1/18/2024 0 Comments Trinkle kansas city jazzTry his chorus on “Let’s Call This”: What! Ben Street pointed out to me that Monk’s comping for Rollins on “More Than You Know” is in the hall of fame of reharmonization, with Monk’s solo being pure gold as well. On the Prestige band tracks Monk is now working with much better soloists. It’s probably not just my favorite Monk album it might simply be my favorite album, period. But, warts and all, the final product is simply transcendent. Apparently he was a policeman first and bassist second, and occasionally you can tell from his exceptionally wrong notes. Max Roach on “Bemsha Swing” is impossibly great: Among other details, he bangs a top cymbal exactly once. But who is playing out-of-tempo claves on “Bye-ya?” Gary Mapp is on no other recordings. A small detail that says something about something but I have no idea what. Percy Heath turns the time around in his bass solo on “Blue Monk.” (It’s a great solo otherwise, Tootie Heath told me that Charles Mingus told Percy, “I wish I could play the blues like you.”) Monk ignores the mistake, keeps counting accurately, and wrong-foots the rhythm section on the head out. Sometimes the piano is really out of tune but that tintinnabulation works just fine for the High Priest, who deals like a motherfucker on some of his best compositions plus darkly stomping/striding “Sweet and Lovely,” “These Foolish Things” in clanging seconds and the first of many profound ruminations on “Just a Gigolo.” There is no single “greatest Monk album,” but if I had to pick just one for that desert island I’d grab what became the 12-inch LP Trio with Gary Mapp and either Max Roach or Art Blakey in late 1952 and “Blue Monk” with Percy Heath and Blakey from 1954. Prestige: Not quite LPs yet, the few Prestige tracks produced by Bob Weinstock were 78s or collected on 10-inch before varied repackaging. Two other highlights are the trio standards “April in Paris” and “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” where the band sounds comfortable and Monk shows off a lot of chops. One of Monk’s greatest collaborators was Milt Jackson, and their work together on these Blue Notes is in a category of one. A couple of “concertos” with the piano in the midst of horns like “‘Round Midnight” and “Thelonious” remain compelling and unique to the first era. (Fortunately, usually the piano solos are the longest and they are always the best.) Some of the hardest Monk tunes are from this era, and several of them would never return in Monk’s book. While not all the horn players are that good, everybody gets solo time. Monk’s first studio tracks as a leader are short, pithy, and packed with information. They are some of the most crucial 78s ever recorded but I rarely return to their raw wonder, with the notable exception of the bonafide masterpiece “Carolina Moon.” If I discover an experienced musician hasn’t heard “Carolina Moon,” I can’t resist stopping the conversation and cueing it up.Īs a set, these have the weakest performances in the Monk canon. Apparently Lorraine was the one who gave Monk the sobriquet, “The High Priest.” Jazz buffs know this progression intimately and can debate the pros and cons of each era with flair.īlue Note: The person who got Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff interested in Monk was Lorraine Gordon (then Lorraine Lion and married to Alfred), who still hangs out at her joint the Village Vanguard a couple of times a week and celebrates her 95th birthday on Sunday. The rich discography mostly divides neatly into label: Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Columbia, and Black Lion. What follows is a ramble though the underbrush of musicianly detail, stuff I thought about while working on the general audience essay. My New Yorker Culture Desk essay “ Think of Monk” is a well-edited aerial view.
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