BN-LA-579-H2

Thelonious Monk - The Complete Genius

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, October 15, 1947
Idrees Suliman, trumpet; Danny Quebec West, alto sax; Billy Smith, tenor sax; Thelonious Monk, piano; Eugene Ramey, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN308-2 Humph
BN309-4 Evonce
BN310-1 Suburban Eyes
BN311-0 Thelonious

WOR Studios, NYC, October 24, 1947
Thelonious Monk, piano; Eugene Ramey, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN312-1 Nice Work
BN313-1 Ruby My Dear
BN314-0 Well You Needn't
BN315-1 April In Paris
BN317-1 Off Minor
BN316-3 Introspection

WOR Studios, NYC, November 21, 1947
George Taitt, trumpet; Edmund Gregory, alto sax; Thelonious Monk, piano; Robert Paige, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN318-3 In Walked Bud
BN319-0 Monk's Mood
BN320-0 Who Knows
BN321-1 'Round About Midnight

Apex Studios, NYC, July 2, 1948
Milton Jackson, vibes; Thelonious Monk, piano; John Simmons, bass; Shadow Wilson, drums; Kenny 'Pancho' Hagood, vocals #1,2.

BN326-3 All The Things You Are
BN327-1 I Should Care (alternate take)
BN328-0 Evidence
BN329-0 Misterioso (as Mysterioso)
BN329-1 Misterioso (alternate take)
BN330-0 Epistrophy
BN331-1 I Mean You

WOR Studios, NYC, July 23, 1951
Sahib Shihab, alto sax #1-5; Milt Jackson, vibes #1-5,7; Thelonious Monk, piano; Al McKibbon, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

BN392-1 Four In One
BN392-2 Four In One (alternate take)
BN393-0 Criss-Cross
BN394-0 Eronel
BN395-0 Straight No Chaser
BN396-1 Ask Me Now
BN397-0 Willow Weep For Me

WOR Studios, NYC, May 30, 1952
Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Lou Donaldson, alto sax; Lucky Thompson, tenor sax; Thelonious Monk, piano; Nelson Boyd, bass; Max Roach, drums.

BN434-1 tk.2 Skippy
BN435-3 tk.7 Hornin' In
BN437-0 tk.10 Carolina Moon
BN438-0 tk.11 Let's Cool One

See Also: BLP 1509 BLP 1510 BLP 1511

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Round Midnight	Thelonious Monk	November 21 1947
In Walked Bud	Thelonious Monk	November 21 1947
Monk's Mood	Thelonious Monk	November 21 1947
Who Knows	Thelonious Monk	November 21 1947
Thelonious	Thelonious Monk	October 15 1947
Humph	Thelonious Monk	October 15 1947
Suburban Eyes	Ike Quebec	October 15 1947
Evonce	I. Sulieman-I. Quebec	October 15 1947
Side Two
Off Minor	Thelonious Monk	October 24 1947
Ruby My Dear	Thelonious Monk	October 24 1947
April In Paris	Y. Harburg-V. Duke	October 24 1947
Well, You Needn't	Thelonious Monk	October 24 1947
Introspection	Thelonious Monk	October 24 1947
Nice Work If You Can Get It	I.Gershwin-G. Gershwin	October 24 1947
Evidence	Thelonious Monk	July 2 1948
I Mean You	Thelonious Monk	July 2 1948
Epistrophy	K. Clarke-T. Monk	July 2 1948
Side Three
I Should Care	Stordahl-Weston-Cahn	July 2 1948
All The Things You Are	O. Hammerstein-J. Kern	July 2 1948
Mysterioso	Thelonious Monk	July 2 1948
Mysterioso - Alt. Master	Thelonious Monk	July 2 1948
Carolina Moon	D. Davis-J. Burke	May 30 1952
Hornin' In	Thelonious Monk	May 30 1952
Skippy	Thelonious Monk	May 30 1952
Let's Cool One	Thelonious Monk	May 30 1952
Side Four
Ask Me Now	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Straight No Chaser	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Four In One	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Four In One - Alt. Master	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Criss Cross	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Eronel	Thelonious Monk	July 23 1951
Willow Weep For Me	Ann Ronell	July 23 1951

Liner Notes

THELONIOUS MONK

It is always easier to judge a person's art when perceived across the bridge of time. Thelonious Monk's contributions began to receive a more widespread acceptance in the mid and late 1950's — and their worth has only increased with the following decades — but in the 1940's, it was only an inner circle of musicians and a handful of lay listeners who realized his importance as a pianist and composer. To others, among the minority who were even aware of his efforts, he was an eccentric, a man who was bearded and wore a beret and heavy, metal-framed sunglasses at night.

