The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (28 page)

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Authors: Tom Piazza

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BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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Page 87
the intro, so the others can hear how it works.) There is also a priceless version of "Ruby, My Dear" on which Hawkins plays only with the trio.
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane
(Jazzland/OJC-039) contains alternate takes of "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy" from the
Monk's Music
session, but the real prizes here are three tracks by the quartet Monk led at the New York club the Five Spot in the summer of 1957, with Coltrane, bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Shadow Wilson. The version of "Ruby, My Dear'' makes a fascinating comparison with the one Hawkins recorded a month earlier; both are beautiful, in completely different ways. The tune certainly draws out Coltrane's lyrical side. His more searching side comes out on the intricate "Trinkle, Tinkle," where Coltrane explores every corner of the harmonies and rhythms; at one point Monk drops out, leaving Coltrane to play with just bass and drum accompaniment. The set also includes one of Monk's best solo piano performances, the long blues titled "Functional."
In 1993 Blue Note released a CD containing recently unearthed live performances recorded by the Monk-Coltrane quartet at the Five Spot in the summer of 1957, with Ahmed-Abdul Malik and Roy Haynes taking the places of Ware and Wilson.
The Thelonious Monk Quartet Featuring John Coltrane - Live at the Five Spot. Discovery!
(Blue Note CDP 0777 7 99786 2 5) is made up of performances of "Trinkle, Tinkle," "In Walked Bud," "I Mean You," "Epistrophy," and "Crepuscule with Nellie," recorded in ultra-low fidelity. You can, however, hear what is going on well enough; Monk was in a swinging, extroverted mood that night, and Coltrane was breathing fire. The historical significance of these recordings perhaps exceeds the listening pleasure afforded by them, but if you are a Monk or Trane fan, they provide all the pleasure you need.
One of the most enjoyable Monk albums is
The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall
(Riverside/OJC-135), which features Monk in front of a large ensemble playing expanded versions of some of his best tunes, including "Monk's Mood" and a version of "Little Rootie Tootie" transcribed from his trio recording of the tune. The ensemble includes trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba, and alto, tenor, and baritone saxes. There are fine solos by trumpeter Donald Byrd, altoist Phil Woods, and baritonist Pepper Adams on "Little Rootie Tootie," which is one of the most infectious jazz performances ever recorded. This is also the first meeting on record of Monk and tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, who would work with Monk throughout the 1960s.
Two albums recorded live at the Five Spot in 1958,
Thelonious in Action
(Riverside/OJC-103) and
Misterioso
(Riverside/OJC-206), feature the Monk quartet
 
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with tenorist Johnny Griffin, an energetic, multinote player, as well as drummer Roy Haynes. Both sets are worth having but are not among the very best of Monk; Griffin was, and is, a sort of "show me the changes and let me blow" player, and Monk's music needed players who were more oriented toward melodic invention based either on motivic development or some other way of extending melodic ideas - a theme-and-variations approach. Griffin, an excellent musician, is from a different school. But there is some fine music here anyway, especially on
Thelonious in Action
, which includes the lovely and rarely played "Light Blue" and good versions of the Monk standards "Rhythm-A-Ning" and "Blue Monk.''
One pairing that worked out surprisingly well was the meeting of Monk and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. I say "surprisingly" because Mulligan was, at the time, associated in most people's minds with cool or West Coast jazz, temperamentally quite different from Monk's roots-oriented music. Released as
Mulligan Meets Monk
(Riverside/OJC-301), the session has a relaxed, conversational feel about it and is enjoyable to listen to, although Mulligan's ideas are sometimes a little corny - they wrap up too neatly and obviously. But he swings, aided not a little by Monk's bassist and drummer from the Five Spot, Wilbur Ware and Shadow Wilson, respectively.
Another unusual pairing is that of Monk and Ellington trumpeter Clark Terry, who made a guest appearance on "Bemsha Swing" on
Brilliant Corners
(Riverside/OJC-026). Monk appears as a sideman on Terry's album
In Orbit
(Riverside/OIC-302), and it is an opportunity to hear him addressing someone else's originals (there's only one Monk tune on the album). He sounds enthusiastic; Sam Jones plays bass, and Philly Joe Jones plays drums, so things swing real well. Monk also plays some gospel-flavored piano on "One Foot in the Gutter." The same words - relaxed and conversational - that apply to the Mulligan album apply to this one. It has been relatively overlooked in discussions of Monk's work, probably because it has only one of his compositions on it, but it is excellent.
5 by Monk by 5
(Riverside/OJC-362) would be worth picking up if only for the beautiful reading of Monk's ballad "Ask Me Now," which should be played for anyone who needs proof that Charlie Rouse was a great tenor player. Trumpeter Thad Jones, from the Count Basie orchestra and an excellent composer in his own right, is also present here and delivers a very hip solo on the roiling version of Monk's highly unusual piece "Jackie-ing," on which Sam Jones and Art Taylor strike a hot groove.
Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two: At the Blackhawk
(Rivers ide/OJC-305) adds trumpeter Joe Gordon and tenorist Harold Land to Monk's Rouse-John Ore-Billy Higgins quartet for nice but
 
