Larry Kart

I'm sure it's available somewhere on CD, but check out Monk's 22-minute, stop-and-start solo rumination on “’Round Midnight,” which was recorded before he played the take that was issued on "Thelonious Himself." I say some things about it toward the end of this piece, which is in Das Jazz Buch. Some of the writing here sounds kind of spacey to me now. Also, I see that I rather loosely endorsed "recomposition," but that was part of the spaciness. Must have been in a strange place when I wrote this: [1982] Long before his death last February 17 at age sixty-four, it was obvious that Thelonious Monk was one of jazz’s premier composers, along with Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. From the deservedly popular “’Round Midnight” to such less-familiar gems as “Who Knows,” “Skippy,” and “Gallop’s Gallop,” Monk created more than seventy compositions, and, in addition to his own recordings, they are now his legacy. But as new recordings of Monk’s music begin to arrive--tributes from other artists and previously unissued material from the master himself--one wonders about the nature of that compositional legacy. If Monk had been a composer in the Western classical tradition, his scores would be relatively straightforward blueprints for future performance, structures that any sympathetic interpretive artist could bring to life. But Monk, like Morton and Ellington, was a quintessential jazz composer, a man whose music cannot easily be separated from the way he and his chosen cohorts performed it, night by night. That is, Monk’s works were not composed and then interpreted, even by Monk himself. Instead, they were composed and then recomposed, coming fully to life only when the “intrepreter” brings to the music all that the music itself already possesses. That daunting yet potentially vital task was one that Monk must have faced throughout his adult life. And judging by the recordings that have emerged since his death, it is a task that should remain daunting and vital for some time to come. Chick Corea’s Trio Music (ECM) and Sphere (Elektra/Musician), from the group of the same name that includes two former Monk sidemen, are the first in what will likely be a wave of tributes to Monk--though, as it happens, neither album was conceived as a posthumous salute. Half of Trio Music, a two-record set, is devoted to Monk compositions, and Corea says that “these tracks were recorded many months before Monk’s passing and aren’t intended as a memorial but as renditions of what I consider some of the classic music of the twentieth century.” A similar desire to honor a still-living artist was the impulse behind Sphere, which, by coincidence, was recorded the day of Monk’s death. Accompanied by bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes, Corea deserves credit for choosing such seldom-performed compositions as “Think of One,” and “Reflections,” in addition to the often-heard “’Round Midnight” and “Rhythm-a-ning.” Also honorable is the pianist’s attempt to alter his normal style--a melange of Ravel, Bartók, and Bill Evans--so that it fits Monk’s musical world, where everything must be clearly stated and there is no room for harmonic sweetmeats or wispy impressionism. After a while, though, one begins to wonder whether Corea is really at home in this music. Once the themes have been stated, his improvisations often seem fidgety, as though he wished to abandon Monk’s stern restraints and frolic a bit in some less-demanding realm. But the ironclad logic of Monk’s music cannot be tampered with, which is why Corea’s version of the austerely graceful ‘Eronel” (attributed to Monk but actually written by Idrees Sulieman and Sadik Hakim) virtually destroys that piece by coyly delaying one of its key phrases. Recomposition, yes, but first one must grasp what is essential. Such knowledge comes more naturally to the members of Sphere (pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Buster Williams, and the group’s two Monk graduates, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse and drummer Ben Riley), and their version of “Eronel” is near-perfect , a relaxed restatement of the piece that simultaneously floats and swings. As Rouse explains in the album’s liner notes, “[Monk’s] compositions, if you really know them, are not the regular slow or medium or fast tempos. He usually set tempos in between. Ben [Riley] and I know the concept Thelonious wanted, having been with him for so long. We have a sense of the rhythmic pattern.” That would seem to gibe with a remark Monk himself once made, when asked why many musicians find his music hard to play. “It’s not hard to play,” he said, “but I know it, that’s all … maybe.” There is, however, not only a pause between Monk’s “that’s all” and his “maybe” but also a gap in sense, perhaps an ambiguity--one that “Sphere” inadvertently highlights. Barron, Rouse, and the rest are excellent interpretive artists, but they avoid the challenge of recomposition, as though Monk’s “that’s all” meant “this far and no further.” So Sphere