acquired jazz lately.  Today the UPS guy brought me a marvelous little package containing a small Columbia box: Thelonious Monk: Original Album Classics.  I paid about $18 for it.  It is not a new document, as many box sets are.  It simply repackages five original Monk albums.  Each album comes in a little cardboard sleeve with the original front and back printed on it.  As it happened, I had not one of the five, so this was quite a pickup.  The albums are:

1. Straight, No Chaser
2. Underground
3. Criss-Cross
4. Monk's Dream
5. Solo Monk

 I have been dancing to all of them (along with my beagle, Bella, who is a big Monk fan) and each is worth a lot more than three dollars and sixty cents.  The first four albums feature Monk's sax man, Charlie Rouse.  The first two feature Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums.  The third and fourth, John Ore on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums. 

Monk's corpus is well served by some brilliant saxophone players.  John Coltrane obviously stands out, but I have sung the praises of Johnny Griffin more than once.  His work on the Five Spot albums (Thelonious in Action and Misterioso) and on the Jazz Messengers/Monk album, is brilliant.  

Charlie Rouse, who was Monk's handpicked sideman on many recordings, might be Monk's most perfect partner.  His playing is exquisite on its own.  He doesn't play with Monk so much as channel Monk's genius through his horn.  Rouse is one of the unsung heroes of modern jazz.  

Here is a sample: Rouses' solo on 'Monk's Dream'.  My excerpt includes the beginning and the solo.  For Monk's brilliant reply, pony up and get the box.  

Thelonious Monk Quartet/Monk's Dream/Monk's Dream (excerpt)

ps.  While I was writing this post, I was listening to the recording.  It just got to 'Bye-ya'.  Wow, what a piece of composing.  So, well inspired, I give you this cut of another version of the song.  Steve Lacy plays soprano and Mal Waldron piano.  I am too lazy right now to look up the rest of the band.  You get a taste here of the Lacy and Waldron's solos.  

Steve Lacy/Bye-Ya/Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk (excerpt)

Don't miss this stuff.  It's what you want to hear.

Ps.  On his way to deliver my Monk, the UPS guy was stung by two hornets.  Don't let his sacrifice go in vain. 

Wynton Marsalis channels Louis Armstrong channeling Thelonious Monk

Can Ouija Boards be networked?  Wynton Marsalis thinks so.  I have been listening to the fourth volume of his Standard Time Series: Marsalis Plays Monk.  The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (may it be praised!) informs me that Marsalis intended to "recast Monk's music in the form of the ensemble jazz of Louis Armstrong's jazz orchestra of 1927 and 1928."  Okay.  What? 

I'm not sure what all that means, but this album is one more tent revival meeting for the cult of Monk.  As a true believer, I can only say amen.  Has any jazz composer been so frequently covered or so deeply worshiped as Thelonious Monk?  Monk's compositions haunt modern jazz.  You might enjoy a good evening by listening to this album along with Anthony Braxton's Monk album and Monk's own Brilliant Corners.  Hey, I think I'll do that.  Marsalis Plays Monk is a brilliant work, and brilliantly recorded.  You can hear the buzz of the bass.

Here is an excerpt from one of the numbers.  It is features the piano player Eric Reed.  This guy straightens out Monk, in accord with the general theme, but that only highlights the genius of the composition.  I love this piece of music. 

Wynton Marsalis/Brilliant Corners/Marsalis Plays Monk/excerpt

Also don't miss the last piece on the album: 'Green Chimneys'.  I didn't recognize that Monk number.  I won't forget it. 

Ran Blake Drops Me a Note. Nothing so far from George Russell

I received a very kind email from Ran Blake in response to my last post.  Now, if only I can get a message from Thelonious Monk on my Ouija board!  This blog is a work of love for all those jazz artists that have touched me, and it is very rewarding to get a response from one of the greats.  

Mr. Blake advises me that a "memorial for George Russell will take place the second Saturday in may in Manhattan."  Living in South Dakota, Manhattan is a little bit out of my range.  If it weren't, I would certainly be there.  I have posted before on George 'Russell.  I am very fond of his magnum opus, Ezz-Thetics.  Any essential collection of modern jazz should include that and four or five other Russell recordings.  Get Stratus funk and The RCA Victor Workshop.  You won't be disappointed.  If you can make the Russell memorial, don't miss it.  Tell 'em I sent ya. 

Here is a wonderful sample:

George Russell/Bent Eagle/Stratus Funk

An actual note from Ran Blake got me interested in Ran Blake.  Blake is a representative of the "Third Stream" movement in jazz.  This, I gather, is analogous to jazz fusion, only here it is a fusion of jazz with classical music.  Don't take my word for it.  I don't know what I am talking about.  But that never stopped me before.  

