Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious Monk is undoubtedly one of the crucial essential – and controversial – figures within the historical past of jazz. Though he was a trailblazer who pioneered a uniquely percussive method to the piano and developed a peculiar musical language that some discovered obscure, his best achievement was writing over 70 memorable songs, a number of of which grew to become jazz requirements.
Monk initially rose to fame alongside alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie within the vanguard of the bebop motion in New York in the course of the mid Forties. In the primary, bebop was a high-octane music pushed by Parker and Gillespie’s virtuosic athleticism however Monk, who was the eldest of bop’s holy trinity, created his personal distinctive musical universe that was outlined by quirky chromatic choruses, disquieting dissonant notes, and, on the entire, a lot slower tempi. Given the novel but extremely stylized traits of his music – which he blueprinted on his very first recordings for the Blue Word label in 1947 – Monk met with extra opposition from the jazz institution than Parker and Gillespie. “He can’t play. He has two left hands,” was how one New York document retailer proprietor responded to Monk’s piano taking part in. Blue Word, nevertheless, hailed their protégé as a genius and helped garner media consideration by selling him as a mysterious maverick.
Though the label’s makes an attempt to interrupt Monk into the jazz mainstream failed, because the 50s progressed, fruitful stints on the Status and Riverside labels established the pianist as considered one of trendy jazz’s main figures; and in 1962, when Monk signed to the main label, Columbia Data, he loved the largest publicity of his profession.
For these listening to Monk for the primary time, discovering a handy entry level into his music can pose a problem; particularly in view of the truth that throughout his 24-year recording profession he made a number of studio recordings of most of his signature compositions. However the 20 choices highlighted under supply the proper introduction to a genius of recent music.
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Blue Word Foundations
(Spherical Midnight; Ruby, My Expensive; Nicely, You Needn’t; Epistrophy; Criss Cross; Straight, No Chaser)
Thelonious Monk spent 5 years with Blue Word (1947-1952) and although it was a creatively fertile interval that yielded fifteen 78 rpm singles and two LPs, none of his recordings bought properly. However Alfred Lion’s label was the place Monk laid the foundations for his singular type and recorded lots of his most essential songs; together with arguably his best and hottest creation, “Round Midnight,” a sluggish, evocative nocturne distinguished by a smoky uncoiling melody. Monk first recorded the track with a sextet in 1947 as “‘Round About Midnight” and since then, it has been covered by everyone from Miles Davis in the 50s to Amy Winehouse in the 2000s. It even has the distinction of being the most recorded jazz composition of all time and had a movie named after it; director Bernard Tavernier’s 1986 movie about an American jazz musician (performed by Dexter Gordon) dwelling in Europe.
“Round Midnight” confirmed that Monk was an distinctive ballad author however it wasn’t a one-off, because the beautiful “Ruby, My Dear,” clearly demonstrated. Monk’s 1947 trio model opens with a descending entire tone cascade; a signature embellishment within the pianist’s field of musical tips.
Monk may additionally produce songs that swung with a compulsive foot-tapping groove. The 1947 recording of “Well, You Needn’t” underlines his ethos of singing swing joyfully whereas its infectious melodic hook reveals that regardless of his repute as an avant-garde iconoclast, Monk may write accessible tunes.
One other early Monk masterpiece, “Epistrophy,” co-written with bebop drummer, Kenny Clarke, was first recorded in 1948 with a band that includes future Trendy Jazz Quartet vibraphonist Milt Jackson and shortly grew to become a go-to track in Monk’s canon.
“Criss Cross” from 1951, additionally swung laborious, resulting from drummer Artwork Blakey’s propulsive groove; the track highlighted Monk’s penchant for angular melodies and seasoning his harmonies with discordant notes. First recorded the identical yr, “Straight, No Chaser” – one other quintessential Monk quantity that the pianist ceaselessly revisited – confirmed how an orthodox 12-bar blues could possibly be radicalized with mesmerizing chromatic melodies.
Blossoming At Status And Riverside
(Blue Monk; Nutty; Pannonica; Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are; Trinkle Tinkle; Rhythm-A-Ning)
Like “Straight No Chaser,” “Blue Monk” – first recorded on the 1954 Status LP Thelonious Monk Trio – dazzled with its complicated prismatic structure however was constructed on a comparatively easy 12-bar blues framework. It was second solely to “Round Midnight” by way of the variety of variations Monk recorded.
One other fashionable tune in Monk’s repertoire was the even catchier “Nutty,” initially reduce in 1954 with a trio for the Status album, Thelonious Monk Performs. Its piano solo, which adheres intently to the track’s melodic theme, reveals how Monk was completely different from technically dazzling bebop pianists like Bud Powell; as a substitute of manufacturing a torrent of liquid piano runs, his improvisation is very fragmented, with lengthy pauses separating percussive right-hand melodies from chunky chordal iterations of the theme.
