Charlie Rouse redux

[Joe]

Strange line-up; strangely likable results.

[Eric]

25 minutes ago, Joe said:

Strange line-up; strangely likable results.

Agreed 😀

[JSngry]

Perfect example, starts out fine, goes on waaaaay too long. The individual ideas are all good, but it's all kinda flatlined. I'll blame Monk because he does it too and it's his band.

Now having said that, it's fun as hell to watch. Watching it while listening, it goes down smoothly. So maybe when we talk about the physicality/muscularity of Monk's music, the visual is totally a part of that, it's full-body music as well as full-everything else.

[Scott Dolan]

I disagree. From about 1:45 to 3:45 he some really good stuff going on. 

[JSngry]

You can "drop a needle" anywhere in that solo and there's good stuff going on. My problem with it is that there's no real beginning, middle, or end to it. I don't mean that in an "infinity" way either, because Monk at his best redefine time and space. This is not doing that, though, this is almost a tow-dimensional reading of the lay of the Monk landscape. Ok, a 2.8 dimensional reading.

I just wish there were more bumps and landings in there.

[Scott Dolan]

The ending was odd, but I thought it was a really coherent and consistent solo. Not his best, but certainly not a mess. 

[JSngry]

Rouse was never a mess.

[Scott Dolan]

Which is why I wonder what the reason is for re-entering this exercise. 

Some people didn’t like Rouse with Monk. 

Some did. 

Was this really a cold case? I thought it had already been settled. 

[CJ Shearn]

I don't have much to add that hasn't been stated, but I always thought Rouse was probably the best "fit for Monk's music, as great and innovative as Trane's contributions were with Monk (I have about 30 Monk CD's, the majority of the Riverside, Blue Note and Columbia work) and Johnny Griffin as well, there's something about Rouse's tone I really love and he fit the quirk of the music perfect.  On Big Band And Quartet In Concert he made a wonderful 1-2 punch with Thad Jones as soloist.

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Which is why I wonder what the reason is for re-entering this exercise. 

Some people didn’t like Rouse with Monk. 

Some did. 

Was this really a cold case? I thought it had already been settled. 

Jim's shrewd post was IMO a very good reason why. Again IMO, he precisely and even empathetically nailed why Rouse with Monk may not be a picnic and what those who do find him to be picnic with Monk need to think about and respond to -- which you then did. A perfect instance, at both ends, of good criticism in action. It's not a matter of right and wrong so much as of putting right there on the table what perhaps needs to be thought of. Also, as we all know or should know, nothing of this sort ever really gets "settled."

[Scott Dolan]

But neither of us covered any new ground. That's all I was getting at. 

I mean, I guess we can revisit the subject every few months to see who has changed their minds, and why. But that seems pretty fruitless as well, because they really wasn't any grey area in this discussion, nor room from growth/change. 

[Larry Kart]

Jim did, by posting that particular performance and by describing its virtues and flaws as he heard them, and you did by responding to the contrary in a reasonable manner. To me, this took the discussion a bit beyond "Some people didn’t like Rouse with Monk. Some did." 

[JSngry]

Oh, my thinking has evolved, and may well keep evolving. I started out entranced by Monk, all of Monk. When I got that Columbia Straight No Chaser LP, I figured it was my deficiency that I couldn't gain traction with it.

Then I got toally drug with ALL Monk/Rouse except the Big Band & Quartet + Underground. Wrote it all off.

Then I listened again, and some of the earlier Columbias started sounding better to me. Better, still not great. I still wasn't thrilled by Rouse, and BEn Riley became my VERY least favorite Monk drummer (and tha tstill stands).

Then I got to almost where I am now, namely that Charlie Rouse was a fine musician, andEXCELLENT musician in fact, and he played those tunes longer than just about anybody. So why don't my heart leap for joy when I hear him.

And then, just within the last year or so, it hit me - he's a great player with a true feeling for Monk's music, but that third (or fourth, if you like) dimension is just not there, it's got neither tension nor release, and that does not seem something that's an inevitable outcome of engaging in MonkMusic. But that was ok with Monk, apparently, because he was doing it himself.

For real, if Monk ran a tighter band and kept everybody (including himself) down to 2-3 choruses except when lightening REALLY was striking, that might well be considered one of The Greatest Bands Ever.

