Thelonious Monk Trio – October 24 1947
Blue Note Records Thelonious Monk Biography
Thelonious Monk grew up in New York, started playing piano when he was around five, and had his first job touring as an accompanist to an evangelist. He was inspired by the Harlem stride pianists (James P. Johnson was a neighbor) and vestiges of that idiom can be heard in his later unaccompanied solos. However, when he was playing in the house band of Minton’s Playhouse during 1940-1943, Monk was searching for his own individual style. Private recordings from the period find him sometimes resembling Teddy Wilson but starting to use more advanced rhythms and harmonies. He worked with Lucky Millinder a bit in 1942 and was with the Cootie Williams Orchestra briefly in 1944 (Williams recorded Monk’s “Epistrophy” in 1942 and in 1944 was the first to record “‘Round Midnight”), but it was when he became Coleman Hawkins’ regular pianist that Monk was initially noticed. He cut a few titles with Hawkins (his recording debut) and, although some of Hawkins’ fans complained about the eccentric pianist, the veteran tenor could sense the pianist’s greatness. https://www.bluenote.com/artist/thelonious-monk/
The Record Changer July 1948
Marvelous cymbal work and drive by Art Blakey, drummer of the famous Billie Eckstine band which included Gillespie, Parker, Gordon, Harris, Navarro, Webster, Ammonds, Stitt, Gray, Potter and Sarah Vaughan (a veritable Fletcher Henderson in our day!). Excellent balance and fidelity, Monk’s playing falls midway between solo and section style. This record provides perfect accompaniment for home jamming. (Bluenote 543)
Blue Note Press Release 1948 “Actually found the person who was responsible for this whole new trend in music —and we have had the privilege of being the first to put his radical and unorthodox ideas on wax—is an unusual and mysterious character with the more unusual name of Thelonious Monk. Among musicians, Thelonious' name is treated with respect and awe, for he is a strange person whose pianistics continue to baffle all who hear him."
Richard Cook – Blue Note Records
Monk’s music today is so lionised and readily frequented by musicians that he is generally acknowledged as the major jazz composer after Ellington. In 1947 – and, indeed, for years afterwards – he was deemed eccentric enough to seem like an aberrant crank to many, even in the unconventional playing field of bebop. Although he embodied many of bop’s innovations, he stood apart from much of the language; the whirlwind tempos and virtuoso accuracy which typified most bop recordings are conspicuously absent from Monk’s own. His tunes, knotty with their own logic, often seem to have been jigsawed out of a combination of jazz past and Monk’s interior world, while his titles illuminate in a cunningly offhand way: “Epistrophy,” “Let’s Cool One,” “Well You Needn’t.” He obliged his groups to play with a kind of martial swing; a loping forward stride, which became infamous for outfoxing unwary performers. Each of his records operates to a combative intensity; they’re famous not for their solo improvisations, but for their awkward and eventually triumphant unity, a collectivism which has much in common with the spirit of the first jazz performances.
The Record Changer August 1948
Idrees Sulinam and Ike Quebec assisted each other in writing Evonce, an intricate tune lustily played by Monk's sextet. Although the structure and general style of the band are like other so-called be-bop groups, there is much more power in their Playing than in any group this size I know of (excepting gangs like Illinois Jacquet's, which was assembled for, tries for, and gets, nothing but power). Contributing factors are that savage little dynamo, Art Blakey on drums; and Monk himself. The two together are most exciting backers of solos you can hear—Monk. in his indifference to the rules, provokes a little extra from all who play with him, and Blakey drives them unmercifully.
The youngster, Danny Quebec West, plays a very melodic alto, not so sharp in tone as some other moderns, and with a touch more vibrato than most—the effect is nice. He news closely to the harmonies sounded by Monk in his solo. which is not spectacular, just very pleasing. On his heels is Suliman, a strange fellow who numbers among his pecularities a fondness for the cornet, and he gets some interesting things out of it. This is a better chorus than his on the previous "Suburban Eyes." He doesn't have a delicate style; it's pretty economical, and, I'd say, mean. Billy Smith plays tenor in so evil a fashion it sounds like a baritone, and then Monk appears with one of his quixotic solos, which becomes a trio with bass-man Gene Ramey and Blakey as it develops.
Off Minor is by the trio—Monk, Blakey, and Ramey. It's in the same mood as "Well 'You Needn't," but there is a little less gaiety in the basic theme. Once that has been established, Monk really goes, playing with the odd charm that identlfies him as much as his conception of things, and with his remarkable swing. And he gives you the feeling that all the things you hear are being done right now, as indeed they are; Monk has hundreds of tunes, some beautiful, some just weird—no matter how accidental they sound, he knows them; but when he improvises on one, he constructs something different each time.
