Name Your Favorite Thelonious Monk Album. Please.

As we all should be, and free of making assumptions about Monk's music in ignorance of the facts about mental illness.

 

I forgot to include another quote from the liner notes of Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, this time from Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious: A Life (forthcoming, The Free Press).

Everything they play is exciting, dynamic, sometimes adventurous, and very much in sync. Monk is having such a good time at the piano that he hardly gets up from the bench. The stories from the Five Spot in this period always portray Monk as dancing around or heading toward the bar while Coltrane blows with the rhythm section. But what Monk is playing underneath Coltrane is pure brilliance; to call it "comping" simply does not do justice to the creative dialogue Thelonious is having with the entire band.

It was a better piano than in the halls Monk usually played; plus, this was CARNEGIE HALL. The music just tells me everyone is having a grand time that night (I can't wait to hear the Sonny Rollins LP coming with his set this same evening).

 

Monk was great, and as for cause and effect and his mental illness, it is irrelevant in actual terms of the music - HOWEVER - he was clearly in the realm of what we call Asperger's, which is somewhat, though not exaclty, on the autism scale - also known as Pervasive Development Disorder, all relatively recent diagnoses - I heard him play quite a few times and, toward the end, he played very little - stylistically, however, nothing changed, and this is born out by recordings made as early as 1941 at, I believe, Minton's (I am not referring to the Charlie Christian sesssions - the ones I am talking about are sessions that were issued initally on LP on Xanadu, I believe, and Monk plays solos on Body and Soul, Nice Work If You can Get it, and some others, as I recall) -

 

so he was comping and dancing at the same time???

 

Is that a joke, or are you making a provocative remark? Maybe both. My statement was pretty clear, but in case you weren't reading or just want to say something sarcastic in response, I'll repeat.
Listen to the Monk performances I've cited. You'll clearly hear that he plays behind the soloist for a chorus, maybe two, sometimes the entire solo. He slowly fades out over the course of the solo, giving the soloist space to make their own statement. I never said he comps throughout, I said that laying out throughout the solo wasn't his signature style. Yes, he did get up and dance. Stagecraft is part of a musician's routine and it gets people into the music. Maybe not you.
Carrying this discussion of whether or not Monk played behind his soloists is over for me. If you pay attention, you can hear it.

 

actually, i was trying to understand what you were saying, it seemed contradictory.

your description of what monk does is accurate. my disagreement would be that in a jazz style where the pianist almost always plays behind each and every soloist, (and often overplays), the fact that there are long stretches without comping is notable, and somewhat of a monk signature.

that's not to say he doesn't ever play behind solos or that he always lays out even part of the time. but the fact is that there's often no piano behind the tenor player- and whether monk's dancing, or chatting with the cook, or having a drink doesn't matter- especially on a record.

and to me none of that is a negative. i love monk's comping, and i love the fact that he knows when to lay out.

i really don't see what there is to get so upset about.

 

Even if you're a psychiatrist it's difficult to diagnose from such a distance. And if I were Monk's psychiatrist I wouldn't be discussing his diagnosis in public. A lot of the behavioral oddity I saw in Straight No Chaser looked like a variant of Tourette's Syndrome, could have been hypomania, and also could have been Asperger's Syndrome.
My point, and the point of several other posters, is that musical creativity exists independently of symptomatic mental illness, the same way the John Nash's genius for economic theory existed independently of his delusions caused by schizophrenia. Saying that Monk's musical ideas were a product of his mental/emotional disorder is a romantic idea of what real mental illness does to a person when they are symptomatic. For another movie version of this, see the movie about David Helfgott, Shine. It's a sentimental film in itself, but it attempts to portray what really happened and does a not too bad job.
The other point that people missed is that bizarre, erratic behavior is a theme that runs through the history of black musicians, and to many the history of artistic people of any color or type of expression. I consider it a defense against the so-called straight, square, or mainstream world of the public. This includes record company producers, engineers, promoters. Consider the language of Lester Young, the drug use of Charlie Parker and many others, the hostility of Miles Davis, the elusiveness of Sly Stone, the otherwordly pronouncements of Sun Ra.

 

It wasn't contradictory if you read all my posts.
I was never upset. That's more than once that you told me how I feel. I don't understand how you could possibly know that, unless I told you. Which I didn't.
I was simply and directly disagreeing with Steve Hoffman's assertion regarding Monk playing behind his soloists, which I think he said that Monk did 'for once', on the Clark Terry record. Is there a part of the sentence 'Monk plays behind his soloists regularly' that you don't understand?
Sheesh. Can we stop the back and forth on this now?
The irony of this discussion, if there is one, is that I mentioned the famous Christmas Eve session where Miles Davis threatened to punch Monk out if he continued to play while Miles was soloing. While we're busy psychoanalyzing Monk, maybe we can look into whether that incident resulted in him suffering from some weird post traumatic stress syndrome that made him unable to back his soloists for the rest of his career.

