clifford_thornton Posted January 12, 2015 Report Share Posted January 12, 2015 Wouldn't it be arguable that different aspects of Monk's rhythmic approach were brought out by different drummers, and unless the drummer is truly not listening/into the music, each player puts something on the table? I can enjoy Riley, Dunlop, Haynes and Blakey with Monk for different reasons (although I suppose there are obvious differences between BANDS that highlight the nuances in his music, not just who's in the chair). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ep1str0phy Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 Wouldn't it be arguable that different aspects of Monk's rhythmic approach were brought out by different drummers, and unless the drummer is truly not listening/into the music, each player puts something on the table? I can enjoy Riley, Dunlop, Haynes and Blakey with Monk for different reasons (although I suppose there are obvious differences between BANDS that highlight the nuances in his music, not just who's in the chair). I've been thinking a ton about Dunlop since this thread + Ethan Iverson's post made me reconsider the battery of quartet recordings I had up until now regarded as relatively marginal. I think it's plain that a positive aspect of the rise of the blogsphere and (educated) armchair criticism among jazz musicians and fans is the reevaluation of music that was/is by near critical consensus lesser in quality. As far as the Columbias are concerned (and as Jim mentioned in a different thread), Underground is really the indispensable one--but if you listen past the multitude of criticisms (redundant repertoire, overlong solos, etc.), there is plenty of meat throughout that part of the discography. What Clifford said above resonates, because it speaks to a (pseudo) phenomenon among genius improvisers--i.e., first rate experimentalists (though not all or even most of them classified as "avant-garde" per se) settling with "lesser" accompanists for large periods of time. Sometimes this music is abysmal, but in some truly special cases, music of this nature can be seriously revealing--e.g., Ornette with Denardo (rather than with Higgins or Blackwell), Ayler with Beaver Harris (rather than Murray or Graves), Miles with Al Foster, and so on. With regard to Ornette (for example), I'm firmly of the mind that the later multi-bass band with Denardo was closer in respects to the "spontaneous delta blues" thing that Ornette was always trying to get to than the otherwise more epochal Atlantic quartets. Denardo is a truly idiosyncratic drummer with a ton of ideas and personality, but he doesn't have the bursting feel of Higgins or the deep fluidity of Blackwell. What he does have is a profound and intuitive knowledge of his father's music, and when I saw that multi-bass band in SF a couple of years ago (my last time seeing Ornette), the general band concept completely subsumed the the individual contributions--Ornette's included. Their penultimate version of Turnaround, complete with these mystifying and seemingly improvised rhythmic conceits (collectively adding and dropping beats but somehow retaining a consistent metrical unity), was in many respects deeper than any of the Atlantic stuff. The Columbia Monk music is kind of like this, and I feel that way even with the (more derided) Riley material. Straight, No Chaser is essentially an album worth of retreads, but some of the capital letter Feel stuff on that album is insane. Yes, the music is overlong and both canonically and internally redundant, but on stuff like "Locomotive" the quartet reaches this level of lumbering, monolithic heaviness that is not quite evident elsewhere--even on the music with Blakey. I really love Iverson's characterizing of Dunlop as surreal and Motian-esque, because I would not have dug into this had someone not brought it up first. That '63 Japan material, Criss-Cross, Monk's Dream--it's crackling with rhythmic obliqueness that is on the surface almost parody but at its heart (truly) as serious as your life. Maybe that music, too, is more about how it reframes Monk than how it makes any profound statements regarding jazz in a macroscopic sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caravan Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 No mention of Shadow Wilson? For me, he's the man with Monk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gheorghe Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 Well, sure I love Shadow Wilson with Monk, maybe a diferent topic ? Anyway, Shadow Wilson was a helluva drummer. Must have been a delight for anyone to have him play Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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