Blakey stays with him, and even anticipates him occasionally, an accomplishment in itself.
This is a worthy successor to the previous Monk records. both sides, and Off Minor is a gem.
(Blue Note 547) (Paul Bacon)
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| Michael Ochs Archives |
Richard Cook – Blue Note Records
For the 24 October date, the horns were absent and Monk. Ramey and Blakey were left to themselves. They set down six titles, four originals by the pianist and two standards. 'Nice Work If You Can Get It' and 'April In Paris' are quality popular songs and fertile ground for jazz improvisers. The Gershwin tune was already a jam session favourite and Monk's four choruses on each of two takes are jocular, pell-mell episodes. Experienced listeners might spot half-heard quotations from his own melodies - such as 'Well you Needn't', which he plays later on the session - but rather than any deliberate mining of his original work, they're more like a sequence of juxtapositions of phrases from his improviser's locker. 'April In Paris' was also cut in two takes: the altemate version is much faster and is over in 2:40, while the master runs for 3:17. Although he sounds a little harried by Blakey on the quicker treatment, each shows how much Monk liked the melody, since he actually chooses to stick closely to it for much of the way, inserting double-time runs and clattery repetitions without completely sundering the wistful feel of Vernon Duke's song.
The four originals are extraordinary. 'Ruby My Dear' is one of Monks three great ballads, along with 'Crepuscule With Nellie' and 'Round Midnight'. He uses a four-note motif as the heart of the piece, modulating it to progress the composition, and the two takes, each a palatial investigation of the theme, have the mix of stateliness and playful bonhomie which distinguishes so much of his slow-tempo work. 'Well You Needn't' became one of his most-liked tunes. Over Blakey's bustle, he plays altemately full and then miserly lines. 'Off Minor' is one of Monk's most jagged ideas. 'Introspection' is one of the pianist's least-known pieces (it wasn't originally released until 1956) and one of his most oblique melodies, which seems, as Bob Blumenthal notes, 'to start somewhere in the middle'.
The most striking thing about this music - then and now - is how different it seems to the rest of the jazz of its time. Bebop piano had already spawned such virtuoso players as Bud Powell, Al Haig, Dodo Marmarosa and others, but none of them approached the unalloyed newness of Monk's ideas and methods of delivering them. If bop was both a rhythmic and an harmonic advance on the precepts of the swing era, it still found it difficult to accommodate Monk's idiosyncrasies, even though the pianist had helped to create the theoretical base for the music, as an after-hours study partner of Dizzy Gillespie. Much has been made of Monk's allegiances to jazz principles already established, and it's possible to skeet-shoot through every bar of these records, noting bits of stride and boogie-woogie, as well as the influence of men whom Monk particularly admired, notably Duke Ellington. But they remain the products of a private realm, as humorous and full of vitality as it was. The music which Lion heard as 'so strong and new' existed almost in a parallel world to the bebop environment.
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| Denzil Best and Al McKibbon, part of Monk's band at the Village Vanguard, October 1948 |
Photo by Francis Wolff
Ira Gitler - Thelonious Monk – The Complete Genius Liner Notes BN-LA-579-H2 1975
On the trio date of [incorrectly listed as] 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.
