That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

126
Part II: Jazz Greats and Great Jazz: An Evolutionary Riff
Figure 7-3:
Thelonious
Monk’s
playing
style is
unmistakable.
Whether making his own music or reworking classic jazz tunes such as “All
the Things You Are” and “I Should Care,” Monk (see Figure 7-3) communicated
oceans of emotion with only a few notes. Other bop pianists played
fast, using a lot of notes, but Monk selected the minimum number of notes to
convey a melody and a feeling. His left hand mixes spare chords and single
bass notes, while his right renders a written or improvised melody. Witness
his playing on The Complete Blue Note Recordings (Blue Note), a must-have
collection of Monk’s finest music that includes the great standards mentioned
above and many more, as well as several original Monk compositions like
“Misterioso” and “Well, You Needn’t.”
Vocalists who bopped
©William P. Gottlieb, www.jazzphotos.com
The art of scat singing — improvising melodies with nonsense sounds and
syllables — reached new creative highs in bebop. The King and Queen of this
vocal art were Jon Hendricks and Ella Fitzgerald. By freeing their voices from
lyrics, bebop vocalists used their voices like trumpets or saxophones to
improvise.