The first two Monk albums I ever got were a Greatest Hits thing on Riverside, and then an ABC/Riverside called Two Hours With Thelonious, the live in Europe/Italy dates repackaged.

On the Greatest Hits, there was the 5X5X5 take of Jackie-ing with Rouse and Thad, and that's still one of my favorite Monk cuts ever. But the Two Hours With...thing is hard listening on a more than 1-2 cuts at a time because ALL the tunes follow the same format - exactly. So, yeah, any one is good, but in the cumulative, what does it matter, what is it worth? Either play tighter routines of make shorter records. And the LP sides were all long, 25-30 minutes each, the only variation in tunes being the tempos. But other than that...interchangeable more or less.

Monk was and is a profound thinker, not just music, although music was his medium, but about all elements of physics. Definitely a genius. But as time went by, he didn't publish well, to use an academic analogy.

Why do we return to this? I guess it's what old folks do, keep ruminating on that cud. Moo.

[Steve Reynolds]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Oh, my thinking has evolved, and may well keep evolving. I started out entranced by Monk, all of Monk. When I got that Columbia Straight No Chaser LP, I figured it was my deficiency that I couldn't gain traction with it.

Then I got toally drug with ALL Monk/Rouse except the Big Band & Quartet + Underground. Wrote it all off.

Then I listened again, and some of the earlier Columbias started sounding better to me. Better, still not great. I still wasn't thrilled by Rouse, and BEn Riley became my VERY least favorite Monk drummer (and tha tstill stands).

Then I got to almost where I am now, namely that Charlie Rouse was a fine musician, andEXCELLENT musician in fact, and he played those tunes longer than just about anybody. So why don't my heart leap for joy when I hear him.

And then, just within the last year or so, it hit me - he's a great player with a true feeling for Monk's music, but that third (or fourth, if you like) dimension is just not there, it's got neither tension nor release, and that does not seem something that's an inevitable outcome of engaging in MonkMusic. But that was ok with Monk, apparently, because he was doing it himself.

For real, if Monk ran a tighter band and kept everybody (including himself) down to 2-3 choruses except when lightening REALLY was striking, that might well be considered one of The Greatest Bands Ever.

The first two Monk albums I ever got were a Greatest Hits thing on Riverside, and then an ABC/Riverside called Two Hours With Thelonious, the live in Europe/Italy dates repackaged.

On the Greatest Hits, there was the 5X5X5 take of Jackie-ing with Rouse and Thad, and that's still one of my favorite Monk cuts ever. But the Two Hours With...thing is hard listening on a more than 1-2 cuts at a time because ALL the tunes follow the same format - exactly. So, yeah, any one is good, but in the cumulative, what does it matter, what is it worth? Either play tighter routines of make shorter records. And the LP sides were all long, 25-30 minutes each, the only variation in tunes being the tempos. But other than that...interchangeable more or less.

Monk was and is a profound thinker, not just music, although music was his medium, but about all elements of physics. Definitely a genius. But as time went by, he didn't publish well, to use an academic analogy.

Why do we return to this? I guess it's what old folks do, keep ruminating on that cud. Moo.

Good post, Jim

maybe why I’m not ruminating on this old great stuff so much any longer. 

I kind of always liked post Riverside Monk in small quantities as it was much of more of the same (outside of the aforementioned brilliant Big Band performances) but there is brilliance in there, it’s just hidden within hours of extended loping tales of the same tunes played for a decade straight. 

Rather ruminate on the recent and I’d also these days much rather listen to the recent and now. Eyes and Ears WIDE open.

 

[Peter Friedman]

Jim’s most recent post made a point that with which I am in total synch. Listening to one Monk quartet album with Rouse is fine, but if I was to play many albums by that quartet within a  short time frame they become rather tedious for the reasons Jim mentioned.

I can’t comment on how to rate Ben Riley with Monk without doing some back to back comparisons of the drummers who played in the Monk / Rouse group. But have greatly enjoyed Ben Riley’s playing in piano trios with Kenny Barron and a variety of others.

Along with Billy Higgins, Ben Riley was my favorite living jazz drummer for many years. His sensitive fours and solos had that tap dancing quality I have long found gave me great pleasure.

 Riley did not try to demonstrate his technical prowess through lengthy solos to wow the audience. Rather it was highly musical very tasteful playing that fit perfectly with Kenny Barron and others that I  enjoyed.

 

 

 

 

[JSngry]

Ben Riley was great, popped like Orville, but not with Monk, not that I've really heard.

