Thelonious Monk The London Collection : Volume Two

 

Notes by Brian Priestley

 

 

*           Evidence (take 2);

*           Misterioso;

*           Crepuscule With Nellie (take 4);

*           I Mean You;

*           Criss Cross;

*           Ruby My Dear;

*           Nutty (take 2);

*           Hackensack;

 

Thelonious Monk - piano, Al McKibbon - bass, Art Blakey - drums.

recorded on November 15, 1971 in London.

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Thelonious Monk's quartet was only intermittently active in the late 60's and early 70's due partly to his ill health and also to the sad state of the American club scene, and his sidemen (from Charlie Rouse to Pat Patrick to Paul Jeffrey) had been rather less than challenging - but his own playing was still full of gems. He had been seriously ill in the previous year, but this seemed to have been successfully surmounted by the time George Wein booked him for a world tour with the all-star "Giants Of Jazz" in the autumn of 1971. Monk's solo work and his concentrated, creative comping behind Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt and Kai Winding was enough to reassure anyone that he was not only back, but ready to play.

 

Inevitably in this context, though, exposure for Monk was limited, and the full fruit of his readiness blossomed the night after the last concert of the 8-week tour, when Alan Bates took him into the studio for his first trio recording in fifteen years, and his first in fourteen years with his old sidekick Art Blakey. It has been said often enough that Blakey is the ideal drummer for Monk, and one only has to hear them together again after all this time to realize the truth of the statement. If Blakey at times seems to push the pianist almost too hard, that is in fact the nature of their musical relationship. And, throughout the session, Blakey appeared to be vying with the producer in alternately cajoling and coercing Monk into fulfilling various requests from the small invited audience.

 

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Evidence, first recorded in 1948, is a fantastic theme whose daring and logic may be savoured by trying to sing simultaneously the melody it's based on, Just You, Just Me (Justice is the title of the Jazz Messenger's recordings of this number). The subtlety of the timing and the indeterminate centre of gravity of Monk's apparently random chords would lead one to think the piece was in a different time-signature and a different key altogether. Perhaps to throw the theme into greater relief, Monk bases most of his solo choruses on Just You, the only evidence of Evidence occurring usually during the release.

 

Misterioso illustrates once again the marvellous musical partnership between Monk and Art Blakey who, while the composer develops the double-tempo implications of his 8-to-the-bar theme not only prompts him but, without being in the least obdurate, gradually engages him in a perfect dialogue.

 

Crepuscule With Nellie, dedicated to Monk's wife, dates back to 1957. An alternate version of this tune, played as a solo can be heard on Volume One of this collection.

 

I Mean You was actually the last performance of the entire date, when the music was flowing effortlessly and the whole feeling was completely relaxed, so relaxed indeed that Monk forgets to sign off at the end with the usual three and a half bar coda which also serves as an introduction and a bridge between the theme and solo. But listen to the flood of invention in the solo itself, the ceaseless variation of the theme and in particular the elaboration of the release in each succeeding chorus. Listen, too, for the subtle simplification of the theme, and the omission of two crucial notes from the release, which takes place in the final reprise.

 

I am particularly delighted that Criss Cross is here, for it was my own suggestion that this piece should be recreated for the first time on record since the original version. And the suggestion had been hanging in the air for at least an hour-and-a-half when Monk suddenly interrupted a conversation between Blakey and photographer David Redfern by launching into the intro. He stays pretty close to the theme, but what a theme it is! The melodic balance of the first four bars is something that could probably only be expressed diagrammatically, while the following phrase is a kind of contracted mirror-image of the same idea. Note too that, although the release is apparently only six bars long, the bass line actually makes it seven by going to the same deliciously ambiguous chord which ends each segment of the tune. And Al McKibbon certainly knows what he's doing because he was on the 1951 recording as well - in fact, he does a tremendous job generally, being one of the few bassists still active who manages to combine the basic bop-era sound (which Wilbur Ware also has) with interesting, tuneful lines.

 

Like I Mean You, both Ruby My Dear and Misterioso were first recorded in the late forties, although they were probably written some years earlier: it has been claimed that Monk was already playing Ruby by 1939 while still in his teens, and certainly it became an underground classic - for a "live" recording of it by Charlie Parker has recently been uncovered.

 

Nutty is vintage Monk, dating back to 1954 when it was first recorded (in trio form with Art Blakey and Percy Heath) for Prestige. Blakey himself is in superb form throughout, propelling the whole number and himself into an exhilarating solo in the process.

 

It would be fascinating to know exactly when Hackensack was created by Monk for, although he personally didn't record it until 1954, a simplified version was used by Coleman Hawkins in 1945 under the name of Rifftide. As it happens, Hawk's regular pianist in 1944 was Thelonious Monk, who was given joint composer credit with Hawkins when the latter recorded his I Mean You and, just to make the whole thing even less coincidental, one of the tunes done the same day as Rifftide was finally recorded by Monk in 1964 as Stuffy Turkey (Hawk called it merely Stuffy). Oddly enough, all three tunes are based on broken chords, and the opening phrase of I Mean You is virtually that of Hackensack upside down, which may be why Monk incorporates it into his solo here

 

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Hearing the music again at this distance from the session, I am filled with admiration for the brilliant way Al McKibbon fitted in throughout, as I am for Blakey's knowledge of when to pace Monk and when to let him forge ahead. As for Thelonious himself, he defies any simplistic summing-up and, if you want proof that he was still at the height of his powers in 1971, you could do no better than investigate this album and its predecessor.

 

Brian Priestley