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Monk - Ken Burn's Jazz
To download this recording via iTunes, click here: Ken Burns Jazz: Thelonious Monk
To buy this recording from Amazon.com, click here: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Thelonious Monk
____________________________________________________________________
The Definitive Thelonious Monk
Ken Burn's Jazz Series
Thelonious Monk plays piano on all tracks, accompanied by:
01. WELL YOU NEEDN'T (2:55)
- T. Monk -
Gene Ramey, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded October 24, 1947
Available on CD: Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 1 (Blue Note CDP 7-8I510-2)
02. EPISTROPHY (3:05)
- T. Monk – K. Clarke -
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Simmons, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded July 2, 1948
Available on CD: Genius Of Modem Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
03. MISTERIOSO (3:20)
- T. Monk -
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Simmons, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded July 2, 1948
Available on CD: Genius Of Modem Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
04. STRAIGHT, NO CHASER (2:55)
- T. Monk -
Sahib Shihab, alto saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
Al McKibbon, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded July 23, 1951
Available on CD: Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
05. BLUE MONK (7:36)
- T. Monk -
Percy Heath, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded September 22, 1954
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk Trio (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-010-2)
06. BRILLIANT CORNERS (7:45)
- T. Monk -
Ernie Henry, alto saxophone;
Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophone;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Max Roach, drums
Recorded October 15,1956
Available on CD: Brilliant Corners (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-026-2)
17. RUBY, MY DEAR (6:18)
- T. Monk -
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Wilbur Ware, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded June 25, 1957
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-039-2)
08. TRINKLE, TRINKLE (6:38)
- T. Monk -
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Wilbur Ware, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded June 25,1957
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-039-2)
09. OFF MINOR (7:49)
- T. Monk -
Donald Byrd, trumpet;
Eddie Bert, trombone;
Bob Northern, French horn;
Jay McAllister, tuba;
Phil Woods, alto saxophone;
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
Pepper Adams, baritone saxophone;
Sam Jones, bass;
Art Taylor, drums;
Hall Overton, arranger
Recorded February 28, 1959
Available on CD: The Thelonious Monk Orchestra At Town Hall (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-135-2)
10. RHYTHM-A-NING (3:53)
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
John Ore, bass;
Frankie Dunlop, drums
Recorded November 6, 1962
Available on CD: The Composer (Columbia/Legacy CK 44297)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc
11. CRISS CROSS (4:40)
- T. Monk -
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
John Ore, bass;
Frankie Dunlop, drums
Recorded February 26,1963
Available on CD: The Composer (Columbia/Legacy CK 44297)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
12. GREEN CHIMNEYS (9:03)
- T. Monk -
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
Larry Gales, bass;
Ben Riley, drums
Recorded December 14, 1967
Available on CD: Underground (Columbia/Legacy CK 40785)
Originally Released 1968 Sony Music Entertainment Inc
13. 'ROUND MIDNIGHT (3:48)
-T. Monk - C. Williams – B. Hanighen -
Recorded November 19, 1968
Available on CD: Monk's Greatest Hits
14. NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT (5:10)
- G. Gershwin - I. Gershwin
Recorded November 15, 1971
Available on CD: The London Collection, Vol. 1 (Black Lion BLCD 760101)
Some of these recordings were transferred from disc sources. Surface noise is audible.
____________________________________________________________________
Jazz is a music that celebrates individuality, and some of its greatest figures made their mark by rewriting the rules in the interest of self-expression. But there have been few jazz musicians as thoroughly individual as Thelonious Monk. Monk was a member of jazz's first generation of modernists, the fiery young iconoclasts who arrived on the scene in the 1940s and whose music came to be called bebop. But his music was unorthodox even by bebop standards.
Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and other high-profile beboppers were just as focused as Monk was on expanding the harmonic and rhythmic palette of jazz. But Parker and Gillespie were virtuosos, and indeed the aspect of bebop that first attracted attention was the technical mastery required to navigate its breakneck tempos and complex chord structures. Monk, on the other hand, had such an unusual approach to the piano that at first many people assumed that he simply couldn't play - or at least that his technique and musical knowledge were severely limited.
He didn't bombard listeners with a flurry of sixteenth notes; in fact, in Monk's hands silence often spoke more eloquently than sound. His phrasing was irregular, often seemingly hesitant or even clumsy. The chords he played could be bracingly dissonant
And he was stubborn, He settled on his highly personal approach as a young man and stuck with it throughout his career, regardless of changing fashions in jazz. As a result, his music gradually went from being widely regarded as too far-out for most listeners to being dismissed by many critics as old-fashioned. Two decades after his death in 1982 (and almost three decades after health problems led him to withdraw from the public arena), it is clear that it was neither: it was simply, as the title of one of his albums put it, Monk's music.