PM, the short-lived New York newspaper of that period, carried a feature article on Monk in which he was depicted as lying on his bed staring up at a picture of Billie Holiday that he had placed on his ceiling and ringed in red lights. Granted that Monk is not your average run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, ordinary homo sapien, but the aura which wafted out of his publicity placed him beyond a weirder-than-thou category. Later, he acquired a reputation for not showing up, engendered by a New York area concert promoter who would use his name on posters without consulting him. When Monk wasn't on the set people would naturally say, "He's goofed again."

Thelonious Sphere Monk. His very name, distinctive as he is, only added to the mystery and the living legend. A billboard outside a 52nd Street club once read, "Thonium Monk" and if he had a dollar for each time it has been spelled "Thelonius" he could endow his own professorial chair at some university. As so often happens people saw the individuality as a strangeness. Instead of accepting it as part of a man who was creating exceptional music, they let it keep them from that very music or blur its full impact.

All kinds of misconceptions grew up around Monk. It was said that only a few people could play his music or play with him. Milt Jackson was one readily acknowledged as able but when Wardell Gray sat in with Monk at the Roost one night and swung his ass off while really getting into his songs even members of the hip intelligentsia were non-plussed, albeit happily.

Vibist Teddy Charles, when I asked him in 1956 why Monk's music was not more widely played, said that many musicians found it too hard or were too lazy to fully investigate it. Monk told me: "It's not hard to play but I know it, that's all, maybe."

Steve Lacy, the soprano saxophonist took the time to really explore Monk's music by listening to Monk's records hundreds of times. "I learned a lot more, in the process of listening and practicing, than merely the tunes themselves," he explained. "The harmony, melody and rhythm are all interesting in Monk's tunes. I like their shapes and the way they interlock — the harmony gives the shapes colors...Monk's music has profound humanity, disciplined economy, balanced virility, dramatic nobility, and innocently exuberant wit."

Even after Monk made the cover of Time there were the dissenters. This time they allowed as how his compositions were something unique but downgraded his technique and touch at the keyboard. Bill Evans countered with: "Make no mistake, This man knows exactly what he is doing in a theoretical way — organized, more than likely in a personal terminology, but strongly organized nevertheless. We can further be grateful to him for combining aptitude, insight, drive, compassion, fantasy and whatever makes the total artist, and we should also be grateful for such direct speech in an age of insurmountable conformist pressures?"

Evans was speaking, of course, of the 1950's, but it was no surprise that Monk, who had been his own man in the face of adversity, was not going to become a conformist just as he began to achieve success, even if it was the button-down time of Eisenhower.

Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in what has now been divined to be 1917 (three years earlier than previously reported), Monk was brought to New York while an infant. He began on piano at six, studying it formally a few years later. At Stuyvesant High School he excelled at mathematics and physics. Early musical experience included playing the organ in church and touring with an evangelist. "She preached and healed and we played," he has said.

Back in New York in the late 1930's Monk worked various gigs and by the end of that decade had already composed some of the pieces he would bring to recorded light in the 1940's, Through his role as pianist in Kenny Clarke's house band at Minton's Playhouse he became involved with the modern movement. By supplying raw material which served as a base for new improvisation he served as an important catalyst in the development of the music, There is no doubt that Dizzy Gillespie was greatly enriched by his association with Monk and Thelonious personally encouraged Bud Powell at a crucial, early stage of the pianist's career.

Monk played with Lucky Millinder's orchestra in 1942; Coleman Hawkin's combo in 1944; and Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1946. None of these short-lived engagements brought him anything approaching great recognition. Perceptive collectors took notice of his solo on Coleman Hawkins' Flyin' Hawk, recorded for the Joe Davis label in October 1944 (reissued on Prestige in 1970), but it wasn't until 1947, when the first Blue Note sessions were done, that people really began to reckon with him. Not to take anything away from the important recordings he did in subsequent years for Prestige, Riverside and Columbia, but the Blue Notes, 1947-52, contain a body of work which by itself lays heavy claim to Monk's exalted position in jazz history.

