"Suburban Eyes"--Monk

[Milestones]

What is the deal on this piece?  I know the original version (from late 40's, I think), but I'm not aware of anyone else covering it.  The piece is not even to be found on Frank Kimbrough's Monk's Dreams.  It's not bad, though hardly in the upper echelon of Monk's works.  But it seems to be a real obscurity.   

LATER:  So I guess it was written by Ike Quebec.  I was thrown because I was looking at a Gary Smulyan album and there the composer was listed as Monk.  

Edited September 12, 2023 by Milestones

[AllenLowe]

doesn't exactly sound like Monk - I believe it's based on All God's Children.

[Gheorghe]

On 9/12/2023 at 9:34 PM, AllenLowe said:

doesn't exactly sound like Monk - I believe it's based on All God's Children.

Yeah, that´s it. Based on All God´s Chillun, but in Eb. Most other bop lines based on that song is in F (Little Willie Leaps, Reets and I, and so on). On those early Monk albums on BN there is another tune where we are not sure, if it was actually written by Monk: "Eronel". It´s said that it was written by Sadik Hakim. Well, I once played it with a great tenor player in quartet, he had called the tune and announced it as Monk´s tune. Whatever, I have not heard other "Sadik Hakim" tunes. I hear him on several Savoy sessions as pianist, but he plays a quite edgy stiff syncopated style, strictly cromatic, which sounds more as if a classical player tries to "play" what he think´s is bop.....

[mikeweil]

4 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

Sadik Hakim ......... I hear him on several Savoy sessions as pianist, but he plays a quite edgy stiff syncopated style, strictly cromatic, which sounds more as if a classical player tries to "play" what he think´s is bop.....

That's what I always thought about him. Those chromatic runs drive me mad.

[Gheorghe]

22 hours ago, mikeweil said:

That's what I always thought about him. Those chromatic runs drive me mad.

The funny thing is, that when I started to try to play "our music", I mean when I was in my early teens, I sounded the same without knowing who Sadik Hakim is. 
That´s if you try to sound "hip" like a bopper but don´t have the means to express it. 
I just heard Bud and Thelonious and wanted to get into that direction, but without really being inside that musical language it sounds stiff and without melody in it. 
I thought I got it but when we recorded a repetition with the tape recorder, the tape recorder doesn´t have mercy, it plays back all the square stiff crap I played: Chromatic but not in the sense of using it to play "your story" , sycopated not like "bouncin´" or "flowing" in a natural manner, but in a stiff non musical manner. 
When I finally heard that Savoy sides of Bird from 1945 where Sadik plays piano even if he didn´t have a Union Card, I was astonished how similar it sounds to what I sounded then. I said to myself (knowing that I don´t like my own playing): "If this guy sounds that way AND is recorded with Bird, it can´t be that bad. But after some nights of good sleep again I was unhappy with what I did. 
I got help from a name US musician who told me "You play Bouncin with Bud but DO YOU REALLY KNOW what "Bouncin´" means ? So this one question meant tons of help. It has to have that natural feeling in it, that makes this tune so beautiful. You can´t play that with a "haba daba haba daba" aproach. Never.....

The best example of one who played stiff and un-boppish when he started but became tops after a few years is Al Haig: Listen to his playing on the Town Hall 1945 with Bird´n Diz and it sounds stiff, it is some studied figures but now natural flow. And then listen to Al Haig in 1949 with Bird or Wardell Gray and you have a topnotch pianist.....

[mikeweil]

Thanks for the elaboration - I will have to re-listen and maybe then I will understand the differences. I do not know enough about pianistics to understand why Hakim sounded so stiff.

[JSngry]

His later records show him playing more "traditionally".

Don't forget that he alsorecorded with Lester Young! 

 

 

[medjuck]

And of course there's the controversy as to whether it is him or Dizzy playing piano on Koko.  IIRC Hakim said it was him in a Coda interview.