Monk's fellow musicians knew his name even before he had made a record. Some knew him as the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Harlem nightclub where visiting musicians were encouraged to sit in. Many knew him for his compositions; even those who were skeptical about Monk as a pianist acknowledged that he was an exceptionally gifted writer. His "Well You Needn't," a jaunty riff tune enlivened by unusual harmonies, was a jam-session staple well before Monk recorded it in 1947. His melancholy ballad '''Round Midnight" was first recorded by trumpeter Cootie Williams's band in 1942 and quickly became a fixture of the jazz repertoire. (Monk himself would record it numerous times - occasionally, as it is heard here, without accompaniment.)
Thelonious Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on October 10, 1917. But his family moved to New York City when he was four years old, and he always considered himself a New Yorker. His earliest influences were the so-called stride pianists who were a ubiquitous presence on the Harlem jazz scene of his youth. Although he would refract that influence through his own off-kilter sensibility, their intricate harmonies and pounding bass lines left a profound mark on his style.
That style was already so different by the early 1940s that the great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins took some heat from his colleagues for hiring Monk. But Monk also had his disciples even then, who admired his melodicism, his rhythmic drive, and his ability to turn dissonance into something glorious - to create, in the words of one of his own song titles, ugly beauty. By the end of the decade he was leading his own group, recording for the enterprising Blue Note label, and garnering a devoted if relatively small legion of fans.
His following remained small for another decade, but that began to change when he secured a booking at the Five Spot on New York's Lower East Side in the summer of 1957. Leading a quartet with the promising but still relatively unknown John Coltrane on tenor saxophone - a quartet heard in this collection on one of Monk's most tender love songs, "Ruby, My Dear," and one of his most intricate lines, "Trinkle, Trinkle" - Monk proved that his unique brand of challenging harmonies and a relentless beat could attract more than just a cult audience.
Less than two years later, Monk appeared at New York's Town Hall, leading a ten-piece ensemble through new arrangements of some of his best-known works. In 1962 his audience grew still larger when he signed a long-term contract with Columbia, the world's largest and most prestigious record company. In 1964, his status as an international celebrity was confirmed when his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
It would have been difficult for any jazz musician to achieve much more than that in terms of recognition, and Monk didn't. It is generally agreed that he did not achieve much more after 1964 in artistic terms either. He wrote few new compositions, he broke no new musical ground, and his performances - at the helm of a quartet that since late 1958 had featured Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone - were often characterized as predictable. Meanwhile, new developments in jazz - the avant garde, jazz-rock fusion - contributed to the notion that Monk was yesterday's news. Further obscuring his importance was his low profile: he made few public appearances after 1972 and none at all after 1976.
But the truth about Monk, clearer than ever in hindsight, is that his playing was always so distinctive, his compositions so memorable, his sense of swing so strong, that even at his most predictable - even, for that matter, at his most uninspired he gave his listeners something they could get nowhere else. To listen to Thelonious Monk is to hear the unmistakable sound of a musician being himself: taking what he needs from the jazz tradition, discarding what doesn't work for him, exulting in the sheer joy of making his music, his way.
Peter Keepnews
MAY 2000
Peter Keepnews is a writer for the National Public Radio programs "Jazz From Lincoln Center" and "Jazz Profiles" and an editorial consultant for Verve Records.