I think a lot of jazz composition rivals the best of classical music.  Blake's teacher, Mal Waldron, is a good example.  I fell deeply in love with Waldron's many duet albums, which are more classical in feel, for the most part, than they are jazzy.  Waldron's duet with Marion Brown, Songs of Love and Regret, comes to mind.  I haven't heard anything in classical music (and I have listened to a lot of that) that is better than 'To a Golden Lady in her Gram Cracker Window'.   

Well, tonight I have been listening to Ran Blake's Epistrophy.  I am consistently amazed by the power that Monk's compositions have in modern jazz.  Scroll down the jazz genre section of my iPod (that's pretty much the whole iPod), stop and spit.  Chances are you will hit a Monk cover.  I shouldn't wonder.  I am myself obsessed with Monk.  You will find a lot of Monk posts on this blog.  I recently praise Anthony Braxton's marvelous album of Monk compositions.  Monk seems to be the Rosetta Stone of jazz: the one place that everyone understands everyone else.  

Blake's Epistrophy is another exquisite interpretation of Monk' genius.  If you like solo piano jazz in any form, you will like this.  As I listened, I kept thinking: okay, so that is what that meant!  Here is a sample.  

Ran Blake/'Round Midnight/Epistrophy

So get the CD.  You'll like it, especially if you like Monk's 'Epistrophy'.  He does it three times.  I do. 

The Short Life of Barbara Monk/Ran Blake Quartet

Now here's my plan: I will continue to include links to whole songs with each posting, but after a week or two I will eliminate those links.  I am hoping that this will keep the coppers off my back.  When and if I can find the time, I will replace those links with links to excerpts from the songs.  I have done this with a recent post on Mal Waldron. 

I would like this blog to be an informal but useful reference for jazz fans, and especially for those who are looking for the kind of music that I like.  I would like any reader to be able to listen to a least a little bit of the music I comment on in each post.  Ideally, I will go back through the blog and provide excerpts for all the posts.  I am not sure whether that is really worth the effort, but as I have said, doing this blog is part of my life as a jazz nerd. 

Meanwhile, I have been listening to a recording by pianist and composer Ran Blake.  I downloaded it some time ago and, as often happened, it didn't grab me when I listened to it the first time.  So it's been sitting idle on my iPod.  For some reason I punched it a couple days ago, and it is exquisite.  

I don't know much about Blake.  I have half of his solo album The Complete All That Is Tied Sessions.  How did that happen?  Like the drunk's tattoo, I haven't a clue.  The solo album is pretty far out there.  It reminds me of the solo work of Cecil Taylor, not that it sounds like Taylor as that it is the same kind of exploration.  There is a lot of space punctuated with pretty dramatic hammering.  It is interesting, if you are in the mood for that sort of thing; but it isn't all that jazzy.  

The Short Life of Barbara Monk is a treasure.  Rickey Ford plays a marvelous tenor, and in fact I think his playing is the highlight of the album.  Ed Felson plays bass, and Jon Hazilla beats the skins. It is a tribute to his friend who died of cancer in 1984, just two years after her father Thelonious Sphere Monk.  She was named after Monk's mother.  

It is hard to imagine a more perfect eulogy.  The recording is lyrical and deeply moving.  The dialogue between piano and tenor sax makes me cry.  Really.  I wish I knew more about Barbara Monk and Ran Blake, and what their friendship was like.  I miss Barbara, even thought I didn't know she existed until I listened to this recording.  If I could choose my own monument, it wouldn't be a statue or an immortal flame.  It would be recording like this.  Here is a sample. 

Ran Blake Quartet/Artistry in Rhythm/The Short Life of Barbara Monk

Now: add the recording to your collection.  It's available for a few credits at eMusic.  After you listen to it, drop me a line.  My readers have been awfully quiet of late.  Insert sad face here.

As reader Steve notes in the comments, this recording is available at ranblake.com.  I note that the cds there are priced a bit lower than at other venues I have checked. 

The Big Question at the heart of this blog ...

is: have I gone nuts?  My masthead informs the reader that the blog is "largely devoted to hard bop."  But I keep posting on avant garde music.  I have always thought that the melody was the thing in music, but I keep listening to music that wants to transcend the melody.  What gives?

Intrepid reader Dan isn't too shy to say that the emperor has no clothes.  He didn't like Archie Shepp's interpretation, or maybe anti-interpretation, of 'The Girl from Ipanema'.  I did like it.  Maybe all this edgy jazz has damaged my brain.  

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a fellow grad student on the dark road back from a California desert, decades ago.  Wes said that jazz was destructive music, as it tried to undermine all coherent forms in music.  I argued to the contrary that jazz was of all musical genres most devoted to the forms of music precisely because it dug into, rearranged, and constantly explored all the myriad dimensions of melody.  

