The Jazz Review - Jazz Studies Online

when, in comparing Monk to other
more easily accessible composers, he
says: "What he [Monk] offers is
not smooth, public-relations-conscious
artifice or surface skills, but merely
the music that is in him". He is one
of "those non-benders and non-conformers
who doesn't happen even to
seem easy to understand". But precisely
because this is so, the performances
must be better prepared, or
else the obstacles to a broader assimilation
are too great. What is left
in "Brilliant Corners" is a feeling of
the potential strength and immediacy
of Monk's work but not its realization.
Similarly "Monk's Music" (Riverside
12-242) brings into focus the
same problem, further aggravated by
the inclusion of Coleman Hawkins on
the date. One has to say, with great
reluctance", that Hawk has considerable
trouble finding his way around
Monk's music. The record starts with
the nineteenth century hymn tune
Abide With Me, Monk's (and incidentally
Fats Waller's) favorite, ft is
nlaved in a solemnlv intoned straightforward
manner much like outtinL a
motto at the head of a chapter.
All of Monk's own playing on this
record is very, very good; it is
strong, lucid, and aggressively leading—a
little like Ellington's or
Basie's approach with their bands.
If all the playing were on Monk's
level this would be a great record.
As a matter of fact, Blakey and
Wilbur Ware are consistently imaginative
but Coltrane—despite his
unoues'tionable 'thoueh still experimenting
talent-doesn't fare too well
on the hrirW of Well Vnil Needn't
with its diffirult to be interesting
parallelI rhordI f f W ^
hadlv hnn P here anf rnnetan^man
ZZ t n L i e tCLkwftlT 3!u
mT!JI r W ^ S l The SLA
T^TTFZ^Z ll J if, J ~ r
r X f l th a I h i
coltrane so that h,: solo emerges m
many tiny land 1 think un.ntentionally)
disconnected fragments.
Hawkins shows clearly that he is
of an earlier generation. Aside from
two shaky or false starts—on Well,
You Needn't and Epistrophy, the latter
beautifully covered by Blakey,
Monk and Ware—Hawk seems often
to be thrown by Monk's oblique accompaniments
and sparse angular
lines. In Ruby, My Dear Monk's insistence
on using an E-maior chord
with both an A. and a G-natural in
the right hand confuses and stiffens
Hawk everv time He does however
relax ultimately on this track and
hrinp-s off some etrikincrlv ehnraeter
istC DhM«TO.hlth OfiMiMT
and f l S v l w I v ! with a
d«hi OUSL Tnnnverl "^h tL
hell wfh it"1SdTpSty much dis"
regarding Monk's altered harmonies.
The only new composition on this
septet record has the whimsical title
of Crepescule with Nellie, dutifully
explained in the liner notes. It is a
moody piece, cast in the usual 32-bar
AABA-format. The second bar of the
A-phrase has a typically unorthodox
Monk touch: an E-flat chord with
not only the minor seventh and
minor ninth, but also the major sixth
and major ninth; thus producing a
bitonal combination of E-flat and C.
Nor does Monk use this dissonance
as a passing chord or try to hide it
in some way; on the contrary with
his characteristic weighty touch he
trumpets it out six times.
"Thelonious Himself" (Riverside
12-235) is a real success. Unhampered
by other players and beholden
only unto himself, Monk ruminates
thoughtfully and caressingly in free
tempo on the eight pieces, three of
them his own. As Keepnews says,
much of the album has a quality of
"thinking out loud". Monk makes
these tunes completely his own c o n
tinually extracting and paring down
to the of each melody and
harmonv Thev all have a heautv and
hiuntmfflvricsm esnechllv 4mil in
ParV'/Should Care and All Alone
Other adierHves that rome to mind
are ''mournful" and "nostaleie"
'KnnnA Wdnirht Monk'sown e as'
W iTintenlTv nersonal The won"
Xrf.llv ,fnner tijerthirrk
are a.kind ot delightful torture as one
awaits them expectantly / Mould
Core is worth many rehear.ngs, as
Monk towards the end-after a sort
of private douhle-tmie passage—plays
four chords in which, after first striking
all the notes hard and sharply,
he quickly releases all but one. This
kind of chord distillation is one of
the most radical aspects of his music,
i.e., the idea that one note above
all others car, most succinctly represent
a chord—not a new idea in
music, but almost untried in jazz. In
the last half of Care Monk is especially
exciting in terms of free tempo
playing. His a-rhythmic, unexpected
moves create a tremendous tension.
Monk's Mood, now in free tempo
as opposed to the 1947 version on
Blue Note, is a fitting finale to the
album. Starting as a piano solo,
Monk later adds bass and tenor
(Ware and Coltrane). Coltrane's
poignant, almost altoish tenor eXactlv
fits' the plaintive mood of the
piece.
My one complaint is that Monk
here allows too many of his favorite
piano "noodles" (all pianists seem
to have them). There were so many
and they interrupted the continuity
at times so much, that I began to
count them. There are fourteen of
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