Thelonious Monk -- 'Monk's Dream'

 

Bye-Ya; Bolivar Blues; (October 31, 1962 - N.Y.)

Body and Soul (solo); Bright Mississippi; (November 1, 1962 - N.Y.)

Monk's Dream; Just A Gigolo (solo); (November 2, 1962 - N.Y.)

Sweet and Lovely; Five Spot Blues; (November 6, 1962 - N.Y.)

 

Thelonious Monk - piano. Charlie Rouse - tenor. John Ore - bass. Frankie Dunlop - drums.

 

 

I store my wines away from my liquors and my beer away from both, so there's no fumbling when I go for what I want. In planning a jazz programme - not a jazz record broadcast, but a real programme - I need to know where the ingredients are, too: I don't classify my record library alphabetically or numerically, but according to programme needs. If a piano record is what feels right, I go to the piano record shelf, and everyone's there. But not Monk. He's over somewhere else. Monk isn't a "pianist", Monk is Monk. At the piano, he recalls Bix Beiderbecke testing the instrument, with premonitions of Duke Ellington and James P. Johnson.

 

Monk is one of the handful of men who made modern jazz and eventually made people like it. His admirers begin with Duke Ellington, Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry, Pee Wee Russell, Quincy Jones and George Shearing and go on from there.

 

                        --Willis Conover

 

 

Jazz has a handful of artists whose presence - in any capacity - on a recording is prima facie evidence of that recording's value. Monk is such an artist. And what his presence guarantees is the jazz mind complete with humour. For Monk's music is, always has been and always will be, above all else, fun.

 

                        --Ralph J. Gleason

 

 

The single and durable impact of Thelonious Monk is due in large part to the consistency of his integrity. Monk never dilutes his music. He does not try to coax audiences. Like vital artists in all media, Monk simply presents his music whole; and that approach, of course, reveals a great deal more respect for one's audience than the more customary fashion of fawning. Monk, moreover, is comparatively rare among jazzmen in that besides having developed an incisively personal playing style, he has also built an equally powerful and expressive body of work. There is, in sum, a concentrated completeness in Monk the musician - as there is in most of his works.

 

                        --Nat Hentoff

 

 

Thelonious Monk finds his musical language in the specific techniques of jazz; the apparent simplicity of some of his work is deceptive, for Monk is a virtuoso, a virtuoso of rhythm, of the unexpected in shading and accent, and in the use of time, space and silence as aspects of musical expression. I am convinced that Monk is the first great jazz composer after Duke Ellington. He makes uncompromising emotional demands on a listener on occasion, but he has the talent to involve us in his playing so that we seem to be working things out together. Monk is what many jazzmen have been called and fewer have actually been - an artist.

 

                        --Martin Williams

 

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MONK'S DREAM is Thelonious Monk's first recording in several years. It has special significance here at CBS because it is his first recording for us. It is filled with moments of great passion, deep thought and conviction. Monk, one of the great artists of contemporary jazz, has set the pattern for many musicians in the past. He continues to set the pattern for future musicians.

 

His playing, like his composistions, is like no one else's in the world. He paints gigantic, colourful pictures with sometimes very few notes, then again with many. His improvised melodic lines remind one of Picasso's paintings: flowing movement, rich textures, striking contrasts. His rhythms are perhaps the most unusual of any jazz player.

 

Sometimes they are jagged, but they are always pulsating and full of rhythmic drive. The chord structures too are not run-of-the-mill: they are very complex, sometimes putting discordant (if you want to call them that) notes together over familiar chord structures as in Body and Soul and Just a Gigolo. I would say that his is a distinctly masculine approach to jazz - searching and finding new and positive ways of expressing itself.

The eight tracks contained in MONK'S DREAM are going to be significant additions to his already legendary performances.

 

                        --Teo Macero