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| Denzil Best |
Down Beat 25 August 1948 Volume 15 Issue 17
The Monk alone with but rhythm tends to make the mind wander with his superprogress even though he does prove on the medium-tempoed Minor that he plays with a beat. Evonce adds the other three members of the sextet and is a pretty choice bop with a groovy collection of ensemble riffs and well-done alto and trumpet choruses by Danny West and Idrees Suliman (Blue Note 547)
Bob Blumenthal – Genius of Modern Music Volume One RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes – 2001 George Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It” had also been recorded by Bud Powell’s trio earlier in 1947. Both takes here feature Monk solos filled with ping-ponging phrases, hanging modulations and startling two-handed conjunctions. While the alternate has more wide-ranging piano invention. the rhythm section is more involved on the master — hear Ramey on the ingeniously suspended ending and Blakey throughout “Manhattan Moods” is the alternate title of “Ruby, My Dear,” the stunning ballad that Monk composed during his Minton’s days. Both takes contain 1 1/2 choruses that explore a melody that is ingeniously modulated and reordered from a haunting four-note phrase. The “composition.” however, is much more than that melody; it includes the introductory whole-tone scale, stark left-hand patterns (including a surprising touch of boogie-woogie at bars 19 and 20), and an indelible coda. The chord changes of “Well You Needn’t,” which proved to be one of Monk’s most popular compositions, had already been borrowed for “Dameronia,” which composer Tadd Dameron had recorded for Blue Note a month earlier. The alternate here is notable for the different way in which Monk phrases the melody in the first chorus, but both versions give the lie to the notion that Monk was technically limited. He simply heard things differently, like the percussive ideas in the riff that begins the third chorus on each take and evokes such inspired responses from Blakey. “April ln Paris” would become one of Monk’s favorite solo piano vehicles. He was ‘dearly drawn to the repetitive, open-ended aspects of Vernon Duke’s melody, which could pass for one of Monk’s own. The master take is played at a significantly slower tempo, which inspires double-timing from Blakey at the start of the second chorus. “Off Minor,” which Monk also called “What Now,” had been introduced on the aforementioned Bud Powell trio session. The coda heard here would also be employed by Monk as an introduction in later versions. This piano solo is indicative of how Monk molded strong thematic material and an inspired use of space into timeless improvisations. As “Playhouse", "Introspection" was arranged for (but unfortunately not recorded by) Dizzy Gillespie’s 1946 big band, which briefly included Monk. There is a four-bar tag on the 32-bar chorus; but what really makes the composition so labyrinthine is its daring melody. The three piano choruses that follow Monk’s long introduction allow us to savor that melody, which is brilliantly extended through the use of triplets and other devices during the bridge. Michael Cuscuna – More Genius of Thelonious Monk – BNJ-61011 Liner Notes Two weeks after that [first] session, on October 24, 1947, Monk did an engaging trio date. From this, we have drawn four alternate takes. The first is "Nice Work If You Can Get It", a standard which he played at Minton's in 1940 and at his last record date in 1972. The alternate was the first take of the session and is far more exciting than the master. He uses the same basic format and arrangement with his never-ending coda, but here he gets off two inspired, convulted choruses of amazing beauty, drive and brilliance with the most unorthodox rhythmic phrasing and harmonies that one could imagine. Yet it all sounds right! Conversely, the alternate first take of "Ruby My Dear" is a much straighter reading of this brilliant composition from the master. In my ten years of going through the entire Blue Note vault, no discovery excited me so much as the alternate take of "Well, You Needn't", which was the second take. Monk adds many grace notes in other places, almost shaping an entirely new composition. It has an excitement and life which the master take does not. The piano solo is more dense and active than the original take. Like "Ruby My Dear", the alternate of "April In Paris", which is the first take, is lighter and more conservative in approach, but interesting nonetheless. Playfully, he starts the solo chorus with a paraphrase from the bridge of the tune.
Record Changer April 1949 Ruby My Dear was written years ago, for Ruby. I guess, who is singularly honored by the gesture. It’s a beautiful tone-poem, played with great feeling and color by the splendid trio of Monk, Gene Ramey and Art Blakey. Oddly enough, I can envision this played one of the Alec Wilder groups, or even a larger lushly instrumented orchestra, although these guys do quite well enough for me. Evidence, with Milt Jackson, John Simmons and Shadow Wilson, is a cockeyed, delightful abstraction of Just You, Just Me, with an irresistible beat and one of Monk's most rollicking solos. More happens on this side—musical free verse or something—with a lot of widely spaced, apparently divergent notes, a result of Monk's habit of thinking of things as a whole, instead of a bar here and a bridge there. A seemingly lost chord may hang in limbo for 12 bars, then suddenly fall into place, Chinese-lock style. I think it's the nuts. (Blue Note 549) (P.B.)
Session Information
Thelonious Monk, piano; Eugene Ramey, bass; Art Blakey, drums.
WOR Studios, NYC, October 24, 1947
BN312-0, Nice Work (alt)
BN312-1, Nice Work, Blue Note 1575, BLP 5009, BLP 1511, BN-LA-579-H2
BN313-0, Ruby My Dear (alt), BN-LA-579-H2
BN313-1, Ruby My Dear, Blue Note 549, BLP 5002, BLP 1510, BN-LA-579-H2
BN314-0, Well You Needn't, Blue Note 543, BLP 5002, BLP 1510, BN-LA-579-H2
BN314-1, Well You Needn't (alt), BN-LA-579-H2
BN315-0, April In Paris (alt), BN-LA-579-H2
BN315-1, April In Paris, Blue Note 1575, BLP 1510, BN-LA-579-H2
BN317-1, Off Minor, Blue Note 547, BLP 5002, BLP 1510, BN-LA-579-H2
BN316-3, Introspection, Blue Note BLP 1510, BN-LA-579-H2
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