It seems fitting that the album's keynote is sounded by 'Round Midnight, Monk's evergreen, most famous and most often recorded (by other musicians) composition. This was not its first recording (Cootie Williams' big band did it in 1944) nor was it Monk's first date for Blue Note (that had taken place a month earlier; see below). It however, its initial cutting by the composer and, as such, a simple yet ingenious arrangement by Thelonious in which he reveals the theme through the horns of Sahib Shihab and George "Flip" Taitt and his own piano. He improvises the bridge, never stating the standard bridge with which we later became familiar, and doesn't return to the actual theme. His introduction is a paraphrase of the one Gillespie used to introduce his February 1946 recording of the song but his ending is totally different than Dizzy's which like Gillespie's intro is still procedural for anyone playing Midnight. Monk's masterpiece has a rare, haunting beauty of the most enduring nature.

In Walked Bud, named for Powell, is Monk's recasting of Irving Berlin's Blue Skies. Flip Taitt, like everyone else, was obviously aware of Diz but his open tone and certain phraseology put one in mind of Freddie Webster. Shihab's acrid tone is distinctive and although elements of his work necessarily echo Charlie Parker he is far from a Bird imitator. I once wrote that Monk's music "leaves the openings that Art Blakey's special grammar punctuates so well." This can be heard here but is even more evident in the trio and quintet sessions of later vintage.

Monk's Mood, melancholia with hope a-bornin', is stated by the horns as Monk's piano comments. Who Knows, an up tempo romp, was once cited by Steve Lacy as a perfect example of how Monk fashions each one of his pieces with lapidarian skill. "It's a very intricate melody," he stated, "with the second eight differing from the first eight and going up to a really high point. And listen to the way the melody fits the chords. In Monk's pieces, that isn't a deliberate plan — making the melody fit the chords — but it is the way his tunes work out...perfectly and naturally."

Monk's first record date for Blue Note is singular for its inclusion of two lines by tenor man Ike Quebec, one a collaboration with trumpeter Idrees Sulieman who, as Leonard Graham, had recorded with Ben Webster and played with Big Sid Catlett on 52nd Street in 1946. Alto saxophonist Danny Quebec West was Ike's cousin; this is his only own prominent appearance on record. Tenor saxist Billy Smith was unabashed disciple of Dexter Gordon who had obviously listened hard to Dex's Savoy recordings of the time.

Thelonious is remarkable (or what Monk fashions from one note — an entire piece. The "stride" segment of Monk's solo shows his roots and linkage to the pianists of an earlier Harlem era: Ellington, Willie the Lion and James P Johnson. But he manages to insert Salt Peanuts!

Humph sounds like our old friend, I Got Rhythm, Sulieman, one of Gillespie's early followers was still close to Diz at this point in his career but he already had his own things happening, and his time conception is relaxed where Taitt's was stiff. Monk's solo is amazing for its rhythmic bite. And dig his bridge — a marvel.

Quebec's Suburban Eyes is an engaging takeoff on All God's Chillun Got Rhythm. Sulieman is in fine form here and on Evonce (his and Quebec's joint effort), whose harmonic structure sounds familiar but somehow eludes me. It is interesting, but on these two numbers, not of his own devising, Monk sounds more like sideman rather than leader.

On the trio date of October 15, 1947, falling between the Thelonious session and the 'Round Midnight date, you can really get at elemental Monk and some of his classic compositions: Off Minor; Ruby My Dear; and Well You Needn't. I had the 78 of Ruby My Dear at college. I'd put it on the turntable of my portable phonograph which would be situated on the floor next to my bed. All I would then have to do was drop my right arm (or my left if I was on my stomach) when the record was over and replace the tone arm at the first groove. I remember listening to Ruby ten times at a clip that way. Not that we should overlook the intriguing Introspection just because it has been less celebrated, or the personal interpretations of Vernon Duke and George Gershwin, respectively.

Next we move to July 1948 and the alchemy that occurs when Monk and Milt Jackson got together. Evidence is Monk's version of Just You, Just Me but to let it go at that is too simple an explanation. Steve Lacy has called it "a glorification of the way Monk comps" and, indeed, the spare, skeletal outline he lays down is a fine example of how he implies much with little. His later recordings of the same song show how he solidified the idea first recorded here.

