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Monk on the Steve Allen's Tonight Show.


Hardbopjazz

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The personnel listed in that cd is wrong. It is Art Farmer, Eddie Bert, Teo Macero (ts), Monk, Mingus, Willie Jones (dr), recorded Oct 6, 1955. It also contains a little "interview" with Monk, in which he "explains" the tunes played. More about this session can be found here, where Teo Macero recalls some hilarious moments of that day. Note that Macero names Dannie Richmond as the drummer, but it really is Willie Jones, who was working with Monk at the time (in as far as Monk was working at all during that period).

 

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i knew a guy a few yrs ago who was his grandson, he was legit- but he said he lost contact with jayne as she was in a home at that point, i told him god you should call jayne and say hi, say hi for me too! lol

IS there any proof hank ever played w/ monk at all?  has this whole monk-mobe  thing been blown out of proportion? im starting to thing it was a big misundertanding.   the BN bio i googled for hank does mention monk.....but i still dont know....

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The two Monk performances from Steve Allen's Tonight show are available on RLR Records (RLR88623). The title of the CD is Thelonious Monk in Philadelphia 1960 with Steve Lacy. The two titles from the Steve Allen Show are dated October 6, 1955, New York City. This is the correct date. I can remember seeing the live broadcast  in the fall of 1955. For some reason the changeover from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time took place at different times in the U.S. and Canada that year so we could watch American TV programs an hour earlier here. It made late-night shows like Steve Allen's available at a more attractive time for us. Robin D.G. Kelley is wrong about the date in his otherwise superb  Monk biography. And the tenor player was definitely Hank Mobley, not Teo Macero.

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26 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Do we have to argue about the date? Why is this so important. The real issue to me is:

How much Hank is heard in those two tunes; what is the sound quality?

How is the rest of this RLR issue and does it justify what looks to be about $35 plus shipping on Amazon?

The sound quality on the Steve Allen show is plain awful. Macero shows up for brief solos on the two tunes. Buying the CD for Mobley is a pure waste of money. Buying it for Monk is worth à reasonable price. Sound is better - not excellent - on the other tunes.

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I'm sorry guys but I saw the program. It was broadcast in October during the period that Daylight Savings Time and /Standard Time were out of sync between the U.S. and Canada, and the tenor player with the Monk pickup group was Hank Mobley, not Teo Macero. I'm not blind. Hank Mobley and Teo Macero did not look at all alike. Perhaps Macero had done something earlier (in June?) with Monk on TV but he was not on this particular edition of the Tonight Show and neither was Eddie Bert.

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37 minutes ago, Don Brown said:

I'm sorry guys but I saw the program. It was broadcast in October during the period that Daylight Savings Time and /Standard Time were out of sync between the U.S. and Canada, and the tenor player with the Monk pickup group was Hank Mobley, not Teo Macero. I'm not blind. Hank Mobley and Teo Macero did not look at all alike. Perhaps Macero had done something earlier (in June?) with Monk on TV but he was not on this particular edition of the Tonight Show and neither was Eddie Bert.

Not denying your memory but why do those who have heard the disc all say it doesn't sound like Hank?  Maybe you're right that Hank appeared with Monk but this RLR release doesn't document it.

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And you saw the program? If you had you would have definitely seen Hank Mobley onscreen. It's possible that the broadcast aircheck available on the RLR label comes from another program but the Steve Allen show that I saw live on October 6, 1955 had Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone. Teo Macero was never a tall, handsome, African-American. The only thing Teo and Hank had in common was that they both played the saxophone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Don Brown
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28 minutes ago, Don Brown said:

It's possible that the broadcast aircheck available on the RLR label comes from another program but the Steve Allen show that I saw live on October 6, 1955 had Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone.

Now that's a totally valid variable to consider, and this is why dating matters.

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