presents us with a warmly affectionate and attractive portrait of Monk, but one in which there is little sign of the galvanic creator who can be heard on three new-old albums from the master himself: Live at the It Club and Live at the Jazz Workshop (both on Columbia) and ‘Round Midnight: Thelonious Monk/Gerry Mulligan (Milestone). The It Club and Jazz Workshop sets, four records in all, were recorded on October 31 and November 4, 1964, by Monk’s working group of the time (Rouse, Riley, and bassist Larry Gales). The repertoire on each album overlaps, with seven compositions being played on both nights; yet Monk’s need to recompose his music makes these dual versions of “Well You Needn’t,” “Bemsha Swing,” and the rest into quite different experiences. In almost every case the It Club performances are more in¬tense, for this must have been one of the best nights this band ever enjoyed. Rouse, who could be a lackadaisical soloist, is pushed to the point of near-delirium; and Monk himself is in equally ferocious form. There is his massive, staggered-chord passage on “Balue Bolivar Ba-lues-are,” the way he works a fragment of “Blues in the Night” into his solo on the same piece, the sheer aggressiveness of his playing on “Well You Needn’t” and a great deal more. Turning to the Jazz Workshop album, one hears less electricity, less heat. But how much and how intriguingly Monk’s approach to “Well You Needn’t” has changed in just four nights, as he finds a jumping, Savoy Sultans-style groove that makes you want to at once laugh and dance. A tune-by-tune comparison of the It Club and Jazz Workshop albums yields many such riches. But even more fascinating, as fascinating as any Monk performance that comes to mind, is his twenty-two-minute solo piano exploration of “ ’Round Midnight” on Thelonious Monk/Gerry Mulligan ’Round Midnight (Milestone). Three-quarters of the two-record set is devoted to original and alternate takes from the August 13, 1957, session that paired Monk and baritone saxophonist Mulligan--a meeting that failed to strike sparks, though Monk and bassist Wilbur Ware are in good form and Mulligan solos handsomely on “Sweet and Lovely” and “ ’Round Midnight.” Then there’s the other “’Round Midnight”--the solo piano version, which comes from the April 5, 1957 session that produced the album Thelonious Himself. The originally issued take of this “’Round Midnight” was one of Monk’s masterpieces, an intense, nearly seven-minute rumination on his most famous theme. But now we have that take plus the music that immediately preceded it, Monk’s extended attempt to decide just how he wanted to handle “’Round Midnight” on that particular day. He starts and stops no less than seven times before beginning the final performance, which may suggest that this newly issued material is a collection of scraps that would have been left unreleased. But the incompleteness of these trial runs is a small price to pay for what we get in return, an almost literal opportunity to read Monk’s mind. Probably aware that he was not going to attempt a complete take for some time, Monk takes hold of “’Round Midnight” as though he had never encountered it before--poking at its rhythms, stretching its harmonies and melodic shapes this way and that until the “’Round Midnight” we already know seems about to disintegrate. But what appears to be disintegration is really a microscopic musical analysis, as Monk breaks his composition into its smallest component parts in order to discover anew what it is actually made of. Once Monk has sifted through the fragments a few times, we too know what “’Round Midnight” is made of--a series of irreducible, crystalline motifs, each one as potentially beautiful as the familiar whole and each one, so it seems, capable of generating a very different “’Round Midnight,” depending on which facets Monk wants to highlight. So even though the final version of “’Round Midnight” is one of Monk’s masterpieces, the takes that precede it aren’t really incomplete at all. Instead they suggest that the seemingly unshakeable logic of Monk’s music was built upon a ceaseless questioning of the forces that held together his own music, or anyone else’s music for that matter. From that point of view, there could be more than one way to take Monk’s “It’s not hard to play, but I know it, that’s all ... maybe “ response to the question “Why do musicians find your music hard to play?” In one sense, Monk’s answer obviously means, “Maybe it’s hard for them because I know how it should go, and they don’t.” But that floating, semi-isolated “...maybe” also seems to look back at “I know it” and “ that’s all” and, in a very Monk-like way, set them syntactically adrift--as though he were saying something like “But what all is this ‘it’ that I know? And to what extent, and in what ways, do I actually know it?” “I know its” chasing after “maybes,” radical risks undertaken in the face of radical doubt--¬perhaps one source of Thelonious Monk’s profound musical logic was his sense of how hard won the order he made actually was.