I Mean You, co-credited to Coleman Hawkins (Hawk recorded it in 1946) is another shining example of Monk-Milt interplay. Epistrophy, co-authored by Monk with Kenny Clarke, was originally called Fly Right. It stemmed from an idea that Charlie Christian helped Kenny conceive. Cootie Williams recorded it in 1942 but Columbia didn't issue that version until decades later. Monk used it as his theme in the Five Spot days of the 1950's when Coltrane was with him. The drummer in that group was Shadow Wilson, the same man who was on this original recording.

On that same July 1948 day, two vocals were done by Kenny "Pancho" Hagood, an Eckstine and Vaughan-influenced baritone who had sung with Gillespie's big band and Parker's group. I Should Care and All The Things You Are were released on a 78 but have never been on LP Even if you do not care for Pancho's sometimes straining intonation — I happen to dig his singing but that's probably because I'm an unregenerate bebopper — Monk's (and Milt's) accompaniment and beautiful solos, especially Monk's oblique gem on All The Things, are worth the admission price.

Mysterioso, the final instrumental selection from this date, is presented here in two takes and comparisons are not odious in this instance, Notice how Monk uses elements of his "walking" theme in his accompaniment to Jackson —paring it down to an essence — and the way in which he unifies the whole performance by what he plays in his solo and how he and Milt close the piece.

Monk's last date as a leader for Blue Note (May 1952) is exactly like his first in instrumentation but very different in feeling due to the sidemen and the material. Blakey may be perfect for Monk but Max Roach, in his way, is perfection, too, Monk's refashioning of Carolina Moon into a 6/4 waltz was perhaps the most celebrated number from this session when it came out on 78 and Roach was no small help in the realization of the concept.

Each one of the three Monk originals is an entity unto itself and a success on its own terms. Hornin' In has a keening, other worldly ensemble sound but is earthy enough in its solo sections. Monk knows how to extract sound from a group through subtle voicings and from a piano by techniques that make a note elastic without being "plastic."

Skippy's wondrously intricate theme is established by the piano before the horns enter in an arcing swell. Lucky Thompson's Byased (out of Hawkins) opinions are followed by a pensive Kenny Dorham who gathers momentum like a good relay man as he passes the baton to Monk whose solo is so meaty that I recommend many listenings for full digestion. On the way out the horns carry the theme before cresting again on that sonic wave.

Let's Cool One mellows along after a most musical cymbal introduction by Roach. Kenny Dorham is the essence of elegant cool, treading surefootedly on the padded feet of a hip cat. Lou Donaldson (not heard in solo on Skippy) blithely splits a chorus with Thompson and Monk shares his with bassist Nelson Boyd.

The set closer is the 1951 reunion of Monk with Bags — Milt Jackson — as well as with Shihab and Blakey. Ask Me Now is a trio performance (Jackson and Shihab lay out) in the same class as the October 1947 classics.

The blues, Straight No Chaser, is a strong example of how masterful Monk is at manipulating phraseology into a motif that generates its own swing. At the end of his solo he quotes Mysterioso. When Straight No Chaser was first issued most musicians slept on it. Then later in the 50's — coincidental with the "rediscovery" of Monk — it became an oft played and recorded line.

Four In One, heard in two versions (the differences are an edifying bonus) has a harmonic base that in places reminds one of Yardbird Suite changes but it is not and the bridge is not the same either. Shihab had become more lyrical since 1947 and Jackson had added polish without slickness to his already substantial talents.

Gunther Schuller, talking about Criss Cross once compared it to work of abstract painters in that it didn't set out to create a "mood" or depict something specific. But so much of music is "abstract" that I think he was stretching things a bit. However, I would agree with his companion observation; "It is not a 'song,' a term so many musicians apply to the music they work with, it is not a 'tune' — it is a composition for instruments."

Eronel is another typically Monkian theme in that even if you have never heard it before, something inside tells you that you might have known it — a musical deja vu of sorts. I think this is because his pieces are crafted so finely — no waste — and have an overall feeling of rightness about them.

Monk is cast strictly in an accompanist's role for Jackson's feature on Ann Ronell's Willow Weep For Me. His is a presence which helps Bags to achieve a continuously affecting performance. And as far as setting moods...

Martin Williams once pointed out something in Monk's playing that is equally applicable to his entire oeuvre. "One of the most immediately striking things...is that everything he says he says musically — if he has no music to make he doesn't fill out a single bar with faked blowing or rambling. All is given in terms of a musical sensibility or it isn't given at all."

And Monk has given us so much.

IRA GITLER