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hardly earthshaking results. It's worth having, but there's a lot of Monk to get to before you pick this up.
The group that Monk kept together the longest - for nearly a decade - was his quartet, with Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, either Larry Gales or John Ore on bass, and either Ben Riley or Frankie Dunlop on drums. Rouse had a smoky tone and a taste for certain intervals in his playing that seemed to lay well with Monk's harmonies. The quartet recorded mostly for Columbia, although a good amount of material recorded on a 1961 European tour is available on the Riverside box. Their first Columbia album, recorded in 1962 and one of their best, is
Monk's Dream
(CK 40786). The quartet from the beginning was an extremely graceful group; although critics have eternally reached into the same tiny bag of adjectives to describe Monk - angular, jagged, weird - Monk's music was as natural as breathing. I once heard bassist Larry Ridley, who played with Monk in the 1970s, illustrate the rhythmic feel of Monk's music with the image of two bicycle pedals going up and down, easily and regularly. Monk, Rouse, and Frankie Dunlop engage in an ongoing, three-way call-and-response conversation, a lesson in integrated rhythm section playing. On the title track, as well as on "Bright Mississippi" (based on "Sweet Georgia Brown"), "Bolivar Blues" (a remake of "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are," from
Brilliant Corners
[Riverside/OJC-026]), "Bye-Ya,'' and the others, Monk's music stands as just what it is - music. The set also includes two excellent piano solos on "Body and Soul" and "Just a Gigolo."
Almost as good is
Criss-Cross
(Columbia CK 48823), Monk's second Columbia album, with Rouse, Ore, and Dunlop. Much of the music in this set - Monk standards like "Hackensack," "Eronel," and "Rhythm-A-Ning" - has a very hard-charging feel about it. All but two of the tracks are well under five minutes long, though, and sometimes I wish the group had more of a chance to build up some steam. One of the highlights here is Monk's solo version of "Don't Blame Me."
Underground
(Columbia CK 40785), recorded five years after
Monk's Dream
, is also excellent, although Rouse plays on only three of the tunes (his replacement on "In Walked Bud" is Jon Hendricks, who sings his original lyrics to the tune and then engages in some strong scat singing). The album was notable at the time because it contained four new Monk compositions, an unusual event, since Monk tended to play the same tunes over and over. One of the originals is a waltz called "Ugly Beauty." Monk's music is so honest; there is never anything faked or thrown in just for effect. "Easy Street" is a fine trio performance of a lesser-known popular tune. All in all, an excellent set.
At present, such fine Columbia quartet albums as
Straight, No Chaser
and
 