The amount and quality of music he made was amazing. I believe he knew how grateful we were.

My favourite quote about Mel was when Jake Hanna was told that Mel had written a biography of Buddy Rich: "Really? Does he mention Buddy?"

Don't see anything wrong in Doug Ramsey's review.

The Picasso of big band jazz? More like the Maxfield Parrish. Also, onetime rocker Andrew Gold was the son of soprano/champion Hollywood dubber Marni Nixon and composer Ernest Gold ("Exodus," etc.)

It's funny you should mention that because I was just going to suggest that very model. I have one that I bought off ebay for $50. Why? Because when we were doing a northern Michigan tour one year and I tried to record one of the gigs at this restaurant, the power was so bad that my digital recorder would barely power up and would not recognize the harddrive. The next year I came back to the restaurant with that very model of line conditioner and plugged it in. The conditioner's LED let me know that the voltage of the line was extremely low, but it smoothed every thing out and my digital recorder worked great. Now I don't leave home without it. It also massively attenuates hum from my Leslie at Baker's Keyboard Lounge (they have terrible power there, too). I need to get a few more for my computers, since they are very susceptable to power fluxuations and my house is very old. Highly recommended and much cheaper than these "audiophile" ones. Just got one. Hooked my Creek amp and Cambridge CD player to it today (before I was using one of your standard power strips) and WOW! Recently had my house rewired at some expense (house's old, original equipment wiring dated from the 1950s and wouldn't have supported modern kitchen applicances if I ever want/need to go that routine), but even though the Tripp-Lite shows my AC power source is perfectly OK, what's coming through my speakers now is not what was coming through them five minutes ago. Imagery, depth of soundstage, highs and lows, you name it -- it's like I've got a whole new system, and for about $160, shipping included. I thought there might be some difference but nothing like this. Thanks, Jim.

(Edited a bit to suit my ear): A Turkish drummer dreams of traveling to America to study jazz percussion. To finance the venture, he joins the Abdul Ahmed Band, which has pretty much sewed up the lucrative club-date scene in and around Istanbul. Having saved up enough money, our hero moves to New York and for two years takes private lessons from Elvin Jones and Roy Haynes. Then he returns to Turkey and rejoins the Abdul Ahmed band. Eager to show off his jazz expertise, on the first set of the first night he plays every hip fill and break he can think of. At intermission, the leader takes him aside. "You know, I think what you are doing is very nice," Abdul Ahmed says, "very nice. But all we need is a simple backbeat on seven and thirteen."

Nor was Rosemary.

"There is something quite seductive about the smell of fresh basil."

Yes, but he cheated on her with Darlene Edwards.

Thanks, Chris. I just found a reference to that exchange in a Gary Giddins piece about Starr from his "Faces In A Crowd," though I'm sure I read it first in Martin Williams' transcription.

No, I don't see the Starr reference there, though the version of the Jazz Hot interview I have at hand is the one from The Jazz Review, which is somewhat edited (a more complete translation appeared in the magazine Kulchur -- I have that issue but can't get at it right now.). I certainly do remember (wherever I saw it) the linkage Pres made between Starr and Bessie Smith, because it struck at the time as being so odd (this being before I'd heard enough unbridled Starr to get the point).

Yes, but didn't Pres explicitly and unmistakably praise Starr in his Jazz Hot interview of about the same time. I say unmistakably because he said that Starr reminded him at times of Bessie Smith -- which is something that certainly could be said of Starr but never of Stafford.

Why does the career of anyone who is not an absolute god (and even some of those) fail to take off? Always lots of reasons, few of them unique. Ortega probably made more records under his own name than, say, Dave Schildkraut did.