But hell yeah, Ben Riley popped everywhere else.

Maybe that's the thing - if you didn't pop with guys like Lock & Griff, you'd be getting paid by somebody else going forth. I guess Monk didn't mind.

[Scott Dolan]

OK, how about this. I’ll try to frame my argument in a more abstract fashion. 

Monk didn’t speak Jazz. Monk spoke Monk. I think of it as some kind of weird analog to Pig Latin. Yeah, it kinda sounds like regular English if you pay close enough attention, but at the end of day it WAS a different language. A “foreign” language. 

So let’s say you grow up speaking Jazz, and speaking it fluently. Not only is it your first language, it’s your only language. 

Next thing you know, you’re in an intense conversation with some patois speaking motherfucker, and the best you can do is speak your native tongue and hope for the best. Why? Because that’s your native tongue, and too late trying to figure this other gibberish bullshit out. So you speak YOUR language with him and make it work.

Jazz was the only language Rouse knew until he started playing with Monk. But instead of simply shoehorning his own language into the conversation he and Monk were having, he actually LEARNED how to speak Monk. Whether you considered him fluent in it or not doesn’t matter. 

You go to France and carry on a conversation, even if in a terribly clumsy way, with a native French speaker? That’s pretty motherfucking impressive to this boy. Not only does that show off an incredibly flexible talent, but also a humility and sympathy that I find rather inspiring. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I love Rouse but I can see what Jim means in that clip he posts and I think it has something to do with how Rouse changed the way he played (just a bit) when he was with Monk. I find his playing style "choppy", in that he seems to bite off notes... sorta like Dexter Gordon does at times. In the video Jim posts, he bites off phrases while playing off the bass line, who's walking to a rather slow beat. There's a long drawn-out sameness to it.

But like Jim says, *seeing* it makes it rather enjoyable. I wish I was there myself.

[jlhoots]

I can almost always identify Rouse immediately. Maybe from what's been said, that's no good.

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I love Rouse but I can see what Jim means in that clip he posts and I think it has something to do with how Rouse changed the way he played (just a bit) when he was with Monk. I find his playing style "choppy", in that he seems to bite off notes... sorta like Dexter Gordon does at times. In the video Jim posts, he bites off phrases while playing off the bass line, who's walking to a rather slow beat. There's a long drawn-out sameness to it.

But like Jim says, *seeing* it makes it rather enjoyable. I wish I was there myself.

I’ll have to watch the video again, but the only thing I noted him “biting off” was at the end with his, “well shit, here’s the end of the bar” akward signoff. Though one has to wonder if he saw Monk out of the corner of his eye and was momentarily flustered. 

Hey, he’s only human. 

[Peter Friedman]

16 hours ago, jlhoots said:

I can almost always identify Rouse immediately. Maybe from what's been said, that's no good.

I have always believed that being able to identify a soloist was a positive thing. It means that the player has an individual sound or style of phrasing that makes him ( or her) stand out from other players.

[Scott Dolan]

7 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

I have always believed that being able to identify a soloist was a positive thing. It means that the player has an individual sound or style of phrasing that makes him ( or her) stand out from other players.

In an interesting twist, I was once in a McDonald’s in Murfreesboro, Tennessee many moons ago and they were playing Miles Davis over the PA. 

Weird part being this recording was clearly a more recent one as the production on it sounded far too modern. So I asked an employee who they were playing. They checked. 

It was Wallace Roney. Playing the trumpet that Miles gave him. 

That was kinda freaky. 

[Dan Gould]

3 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

In an interesting twist, I was once in a McDonald’s in Murfreesboro, Tennessee many moons ago and they were playing Miles Davis over the PA. 

Weird part being this recording was clearly a more recent one as the production on it sounded far too modern. So I asked an employee who they were playing. They checked. 

It was Wallace Roney. Playing the trumpet that Miles gave him. 

That was kinda freaky. 

Is this a McDonalds thing because I stopped at one near Orlando once and could not begin to believe that I was hearing a series of BN "Sons of Sidewinder" type numbers in the dining room.

[Scott Dolan]

A fair question. At the time we were on our way back from Orlando, so there's some more bizarre connective tissue... 

 

[Peter Friedman]

I avoid McDonalds as much as possible. But if I can hear some decent, if not outstanding, jazz while drinking a cup of coffee, I may give it a try.😋