Thelonious Monk -
"Thelonious Alone in San Francisco."
Sleeve notes by Orrin Keepnews.
Riverside 6163 / RLP 12-312 / RLP 1158 / CD OJC 2531-231-2
Blue Monk (3'41); Ruby, My Dear (3'55); Round Lights (3'33);
Everything Happens To Me (5'35); You Took The Words Right Out Of My Heart
(3'58); Bluehawk (3'37); Pannonica (3'48); Remember (2'36); There's Danger In
Your Eyes, Cherie (take 2)(4'17); There's Danger In Your Eyes, Cherie (take 1,
CD only); Reflections (5'03); (October 21 & 22, 1959 - San Francisco)
Thelonious Monk - piano.
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This is an album created, you might say, by stripping things
down to the essentials: a bare hall, recording equipment and one highly
talented musician. When that musician is THELONIOUS MONK, it should not be at
all surprising that the result is as intriguing and challenging a program as you
could hope to get from any jazz combination of any size.
This remarkably creative pianist has often been considered
"alone" (sometimes correctly, sometimes not) during the course of a
still-expanding career that spans all of modern jazz. Ihelonious was of course
a focal point of the "be-bop" revolution of the very early 1940s and
he has remained a major force ever since, both through his own work and by his
influence on others. There were years when much of the public, most critics and
even some musicians left Monk alone, either admitting that he baffled them or
claiming that he was merely an over-legendized eccentric. But by the late
1950s, there was widespread recognition of his unique talents (for examples:
first place among pianists in the Down Beat Critics Poll and second in their
Readers Poll in both 1958 and 1959), and he remained musically alone only in
the sense that so highly personal an artist and composer must always remain
somewhat apart and totally understandable only (if to anyone) to himself.
Being "alone" in the specific sense of recording by
himself is of course a somewhat different matter, but not too different This is
Monk's second album of this kind; the first ("Thelonious Himself" --
RLP 12-235) having been recorded two and a half years earlier, before the
current acceptance of Monk began to take hold. In the notes to that LP, I
commented that it is not always easy for other musicians, no matter how skilled
or sympathetic, to "grasp fully or execute perfectly the intricate and demanding
patterns that Monk's mind can evolve," so that one special attraction of a
solo album is that it presents the pianist in a self-sufficient vein, offering
an opportunity "to hear Thelonious as he thinks and sounds when he has
chosen to be, temporarily, complete in himself." All this certainly still
holds true for 1959 solo Monk, particularly since his now being a much bigger
name than he was early in 1957 is both less surprising and less distracting to
Thelonious than it is to just about anyone else. Actually, circumstances
combined to add several extra degrees of aloneness to this recording, and to
make it perhaps an even more striking example of an artist looking into the
depths of himself. Monk was making his first visit to San Francisco (a second
solo album had been planned for some time; the coincidence that Thelonious and
this writer were both in the West Coast city at the same time brought it into
being there). In a long, empty meeting hall - acoustically quite good, but
rather bizarre-looking, with Monk sitting onstage with banks of ancient, ornate
chandeliers for background. In a strange city - when photographer Bill Claxton
drove him to various landmarks (including the cable-car setting of the cover
photo) during a break in the session, it was Monk's first real view of San
Francisco. And, although personal matters generally don't belong in liner
notes, it might also be relevant that Thelonious had just had to leave his wife
behind in Los Angeles, recuperating from major surgery; and that the first recording
session came the afternoon after the opening night of his engagement at the
Black Hawk - when, due to varied confusions not of his making, Thelonious had
been the only member of his quartet on hand for the first two sets.
To what extent all these varieties of aloneness are reflected
on the LP is an open question. What is clear is that Monk is in a predominately
lyrical and introspective mood, with quiet emphasis on the blues and also with
flashes of his characteristic wry humor. Some of the selections make for
interesting comparison with previous recorded versions: Pannonica is now less
'tough', more richly a ballad than in the original quintet version on
"Brilliant Corners" (RLP 12-226); Blue Monk is more subdued than in
the on-the-job quartet effort on "Thelonious in Action" (RLP 12-262).
The latter is one of three blues included here, the other two being new ones:
Bluehawk, and Round Lights - this last in honor of those chandeliers! Ruby, My
Dear has always been a ballad (he had most recently recorded it with Coleman
Hawkins on "Monk's Music"--RLP 12-242), but seems still deeper and
firmer as a solo.
The other of his own tunes is the appropriately-titled
Reflections; and then there are four standards, two of which (Everything
Happens and You Took the Words) are old favorites of Monk's, the sort he often
plays solo at the start of a set in a club. Remember is a rather affectionate
analysis of the Irving Berlin warhorse. But There's Danger in Your Eyes,
Cherie, a 1929 number associated with Harry Richman, is something else again,
an unplanned-for and unlikely inclusion. Thelonious came across it while
leafing through a folio of old standards, recalled it, and proceeded to have a
ball with it, exploring it in search of Monk-ish chords, and generally justifying
his comment that "they won't be expecting something like this from
me."
© Orrin Keepnews.