____________________________________________________________________
Compilation Produced by: Bob Belden, Michael Cuscuna
A&R: Steve Berkowitz, Sarah Botstein, Michael Brooks, Ken Burns, Peter Miller, Lynn Novick, Seth Rothstein, Richard Seidel, Ben Young
Mastered by Mark Wilder and Seth Foster at Sony Studios, New York City
Discographical information: Bob Belden, Michael Cuscuna, Didier C. Deutsch, Carlos Kase, Ben Young
Liner Notes edited by Deborah Hay
Special Thanks: Orrin Keepnews
Photo Credits: Cover Photo by Herman Leonard; William Claxton: p. 7, back cover; Frank Driggs Collection: back of booklet; William P. Gottlieb/from the Library of Congress collection: p. 5; Herman Leonard: inner tray card; Robert Parent Collection: p. 8
Courtesy Credits: "Epistrophy," "Misterioso," "Straight, No Chaser," "Well You Needn't," courtesy of Blue Note Records; "Blue Monk," courtesy of Prestige Records/Fantasy, Inc.; "Brilliant Corners," "Off Minor," "Ruby, My Dear," courtesy of Riverside Records/Fantasy, Inc.; "Nice Work If You Can Get It," courtesy of DA Music, member of The PALLAS Group
To buy this recording from Amazon.com, click here: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Thelonious Monk
____________________________________________________________________The Definitive Thelonious Monk
Ken Burn's Jazz Series
Thelonious Monk plays piano on all tracks, accompanied by:
01. WELL YOU NEEDN'T (2:55)
- T. Monk -
Gene Ramey, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded October 24, 1947
Available on CD: Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 1 (Blue Note CDP 7-8I510-2)
02. EPISTROPHY (3:05)
- T. Monk – K. Clarke -
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Simmons, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded July 2, 1948
Available on CD: Genius Of Modem Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
03. MISTERIOSO (3:20)
- T. Monk -
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Simmons, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded July 2, 1948
Available on CD: Genius Of Modem Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
04. STRAIGHT, NO CHASER (2:55)
- T. Monk -
Sahib Shihab, alto saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
Al McKibbon, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded July 23, 1951
Available on CD: Genius Of Modern Music, Vol. 2 (Blue Note CDP 7-81511-2)
05. BLUE MONK (7:36)
- T. Monk -
Percy Heath, bass;
Art Blakey, drums
Recorded September 22, 1954
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk Trio (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-010-2)
06. BRILLIANT CORNERS (7:45)
- T. Monk -
Ernie Henry, alto saxophone;
Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophone;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Max Roach, drums
Recorded October 15,1956
Available on CD: Brilliant Corners (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-026-2)
17. RUBY, MY DEAR (6:18)
- T. Monk -
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Wilbur Ware, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded June 25, 1957
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-039-2)
08. TRINKLE, TRINKLE (6:38)
- T. Monk -
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Wilbur Ware, bass;
Shadow Wilson, drums
Recorded June 25,1957
Available on CD: Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-039-2)
09. OFF MINOR (7:49)
- T. Monk -
Donald Byrd, trumpet;
Eddie Bert, trombone;
Bob Northern, French horn;
Jay McAllister, tuba;
Phil Woods, alto saxophone;
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
Pepper Adams, baritone saxophone;
Sam Jones, bass;
Art Taylor, drums;
Hall Overton, arranger
Recorded February 28, 1959
Available on CD: The Thelonious Monk Orchestra At Town Hall (Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-135-2)
10. RHYTHM-A-NING (3:53)
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
John Ore, bass;
Frankie Dunlop, drums
Recorded November 6, 1962
Available on CD: The Composer (Columbia/Legacy CK 44297)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc
11. CRISS CROSS (4:40)
- T. Monk -
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
John Ore, bass;
Frankie Dunlop, drums
Recorded February 26,1963
Available on CD: The Composer (Columbia/Legacy CK 44297)
Originally Released 1963 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
12. GREEN CHIMNEYS (9:03)
- T. Monk -
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;
Larry Gales, bass;
Ben Riley, drums
Recorded December 14, 1967
Available on CD: Underground (Columbia/Legacy CK 40785)
Originally Released 1968 Sony Music Entertainment Inc
13. 'ROUND MIDNIGHT (3:48)
-T. Monk - C. Williams – B. Hanighen -
Recorded November 19, 1968
Available on CD: Monk's Greatest Hits
14. NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT (5:10)
- G. Gershwin - I. Gershwin
Recorded November 15, 1971
Available on CD: The London Collection, Vol. 1 (Black Lion BLCD 760101)
Some of these recordings were transferred from disc sources. Surface noise is audible.
____________________________________________________________________
Jazz is a music that celebrates individuality, and some of its greatest figures made their mark by rewriting the rules in the interest of self-expression. But there have been few jazz musicians as thoroughly individual as Thelonious Monk. Monk was a member of jazz's first generation of modernists, the fiery young iconoclasts who arrived on the scene in the 1940s and whose music came to be called bebop. But his music was unorthodox even by bebop standards.
Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and other high-profile beboppers were just as focused as Monk was on expanding the harmonic and rhythmic palette of jazz. But Parker and Gillespie were virtuosos, and indeed the aspect of bebop that first attracted attention was the technical mastery required to navigate its breakneck tempos and complex chord structures. Monk, on the other hand, had such an unusual approach to the piano that at first many people assumed that he simply couldn't play - or at least that his technique and musical knowledge were severely limited.
He didn't bombard listeners with a flurry of sixteenth notes; in fact, in Monk's hands silence often spoke more eloquently than sound. His phrasing was irregular, often seemingly hesitant or even clumsy. The chords he played could be bracingly dissonant
And he was stubborn, He settled on his highly personal approach as a young man and stuck with it throughout his career, regardless of changing fashions in jazz. As a result, his music gradually went from being widely regarded as too far-out for most listeners to being dismissed by many critics as old-fashioned. Two decades after his death in 1982 (and almost three decades after health problems led him to withdraw from the public arena), it is clear that it was neither: it was simply, as the title of one of his albums put it, Monk's music.
