The Monkastery

[king ubu]

I'm not sure if I would agree, considering also how much his work has been played... after Ellington is the second most covered jazz composer.
For instance I should think about it but I remember Steve Lacy doing a great job with his tunes.

I'm not opposed to such cover projects at all, it's just that usually they don't work too well. Lacy is an exception of course, he really understood how these tunes worked.

But all in all, it's a bit like with Mingus: without the man itself, the music will just never be the same, it's virtually impossible to revive it in true spirit - and maybe the true spirit would be anyway to do one's own thing.

In general, I do see a difference in people covering, say, tunes by Hank Mobley or Sonny Clark or Lee Morgan that can be approached in different ways or are mostly vehicles for improvisation. With Monk, the linkage between tunes and performance is so much tighter that it feels a bit like failure (as opposed to: like another, equally valid point of view or approach) if that linkage gets lost when others perform his music.

[Brian]

Great long essay in appreciation of Monk's unique gifts as a composer, from Pitchfork magazine.

[Mirror Image]

I'm really into Monk at the moment, Straight: No Chaser is a damn good CD! 

And it's the only other time Monk recorded his piece Locomotive. What I love about Monk is how he can take something that sounds like a nursery rhyme or children's lullaby and make it swing.

[Karl Henning]

I'm really into Monk at the moment, Straight: No Chaser is a damn good CD! 

Aye.

[Karl Henning]

The original Riverside is back in print?!?!? Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Just listened to Underground. Love the cover, and love the entire B side, but the highlight for me is definitely "Ugly Beauty" - the softest, tenderest playing I've ever heard from Charlie Rouse.

Great track.

[San Antone]

Another great Monk box



Live dates, which I generally prefer to the studio recordings.

[Brian]

I just listened to "Thelonious in Action" and am surprised by something. After 50+ years, has nobody yet identified the "Unidentified Piano Solo"?? Google is not offering any answers. But it seems like a straightforward old Tin Pan Alley tune that surely other musicians (or later musicologists) would have known.

[aukhawk]

I agree with others that Monk's trio recordings on Prestige are very special.  Blue Monk, with a swinging drum solo from Max Roach.

I don't think there's been any mention of Monk's final (?) studio recording, in London in November 1971, which produced 3 hours of trio music and 3 hours of solo.  The trio included Al McKibbon on bass and Art Blakey on drums.  The material was all the usual Monk standards, and one extended solo 'noodle' entitled Chordially.
Perhaps not as high-energy as the music of 10 or 20 years earlier (apparently McKibbon was not familiar with some of the material), but the solo playing is really as good as ever, very introspective, and the trio has the advantage of a good modern recording.

Probably hard to find, the LPs and CDs I've got are on the Black Lion label.


I saw the Monk quartet performing live in Croydon, just south of London, when I was about 14.  Very special!

[San Antone]

I saw the Monk quartet performing live in Croydon, just south of London, when I was about 14.  Very special!

Lucky you!   

[king ubu]

I just listened to "Thelonious in Action" and am surprised by something. After 50+ years, has nobody yet identified the "Unidentified Piano Solo"?? Google is not offering any answers. But it seems like a straightforward old Tin Pan Alley tune that surely other musicians (or later musicologists) would have known.

May be "Dreamland"?
http://www.monkbook.com/sessionography/sessionography-1958-1962/

Don't know that tune at all ...

[San Antone]

May be "Dreamland"?
http://www.monkbook.com/sessionography/sessionography-1958-1962/

Don't know that tune at all ...

(Meet Me Tonight in) Dreamland - thought to be a Monk tune possibly based on an earlier song.  Also found on this studio recording: London Collection Vol. 1



The original song here

https://www.youtube.com/v/fXzuZQb6X2w

"Meet Me To-night in Dreamland" was one of the most famous and beloved popular songs of the early twentieth century. This waltz, with lyrics by Beth Slater Whitson and music by Leo Friedman, was published in Chicago in 1909.

If Monk used the earlier song he altered it quite a bit.  Curious.