# Monk Mania!



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

*Monk's Dream*

It took me awhile to appreciate Monk's genius and charm. I finally realized that his music sounded like there was a completely unspoiled 7-year old child trapped inside his body gleefully pounding away on the keys in unpredictable, off-the-wall rhythms and harmonies and that he was filled with wonder, innocence, and joy. In Monk's Dream, he's at the top of his game with Charlie Rouse at his best and a great rhythm section. Columbia recorded Monk well for an outstanding album that is as fresh today as it was in 1963, with Frankie Dunlop on drums, John Ore on bass.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

A classic CBS album and a classic cover. Great music from a jazz giant.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

*Straight, No Chaser*. Another great album with Monk in a good mood and some charming solo piano toward the end like he's discovering music for the first time-a quirky, creative, eccentric genius.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The first TM album I bought was the live _Misterioso_ from 1958. Great set, but what a pity that the occasional smattering of applause is not the only noise coming from the Five Spot hipsters - the chinking of glasses and muffled chattering may give you a sense of what the place was like during a gig but I found it off-putting. I mean, what were people there for, to listen to the music or simply out-cool each other? Could you imagine Charles Mingus putting up with that? Perhaps it might have been better had Orrin Keepnews and his team mixed the background down to a minimum.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

what's really going on with Monk is that back in the bebop era, jazz musicians developed their own concepts of harmony and they explored the music themselves.

So what is particular about Monk is that he used the triton substitution to create a lot of chromatic motion, and then if you listen, he begins a lot of his phrases with intervals like minor 7th, he plays a lot of 2nds, and things like that

Parker would start a lot of phrase with a major or minor 6th. Now when you open up with an interval like a minor 7th, you line is going to seem angular, which is what he is going after, but in the context of his day Monk sounded like he was coming from left field.

I learned to play jazz from old fellas (long dead) that were around in the bebop era, and these are the things the guys talk about when they talk about Monk tunes


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

elgars ghost said:


> The first TM album I bought was the live _Misterioso_ from 1958. Great set, but what a pity that the occasional smattering of applause is not the only noise coming from the Five Spot hipsters - the chinking of glasses and muffled chattering may give you a sense of what the place was like during a gig but I found it off-putting. I mean, what were people there for, to listen to the music or simply out-cool each other? Could you imagine Charles Mingus putting up with that? Perhaps it might have been better had Orrin Keepnews and his team mixed the background down to a minimum.


that actually was recorded at a gig. A lot of old jazz records were done like that


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

its interesting to hear you talk about Monk being gleeful like a child because I always heard him and Bud Powell to be more like the tortured genius. Monk is far from being childlike, he is searching. When you are trying to play differently than anyone else who touched a piano, and this is a thing the old jazzmen called "finding your voice", but it is spirited and if the moment is joyful , then he will sound like he is gleefully banging away...but there is a very serious method to the madness

sometimes if you just don't get what he's doing, remember that 2+ 2 = 4

because he is playing triads from another key superimposed on the key he is in


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

^
^

I know it was a gig, but I can't understand why the crowd weren't more, well, _interested_? Were jazz club audiences always like that back then even when one of the greats was playing just a few feet away?


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

elgars ghost said:


> ^
> ^
> 
> I know it was a gig, but I can't understand why the crowd weren't more, well, _interested_? Were jazz club audiences always like that back then even when one of the greats was playing just a few feet away?


absolutely. a lot of Charlie Parker records I have sound like the mic was off to the side next to the kitchen

and talk about greats playing a few feet away...I used to go to Lott's Emporium in Houston to hear jazz heavies, and we would always sit up and off to the side of the bandstand so we could watch Carl Lott Jr, who was the best drummer in the city. One night we are there for Hank Crawford, and after his solo he steps off to the side and he is standing right by me! I can feel his jacket brushing against me and as he is playing pad lines behind the other soloist, he's leaning away from the bandstand and I get the bell of his horn right in front of my face!

I'm siting there still as I can be, hoping not to do anything that would break his concentration or make him move away

it was awesome


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

The title track to Brilliant Corners is one of my favorite non_Classical tracks.


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