Of course all that experimentation is bound to produce a lot of false positives.  I am on recorded as having no time for Trane's Ascension.  But one thing I notice: when avant garde masters present more conventional, straight ahead jazz, they bring lots of new juice to the table.  

Case in point: Anthony Braxton's Six Monk's Compositions.  Braxton is one of the more extreme page five musicians.  His album Eugene is listed as one of the Penguin Guide's core collection.  I bought it on that recommendation years ago, and I still can't figure out what it is about.  But today I acquired the former recording, and it is marvelous.  Here is a sample:

Anthony Braxton/Brilliant Corners

Give this one a listen, Dan, and let me know what you think.  

Monk, Solos, Duos, Avant Garde, Hard Bop, and Martinis

It's stream of consciousness time here at Jazz Note.  I am digesting a little new music by Noah Preminger, John Surman, Dave King, and Tom Varner.  But I am not ready to post on any of that.  Instead, I feel like returning to a handful of occasional them and letting them bleed into one another.  

First: jazz solos and duets.  Solo albums are the jazz version of a dry martini joke.  Pour in the gin, whisper "vermouth," over the angled glass and push it across the mahogany.  If a jazz man isn't playing the piano or recording multiple tracks, it's hard to lay down anything for the listener to glide on.  Only the raw ideas are expressed, leaving the listener to supply his or her own blues and swing.  For that reason the solo recording can be as rewarding as it is demanding.  You ain't gonna make it rich that way.  

Here's an example of Steve Lacy playing Monk's 'Evidence'.  Lacy is an avant garde master who was devoted to the soprano sax exclusively and Monk, well, a whole lot.  The recording is from a relatively obscure album, the obscurity being no mystery.  But I think you will dig it if you give it a chance.  You are nowhere but in the horn on this one. 

Steve Lacy/Evidence/5 X Monk 5 X Lacy

The duet can be as laconic as the solo even when a piano is included, especially if the piano player is Mal Waldron.  Lacy and Waldron recorded a lot of records together and everyone of them is a work of dynamic genius.  

Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron/Epistrophy/At the Bimhuis 1982

This is distilled love: Lacy and Waldron for one another and both for Monk.  Waldron plays with a percussive style, just as Monk did; but no one would mistake Waldron for Monk here.  I love how the piano's insistent beating constantly invites the next note from Lacy's horn.  

Another horn/piano duet that probably isn't on your iPod is Chris Potter and Kenny Werner's album.  I don't know Werner, but I don't think of avant garde when I think of Chris Potter.  This treatment of the same song as above is altogether different: faster and fuller in sound.  I like it a lot.  

Chris Potter and Kenny Werner/Epistrophy/Concord Duo Series, Vol. 10

All of that gives you a pretty good idea of what a jazz solo and duo can do with a Monk tune.  But I can't let this one go without a fuller treatment for contrast.  In 1964 Monk recorded a live album at the It Club in San Francisco.  I only picked it up recently, but it is a four star document.  Charlie Rouse plays tenor, Larry Gales bass, and Ben Riley drums.  Wow is this double CD good! 

Thelonious Monk/Evidence/Live at the It Club

And here is a little inside information from yours truly.  Over the course of several decades I have majored in philosophy and minored in jazz.  Both of these courses of study have allowed me to fall in love with other men, with no exchange of bodily fluids.  Infection nonetheless occurred.  I have been in love with Plato for a long time, and with Thelonious Monk for a good ten years.  Listening to the It Club recording meant falling in love all over again. 

Brilliant and Crazy: Thelonious Monk

If you have seen A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe as the brilliant and nuts logician John Nash, you have a sense of the connection between mental impairment and genius.  Another case in point is one Thelonious Sphere Monk.  I have loved Monk for a long time now.  Today I read David Yaffee's review of "Robin D.G. Kelley's exhaustive, necessary and, as of now, definitive Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original"  at The Nation.  I can't wait to read the book, but the review is a fine presentation of the man.

If you are interested in digging into some Monk recordings, I have some suggestions.  Monk's best single album, imho, is Brilliant Corners.  Even the title is pure Monk.  Here are some more:

1. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk
2. Misterioso
3. Thelonious Monk in Action
4. Mulligan Meets Monk
5. Alone in San Francisco
6. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane
7. Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane
   

Discs 1-3 feature Johnny Griffin on sax, who turned out to be a very fine interpreter of Monk's genius.  But Monk's encounter with Trane is one of the immortal gifts that jazz keeps giving.  Number seven was my first exposure to Monk, and it left and indelible mark. 

Monk was always a bit nuts.  He knew it, and he used it, but it also irritated him that everyone else knew it.  What can you do?  Of course, there was that hat.

Happy new year. 