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It's Monk's Time
are available only in European issues. Two good compilations that include material from several of the 1960s albums have been released, one titled
Standards
(Columbia CK 45148), the other
The Composer
(Columbia CK 44297).
Standards
is mostly solo piano and is highly recommended for Monk's thoroughly individualistic readings of I Hadn't Anyone Till You," "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," and "Memories of You."
The Composer
has blazing versions of "Bemsha Swing" and ''Straight, No Chaser" from a Japanese concert. The two discs together make an excellent introduction to Monk. Also worthwhile is
Music from the Motion Picture
"Straight, No Chaser" (Columbia SC 45358), a collection of interesting odds and ends, mostly live performances taken from the soundtrack to a documentary about Monk's life and work.
One other item that must be mentioned is a set called
Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols
(Savoy ZDS 1166), which contains four tunes recorded by a quartet led by the fine alto-playing Bird disciple Gigi Gryce, with Monk on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. Three of the four tunes - "Brake's Sake," "Gallop's Gallop," and "Shuffle Boil" - are Monk originals rarely heard elsewhere; the fourth, "Nica's Tempo" (another tribute to the Baroness de Koenigswarter), is a very good Gryce original. Predictably, given the personnel, the session is a smoker.
As should be obvious, I can't recommend Monk's music highly enough. Several of his solo and trio records are discussed in the Soloists section.
Charles Mingus
Bassist Charles Mingus was certainly one of the most important composers and bandleaders to appear in the wake of Charlie Parker. Like Monk, he was active in the 1940s (Lionel Hampton recorded his big-band arrangement of "Mingus Fingers" in 1947), but his real impact wasn't felt until well into the 1950s.
Mingus understood perhaps better than anyone that the real implication of Charlie Parker's style was a constantly evolving group counterpoint ideal rather than the soloist-with-rhythm approach taken by so many. Mingus's idol was Duke Ellington, and he was steeped in jazz history, recording tributes to Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. At a time when many were obsessed with the latest sound, Mingus made his horn players use plunger mutes and other devices associated with a so-called older form of jazz, as if to remind everyone that the music was a continuum - or, as pianist Mary Lou Williams liked to say, that "all eras in the history of jazz were modern."
 
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As a bandleader, Mingus always urged his band members to find something of their own to say. Many musicians have stressed how important their tenure with Mingus was in helping them grow and find their own voices. His compositions and performances were marked by a turbulence that all who knew him say echoed the turbulence inside him. He was a volatile person, known on more than one occasion to physically strike a band member who wasn't pulling his weight, and yet he could be gentle, charming, and very funny as well. Mingus above all didn't like to let assumptions rest unchallenged, whether they were other people's assumptions about who they were or assumptions about the role an instrument was to play. His recordings vary in quality, too; some are very tight and well planned, and some are positively raggedy sounding. Some of the loosest-seeming are, in actuality, some of the tightest. But that was Mingus in a nutshell - a bunch of heroic contradictions.
One of the very best Mingus albums is
Blues and Roots
(Atlantic 1305-2), a collection of six Mingus originals that address the fundamentals of jazz: its roots in gospel and blues, group counterpoint, and swing in both four-four and two-four. Mingus said that, instead of writing out the music for the nine-piece ensemble, he played each musician's part on the piano and had him commit it to memory, so that the ensembles would have a looser, more spontaneous feeling than they would have if he had written the parts out. Certainly the record is remarkable for its combination of fire and urgency with a very focused group conception.
"Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" is Mingus's six-eight impression of sanctified church music, a rolling, boiling performance in which the instrumental voices come out of the ensemble like voices in a church congregation. During Booker Ervin's tenor solo the background rhythm stops, and he is accompanied only by hand clapping; throughout, you can hear Mingus hollering like someone catching the spirit in church. "Moanin'," not to be confused with the Bobby Timmons composition of the same name recorded by Art Blakey, is a surging, medium-tempo composition on which all the horn players play different melodic lines, in a sort of reaching back to New Orleans polyphony. At times Mingus's bass comes up into the higher register behind one of the horn solos or plays a counterrhythm, like a whale coming up from the depths for some air; the vitality of the music and Mingus's involvement in it are tremendous. ''Tensions" is another performance at the same surging medium tempo, with exceptional solos from Mingus on bass, altoist Jackie McLean, Booker Ervin, and baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams.
"E's Flat, Ah's Flat, Too" uses the same device as "Moanin'," that of having each instrument play a separate line; here they do it at a ferocious up-tempo. The piece starts off with the baritone playing its line for one fast blues chorus,

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