 

Well, if you're this hostile when you're not upset....

 

Throughout my posts in this thread I've tried to keep the temperature low and deflect any and all remarks that were addressed out of hostility, incomprehension, ignorance, and the like.
It's been difficult, since there hasn't really been much to address of any substance for some time. I've just had to explain myself over and over, all over not very much.
There's plenty of information about Monk out there, from much better sources than this thread. And plenty of great music to listen to.
Dragging down the discussion to this level is a waste of time, both yours and mine. My little jokes evidently seem to you to be coming out of some well of negativity and hostility. I already told you that I thought your first response to Steve Hoffman was just right. Take that as the compliment it was, and try to forget about the rest. As I will.
I already made the point that personal attacks aren't part of the accepted behavior at SH Forums, and what you're doing in your posts isn't discussing the music of Thelonious Monk. It's a personal attack directed at me, IMO.

 

I'm more a rock fan than a Jazz fan and tend to be pretty conservative with my jazz purchases but it
looks like I have to explore the pre-columbia material, it was so easy/safe for me to snap up the columbia remasters at 6.99 a pop, good sound, nice booklets , bonus tracks blah blah blah. thats all I have, the columbia stuff.

 

I think you can see how one would find this statement just a bit wee bit churlish, especially when you consider this thread has been inactive for a week and a half with the last activity generally being positive in nature.. Are you really suggesting that you clearly did not understand ATR? I think one could catch his meaning without to much effort, when reading through his posts.

 

Ask for , and sometimes you shall receive.
Peace on Earth.

 

Monk and Trane

 

Jeez, even when this thread comes back after over a week's rest, people are still touchy and defensive.

 

I hope you don't mean me.
I wouldn't have come back except that I was asked to clarify my week old posts, which I felt had already been over clarified when the thread seemingly had met a merciful end. No one's perfect, and if you keep rattling their cage they will eventually appear to be much less so, in my experience.
But thanks for your input.

 

"My point, and the point of several other posters, is that musical creativity exists independently of symptomatic mental illness"

read my first sentence again, that's exactly what I said - as for the diagnosis, it's quite accurate - having known a few musicians who knew and/or worked with Monk, and having a son with the same syndrome, it is clearly Asperger's - as for it being a "defense" mechanism, that's a silly and relativist position - I saw Monk up close on more than one occasion, knew one of the people who lived with him in his last years, and his behavior was a sign of untreated mental illness. I also knew musicians who worked with everyone you mentioned, including Lester Young, and he was a true eccentric and was not putting on the white folks - no one who knew these guys or spent any time with them would describe their behavior as masking themselves from whites; they behaved the same with both black and white musicians -

 

Sorry to have offended you.

You're right, you did agree that the musical ideas and the symptomatic mental illness exist independently.

But my point about diagnosing anyone from their behavior, no matter how close you have been, stands. Obviously you have experienced Asperger's first hand. That doesn't mean you can diagnose Monk. In the film Straight No Chaser I seem to recall his son saying he had bipolar disorder. I have experience in mental health work, and I've seen people diagnosed and rediagnosed with each decompensation and rehospitalization.
Maybe it's a black and white thing to you, but it isn't to me.

I also have professional experience with musicians. I can only guess where their idiosyncracies come from. Some of them seem perfectly straightforward. Just like the rest of us. For the record, I wasn't referring to how they acted around white musicians. I was referring to how they acted toward non-musicians. Sorry to have picked a few examples that got your back up.

Well, I've certainly had my fill of this thread. I'm leaving to enjoy the holidays with my family, friends, work, and music.
Bye-Ya.

 

I nearly made the mistake of buying an old, incomplete (only 7 tracks) Columbia CD version of this album today.... didn't even know this version existed! :thumbsdn:

Luckily my gut told me it wasn't the version I was looking for, and I passed on it... still keeping my eyes out for the full 12-track Columbia/Legacy edition!

 

Looking for a good place to start... any recommendations for good vinyl pressings to start with?

 

Monk's Dream on Columbia. I've not heard a bad pressing yet. Even budget reissues from the 70s have the mojo.

 

Agree with Monk's Dream. I would also look for the Milestone Comp - Memorial Album, a great sounding comp of Prestige and Riverside material. Another great one is the Milestone Twofer - At The Five Spot which contains the live recordings Thelonious In Action and Misterioso. Its my favorite Monk lineup with Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Johnny Griffin and Roy Haynes.

 

Misterioso or Thelonius in Action, both the same live session

 

I can't....too many I like!

 

I doubt anyone's listed this, but I'm still very fond of my introduction to Monk -- Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two / At The Blackhawk.