I know Stephen Hough's Bowen disc on Hyperion, and those works are dishwater IMO. Compare Bowen's Ballade No. 2 (1931) to the Ballade (1929) of Bowen's contemporary John Ireland.

Pretty sure you'll enjoy it. Also, as one might expect (Scandavian meticulousness), both it and Regni are beautifully recorded. The title track of this one, a polytonal setting of "Donna Lee," is full of Broberg's serious/funny sense of humor.

I have two big band albums by Broberg (b. 1937) and his Nogenja ("Nogenja = "No Generation Jazz") Ensemble -- "Regni" (Phono Sueica) from 1995 and "Conspiracy in Flat Five" (Caprice) from 2000 or so -- that I found very appealing when I first listened to them a few years ago, and upon recent re-listening I'm even more impressed. Broberg lists his idols as Gil Evans, Monk, Dameron, Ellington, Strayhorn, George Russell, Mingus, et al., but all that has been digested and personalized; Broberg is himself. His band is full of very good and quite individual Swedish players, some of them fairly familar to me (e.g. Jan Allan, Lennart Aberg) others new to me (e.g. alto and tenor saxophonist Krister Andersson, who on alto recalls the late brilliant Konitz offshoot Rolf Billberg). In particular, Broberg's music is full of humor/wit -- genuinely musical humor/wit in jazz (that is, there's a dramatic, storytelling element of distortion of expectations that also is wholly musical) being a rare thing in my experience (e.g. Broberg's "Monkey Serenade" on "Regni" is an at once quite insane and perfectly lucid 14-minute exercise in harmonic and rhythmic wrong-footedness [based on "I Got Rhythm"], while his "Double Steps and Track Fragments" from the same album does things to "Giant Steps" that ought to be illegal -- though as I'm sure you'll agree, the idea of playing with, even toying with, "Giant Steps" is an idea whose time has come). BTW, Broberg in his onetime position at Swedish Radio commissioned George Russell's "Electronic Souls etc." back in the mid-1960s.

I could be wrong, although he's the only artist listed so far, and he's pretty clearly the headliner. But if I am right, his website says that he "writes exquisite jazz ballads" -- which is fine because those are the only kind I like to listen to.

This would seem it be the culprit: http://www.richarddworsky.com/ If so, the answer probably is simple but no less pissy: He didn't want to be preceded by a group whose leader was a pianist and no doubt a much better pianist than he is.

I see from a previous post of mine: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=38946 that it is "No Thanks."

One of Al Cohn's two charts on this Med Flory album: http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/record.php?record_id=2112 "No Thanks" and "The Fuzz" (can never remember which one it is) is just amazing, has IMO the greatest shout chorus ever written (and I'm not one of those old farts who's in love with shout choruses per se) and much else that's damn fine. I'd tell you which of those two pieces it is, but most of my CDs are still inaccessible to me.

As a friend of mine who used to do a lot of freelance technical writing for Sony once explained to me, the worst thing you can do for yourself in a corporate setting is say, " I can do that for less money (or with fewer people)."

Does everyone have me on ignore or something? Trust me--this site will work: http://www.joshhosler.biz/numberOneInHistory/selectMonth.htm OK, I get it now. "Tangerine" by Jimmy Dorsey. Thanks.

Trumpeter John Nesbitt (1900-35), who wrote a great deal for McKinney's Cotton Pickers.

Bruce is the author of a fascinating biography of Talbert, "Tom Talbert His Life and Times: Voices From a Vanished World of Jazz" (Scarecrow). I bought "Bix Duke and Fats" when it came out back in 1956 and everything else I could find by Talbert afterwards. All I lack, I believe, is "Wednesday's Child," although two tracks from that 1956 Atlantic album are on the CD that is included in Bruce's book. Seek out anything by Talbert you can find. He's in the same class as Gil Evans, and the flavor of his music is unique -- at once modern and a bit "moderne" at times (like a musical equivalent of Art Deco), it always seemed to be "curved" (if you know what I mean), but it has plenty of drive when it wants to be that way. There's some kinship musically between Talbert with Oscar Pettiford (Talbert knew Pettiford in Minneapolis in his teenage years and later wrote for O.P. in the '50s).