Monk's fellow musicians knew his name even before he had made a record. Some knew him as the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Harlem nightclub where visiting musicians were encouraged to sit in. Many knew him for his compositions; even those who were skeptical about Monk as a pianist acknowledged that he was an exceptionally gifted writer. His "Well You Needn't," a jaunty riff tune enlivened by unusual harmonies, was a jam-session staple well before Monk recorded it in 1947. His melancholy ballad '''Round Midnight" was first recorded by trumpeter Cootie Williams's band in 1942 and quickly became a fixture of the jazz repertoire. (Monk himself would record it numerous times - occasionally, as it is heard here, without accompaniment.)
Thelonious Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on October 10, 1917. But his family moved to New York City when he was four years old, and he always considered himself a New Yorker. His earliest influences were the so-called stride pianists who were a ubiquitous presence on the Harlem jazz scene of his youth. Although he would refract that influence through his own off-kilter sensibility, their intricate harmonies and pounding bass lines left a profound mark on his style.
That style was already so different by the early 1940s that the great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins took some heat from his colleagues for hiring Monk. But Monk also had his disciples even then, who admired his melodicism, his rhythmic drive, and his ability to turn dissonance into something glorious - to create, in the words of one of his own song titles, ugly beauty. By the end of the decade he was leading his own group, recording for the enterprising Blue Note label, and garnering a devoted if relatively small legion of fans.
His following remained small for another decade, but that began to change when he secured a booking at the Five Spot on New York's Lower East Side in the summer of 1957. Leading a quartet with the promising but still relatively unknown John Coltrane on tenor saxophone - a quartet heard in this collection on one of Monk's most tender love songs, "Ruby, My Dear," and one of his most intricate lines, "Trinkle, Trinkle" - Monk proved that his unique brand of challenging harmonies and a relentless beat could attract more than just a cult audience.
Less than two years later, Monk appeared at New York's Town Hall, leading a ten-piece ensemble through new arrangements of some of his best-known works. In 1962 his audience grew still larger when he signed a long-term contract with Columbia, the world's largest and most prestigious record company. In 1964, his status as an international celebrity was confirmed when his face appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
It would have been difficult for any jazz musician to achieve much more than that in terms of recognition, and Monk didn't. It is generally agreed that he did not achieve much more after 1964 in artistic terms either. He wrote few new compositions, he broke no new musical ground, and his performances - at the helm of a quartet that since late 1958 had featured Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone - were often characterized as predictable. Meanwhile, new developments in jazz - the avant garde, jazz-rock fusion - contributed to the notion that Monk was yesterday's news. Further obscuring his importance was his low profile: he made few public appearances after 1972 and none at all after 1976.
But the truth about Monk, clearer than ever in hindsight, is that his playing was always so distinctive, his compositions so memorable, his sense of swing so strong, that even at his most predictable - even, for that matter, at his most uninspired he gave his listeners something they could get nowhere else. To listen to Thelonious Monk is to hear the unmistakable sound of a musician being himself: taking what he needs from the jazz tradition, discarding what doesn't work for him, exulting in the sheer joy of making his music, his way.
Peter Keepnews
MAY 2000
Peter Keepnews is a writer for the National Public Radio programs "Jazz From Lincoln Center" and "Jazz Profiles" and an editorial consultant for Verve Records.
____________________________________________________________________
Compilation Produced by: Bob Belden, Michael Cuscuna
A&R: Steve Berkowitz, Sarah Botstein, Michael Brooks, Ken Burns, Peter Miller, Lynn Novick, Seth Rothstein, Richard Seidel, Ben Young
Mastered by Mark Wilder and Seth Foster at Sony Studios, New York City
Discographical information: Bob Belden, Michael Cuscuna, Didier C. Deutsch, Carlos Kase, Ben Young
Liner Notes edited by Deborah Hay
Special Thanks: Orrin Keepnews
Photo Credits: Cover Photo by Herman Leonard; William Claxton: p. 7, back cover; Frank Driggs Collection: back of booklet; William P. Gottlieb/from the Library of Congress collection: p. 5; Herman Leonard: inner tray card; Robert Parent Collection: p. 8
Courtesy Credits: "Epistrophy," "Misterioso," "Straight, No Chaser," "Well You Needn't," courtesy of Blue Note Records; "Blue Monk," courtesy of Prestige Records/Fantasy, Inc.; "Brilliant Corners," "Off Minor," "Ruby, My Dear," courtesy of Riverside Records/Fantasy, Inc.; "Nice Work If You Can Get It," courtesy of DA Music, member of The PALLAS Group
