Like “Straight No Chaser,” “Blue Monk” – first recorded on the 1954 Prestige LP Thelonious Monk Trio – dazzled with its complex prismatic architecture but was built on a relatively simple 12-bar blues framework. Blossoming At Prestige And Riverside (Blue Monk Nutty Pannonica Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are Trinkle Tinkle Rhythm-A-Ning) First recorded the same year, “Straight, No Chaser” – another quintessential Monk number that the pianist frequently revisited – showed how an orthodox 12-bar blues could be radicalized with mesmerizing chromatic melodies. “Criss Cross” from 1951, also swung hard, due to drummer Art Blakey’s propulsive groove the song highlighted Monk’s penchant for angular melodies and seasoning his harmonies with discordant notes. The 1947 recording of “Well, You Needn’t” underlines his ethos of making a song swing joyfully while its infectious melodic hook shows that despite his reputation as an avant-garde iconoclast, Monk could write accessible tunes.Īnother early Monk masterpiece, “Epistrophy,” co-written with bebop drummer, Kenny Clarke, was first recorded in 1948 with a band featuring future Modern Jazz Quartet vibraphonist Milt Jackson and soon became a go-to song in Monk’s canon. Monk could also produce songs that swung with a compulsive foot-tapping groove. Monk’s 1947 trio version opens with a descending whole tone cascade a signature embellishment in the pianist’s box of musical tricks. “Round Midnight” showed that Monk was an exceptional ballad writer but it wasn’t a one-off, as the exquisite “Ruby, My Dear,” clearly demonstrated.
THELONIOUS MONK RHYTHM A NING MOVIE
It even has the distinction of being the most recorded jazz composition of all time and had a movie named after it director Bernard Tavernier’s 1986 film about an American jazz musician (played by Dexter Gordon) living in Europe. Monk first recorded the song with a sextet in 1947 as “‘Round About Midnight” and since then, it has been covered by everyone from Miles Davis in the 50s to Amy Winehouse in the 2000s. But Alfred Lion’s label was where Monk laid the foundations for his singular style and recorded many of his most important songs including arguably his greatest and most popular creation, “Round Midnight,” a slow, evocative nocturne distinguished by a smoky uncoiling melody. Thelonious Monk spent five years with Blue Note (1947-1952) and though it was a creatively fertile period that yielded fifteen 78 rpm singles and two LPs, none of his recordings sold well. Blue Note Foundations (Round Midnight Ruby, My Dear Well, You Needn’t Epistrophy Criss Cross Straight, No Chaser) Listen to the best of Thelonious Monk on Apple Music and Spotify, and scroll down for our introduction. But the 20 selections highlighted below offer the perfect introduction to a genius of modern music.
Blue Note, however, hailed their protégé as a genius and helped garner media attention by promoting him as a mysterious maverick.Īlthough the label’s attempts to break Monk into the jazz mainstream failed, as the 50s progressed, fruitful stints at the Prestige and Riverside labels established the pianist as one of modern jazz’s major figures and in 1962, when Monk signed to the major label, Columbia Records, he enjoyed the biggest exposure of his career.įor those listening to Monk for the first time, finding a convenient entry point into his music can pose a challenge especially in view of the fact that during his 24-year recording career he made multiple studio recordings of most of his signature compositions. He has two left hands,” was how one New York record store owner responded to Monk’s piano playing. Given the radical yet highly stylized characteristics of his music – which he blueprinted on his very first recordings for the Blue Note label in 1947 – Monk met with more opposition from the jazz establishment than Parker and Gillespie. In the main, bebop was a high-octane music driven by Parker and Gillespie’s virtuosic athleticism but Monk, who was the eldest of bop’s holy trinity, created his own distinctive musical universe that was defined by quirky chromatic choruses, disquieting dissonant notes, and, on the whole, much slower tempi. Monk initially rose to fame alongside alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in the vanguard of the bebop movement in New York during the mid 1940s. Although he was a trailblazer who pioneered a uniquely percussive approach to the piano and developed a peculiar musical language that some found difficult to understand, his greatest achievement was writing over 70 memorable songs, several of which became jazz standards.
Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious Monk is undoubtedly one of the most important – and controversial – figures in the history of jazz.
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