Cecil Taylor, the Envelope, and the Abyss

According to legend, Cecil Taylor invented free jazz in 1957. I like that legend. That's the year I was born. Obviously the Creator was in one of his creative periods. Taylor is surely among the great figures in avant garde jazz. But his magnum opus was recorded a year earlier. Jazz Advance is simply brilliant, from the album title down to the last note. For some reason, I always think of Andrew Hill's magnificent Point of Departure in connection with Jazz Advance.

It opens with a Monk number, 'Bemsha Swing,' and I think you have on display a standard characteristic of modern jazz: a piano player, playing a Monk tune, and trying to sound like Monk. Taylor pulls it off. But he does so in the way that a prospector digs for gold.

I continue to think that the avant garde jazzmen did their best work when they kept at least a thread of connection to hard bop and post bop. Jazz Advance has Steve Lacy on Soprano Sax, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Denis Charles on drums. You will find a lot of Lacy in my previous posts. Here is the above mentioned tune:

Cecil Taylor/Bemsha Swing/Jazz Advance

And here is a tune from a Taylor/Neidlinger album. It's a more traditional rendering of a standard that Taylor was obviously fond of. I'm not sure who played on this number, but Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Roswell Rudd, and Clark Terry are on the credits.

Cecil Taylor & Bud Neidlinger/Things Ain't What They Used to be/New York City R&B

Finally, here is pure Taylor free jazz, from his solo album For Olim. Steve Lacy once said that there are two kinds of jazz: offensive and defensive. Taylor always played for the offense. But there is a lot of yardage gained here.

Cecil Taylor/Question/For Olim

Well, there is some Cecil for you.

Best Live Jazz: Monk at the Five Spot

I am inspired to do a series of posts on 'best live jazz.' That's best out of my collection, of course. I have a modestly competent collection of hard bop and avant garde jazz albums. But that leaves a universe of great recordings out of my reach. Something else that's out of my reach is the level of jazz criticism in Stanley Crouch's Considering Genius. I have been reading Crouch on jazz and culture for more than twenty years. He is a musician himself and for that and other reasons writes with an authority that I can never measure up to. No one that I have read has a greater grasp of the whole trajectory of modern jazz, nor a finer ear for the action of any jazz composition, let alone the genius to put them together.

In Considering Genius Crouch has an essay on Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot. Rereading it this evening, I resolved to begin this series. Two albums came out of this 1958 date: Misterioso, and Thelonious Monk In Action. I'll let Crouch speak:

With a quartet that included a tenor saxophonist with the intellectual, emotional, and technical skills of Johnny Griffin, Monk was able to realize his orchestral desires by using the entire range of the horn, pivoting the motion of the band off the bass, with the piano and trap drums creating an ongoing arrangement of textural, harmonic, and melodic development.

Wow. I half understand that. Listening to the two albums, I can sorta see what he was hearing. Griffin was indeed amazing. These two albums are stellar examples of what can be achieved by a band of real genius in a small club setting. Ahmed Abdul-Malik is on bass, and Roy Haynes is on drums. Crouch has some fine praise for Haynes, but more for Griffin. The best I can do is say I have been enamored of Griffin's horn for a long time.

Here is a sample:

Thelonious Monk/Round Midnight/Misterioso

Drop me a line if you find this worth listening to.

Misterious Motian

If you have a neck injury, and you like jazz, put on the brace and listen to Paul Motian's album Misterioso. The brace will come in handy when the second number opens up, and if you don't have a neck injury, you might get one.

Drummer Paul Motian (pronounced, if you didn't get it, like motion) has had a life. He won fame and (I hope) fortune with the Bill Evans Trio. It is no small thing to be part of the Evans Village Vanguard recordings. Since that time he has laid down the beat for a lot of modern jazz, across a wide range of jazz styles.

Misterioso is a fine example of his range and flexibility. Jim Pepper plays tenor and soprano sax. Joe Lovano is also on tenor, which whets my interest as I saw him play in Sioux Falls. Bill Frisell plays guitar, and there is a powerful fusion influence. But I run into a mystery here. iTunes lists Alex Lodico, trombone player, but he isn't on the Penguin guide notes about the album. Maybe someone out there can fill me in.

Anyway, the album begins with a pure bop working of Monk's 'Misterioso'. It's delicious. And the next song, 'Abicus', is altogether fusion in presentation. Hence the whiplass. The rest of the album is most fusionesque. Go to your local jazz store and ask for it. Tell 'em I sent you.

Here is the opening number for a taste:

Paul Motian/Misterioso/Misterioso

For comparison, here is the same composition from Monk's own Misterioso. The showcase here is Johnny Griffin's tenor. It is very exciting to hear Monk's voice as he goads Griffin to new fronts. Monk, as always, is brilliant. If you don't have Monk's Misterioso, for heaven's sake log on and get it.

Thelonious Monk/Misterioso/Misterioso