In 1955, Monk joined producer Orrin Keepnews’ Riverside label to start probably the most satisfying part of his profession. Arguably the highpoint of his time there was the 1956 album, Sensible Corners, that includes saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Ernie Henry, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Max Roach. The document noticed the premiere of Monk’s stunning ballad “Pannonica”; Monk performed celeste in addition to piano on a dreamy tune impressed by his pal and patron, the Baroness Pannonica “Nica” de Koenigswater. She was additionally the muse behind one other pretty sluggish ballad on the album; “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are” (aka “Bolivar Blues”), whose title referenced Manhattan’s Bolivar Lodge, Nica’s dwelling on the time.
A yr later, in 1957, sax big, John Coltrane, joined Monk’s group for a brief interval; they solely made one studio album collectively (Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane) however because the quirky, intricate “Trinkle Tinkle” reveals, the 2 jazz giants created musical alchemy once they mixed their formidable abilities.
Monk’s penchant for technically-gifted saxophonists resulted within the extremely regarded tenor titan, Johnny Griffin, becoming a member of his quartet in 1958. They have been captured reside on the 5 Spot Café in New York on two compilation albums, Thelonious in Motion and Misterioso. Thelonious in Motion options an incendiary model of Monk’s traditional “Rhythm-A-Ning,” a driving tune the pianist first recorded within the studio in 1957 with Artwork Blakey & The Jazz Messengers.
Thelonious Monk’s Solo Monk Piano Excursions
(April In Paris; Only a Gigolo; Lulu’s Again In City; Subtle Woman)
Thelonious Monk reduce 4 albums of unaccompanied piano throughout his profession, starting in 1954 with Piano Solo, recorded in Paris as a one-off undertaking for a French firm. However considered one of his most well-known solo forays was Thelonious Himself, recorded three years later, which blended self-penned materials with jazz requirements. Monk’s model of the ballad “April In Paris” from that album is especially arresting; the way in which he serrated the melody and re-harmonized it revealed how he utilized his signature musical traits to another person’s creation. Noteworthy, too, is his 1963 solo piano rendering of the favored Nineteen Twenties Austrian tango, “Just A Gigolo,” a track that jazz pianists Fat Waller and Artwork Tatum reworked first, however which Monk fully transforms to replicate his personal musical psyche.
There have been different lone piano recordings the place Monk clearly indicated how he fused the extremely rhythmic stride-style popularized by Harlem musicians like James P. Johnson within the Nineteen Twenties with an altogether extra trendy conception of melody, concord, and meter; instance is supplied by the jaunty piano intro to his 1964 rendition of the Thirties tune, “Lulu’s Back In Town,” which is peppered with grating but nearly humorous harmonic clashes.
Though Monk is likely one of the best composers within the historical past of jazz, because the above two songs reveal, he was additionally an adept interpreter of jazz requirements. He recorded two albums dedicated to different writers’ songs; considered one of them, recorded in 1955, paid homage to the music of Duke Ellington and included a typical Monk-esque remodelling of the evergreen ballad “Sophisticated Lady.”
Wider Fame In The 60s
(Proof; Bye-Ya; Inexperienced Chimneys; Ugly Magnificence)
Thelonious Monk’s signing to Columbia Data in 1962, the place he joined a roster together with jazz heavyweights Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington, meant that his music may attain extra folks than ever earlier than. He was in a position to journey the world and carry out on its best phases, and in 1964, proof that Monk was not an underground determine was confirmed when his portrait graced the entrance cowl of the influential US journal, Time.
However the 60s was a interval of consolidation for the pianist/composer, who primarily supplied refreshed variations of older songs; some have been revived in a big ensemble context, just like the thrilling large band retoolings of the uptempo numbers, “Evidence” and “Bye-Ya,” each recorded on tour in 1963. Of the brand new songs Monk debuted within the 60s, “Green Chimneys,” an upbeat swinger, and “Ugly Beauty,” a mournful however elegant waltz, confirmed that the composer may nonetheless write compelling music. Even so, because the 60s grew to become the 70s, his inventive powers quickly declined with the development of undiagnosed bipolar dysfunction.
Thelonious Monk died in February 1982, 11 years after his closing studio recording, however since then, his inventory has risen exponentially; in 1993 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and two years later, his face appeared on a US postage stamp. Extra accolades adopted; the Thelonious Monk Institute Of Jazz was based in Los Angeles in 1986 and precisely twenty years later, Monk was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. His title has additionally been saved within the public eye with a plethora of reissues, retrospectives, tribute albums, and unreleased reside recordings; the latter epitomized by 2020’s critically acclaimed Palo Alto, capturing Monk’s band taking part in at a highschool in 1968.
With their angular melodies and harmonic surprises, these Thelonious Monk items seize the idiosyncratic essence of their creator, a musical genius who was typically misunderstood in his lifetime. Although Monk recorded most of these choices a number of occasions, he by no means performed them the identical means twice; a incontrovertible fact that’s not solely indicative of jazz’s improvisational nature but in addition displays the pianist’s forthright individualism, whose sartorial panache and penchant for natty headgear was nearly as well-known as his groundbreaking music.
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