I would say that the studying of Monk probably led to everything. I think it probably led to my whole compositional outgrowth because that’s when everything started happening.
- Grachan Moncur III
Back in the day, when you wanted to hear some jazz, you had to go out and hunt for it, buy it, and then listen to it - you couldn’t just do a quick search on iTunes or YouTube. Finding jazz was much more like a journey, and you didn’t always know what you were getting. This made the affair all the more interesting and adventurous. An example of this is when I picked up Jackie McLean’s One Step Beyond in the late 1990s at Logos Books and Records in Santa Cruz.
I bought One Step Beyond because I noticed it was a pianoless quintet. I thought, “Interesting - no piano, but a vibe player instead. Ok.” I knew little or nothing of the musicians that played on the album. I had no idea what to expect.
The first time I played it, even more than McLean’s distinctive alto sound and Hutcherson’s vibes, I was left wondering, “Who is this Grachan Moncur III, the trombone player with the mysterious, brooding sound?” I loved it right away.
My life had changed, and I thought about my dad. I needed to tell him that what he once told me “We don’t change, except for the books we read and the people we meet” needed to be amended to include, “…and the records we play.” As it turned out, One Step Beyond was my gateway to creative music and avant-garde jazz.
Grachan Moncur III was born in New York City and grew up in a musical family. His father was Grachan Brother Moncur II, who played bass for the Savoy Sultans, which was led by his uncle Al Cooper. He attended high school at Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, a private school with a strong musical heritage. After graduating from high school in 1955, he returned to the New York City area and was quickly drawn into Newark’s dynamic jazz scene. He recalls, “There were quite a few jazz clubs, and every night there was a jam session somewhere.” Moncur also learned a lot playing in the Newark YMCA band, where he met saxophonist Wayne Shorter.
An encounter with Miles Davis helped Moncur establish his own identity at an early stage of his career. He recalls, “I used to go to Birdland and sit in on Monday nights. One night Miles came in. I went up to introduce myself and told him how much I admired him. He looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you ever say that corny shit to nobody! I know who you are, man. You got something. Dig yourself!’ That made me go inside myself. Not that I didn’t respect other musicians like J. J. (Johnson) anymore, but I didn’t idolize them.”
Moncur continued his formal education at the Manhattan School of Music and later Juilliard but dropped out for financial reasons. In 1958, he joined the Ray Charles Show. He spent about a year and a half with Charles and was taken under the wing of veterans Hank Crawford and David “Fathead” Newman. “I was the kid in the band - full of youthful enthusiasm,” Moncur recalled.
While Moncur was touring with the Ray Charles Show, Art Farmer and Benny Golson liked what they heard of the young trombonist and invited him to join their Jazztet. When Moncur gave Ray Charles his notice, he explained that he loved working in the band, but he felt it was time to spread his wings. He thought the Jazztet would be a prime showcase for his instrument. Charles replied, “I really admire your spunk, but do you realize it’s 1959, and I’m booked till 1980?” Nevertheless, with Charles’ blessing, Moncur joined Farmer and Golson’s Jazztet. It was Art Farmer who taught Moncur how to compose, recalling, “I learned more in a half hour with him than I had in any of my formal schooling!” His mentorship lasted until the Jazztet disbanded in 1962.
At this point, he was living in Brooklyn and entered into an extremely creative period of freelancing with like-minded musicians such as Jackie McLean, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Bobby Hutcherson. These associations led to three Blue Note pianoless recordings that became classics in the evolution of modern jazz.
In 1963, Moncur recorded on three seminal Blue Note albums: One Step Beyond, Destination… Out!, and Evolution. These albums feature perhaps my favorite Blue Note band, consisting of a core group of phenomenal musicians: Moncur on trombone, Jackie McLean on alto, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, and youngster Tony Williams on drums (Roy Haynes played on Destination… Out!). The albums feature three different bass players. It was Moncur’s compositions that sparked the band on these albums, writing nine of the twelve compositions. In a 2003 interview, Moncur had this to say about the summer before these 1963 recordings:
So what I did was I didn’t even concentrate on working that summer. I just lived off a little bread that I made that year and just shedded. I just shedded on studying Monk’s tunes. I didn’t have a piano. I didn’t really do that to learn his repertoire to play it. I was just doing it to analyze his music. I just wanted to get the sound of his music inside my body. Between shedding on Monk’s stuff and then I started writing on my own and this particular night, I had been listening to a lot of television and science fiction sounds and all that kind of stuff. This particular night, I would say about two hours before Jackie (McLean) called, I wrote Frankenstein first and then Ghost Town.
From the first of these pivotal albums, One Step Beyond, recorded on April 30, 1963, here is Ghost Town:
I like the obscure Eddie Khan’s bass work on this album. You can read more about him here:
On September 20, Moncur recorded on the second album, McLean’s Destination… Out!. From this avant-garde jazz landmark, here is Moncur’s composition Riff Raff:
Based on the success of these two albums, Blue Note gave Moncur his chance to record as a leader.
On November 21, Moncur recorded Evolution. The core band included Ben Crenshaw on bass and Lee Morgan on trumpet. For this session, all four songs were Moncur's original compositions. Here is The Coaster:
Shortly after Evolution, Moncur released Some Other Stuff, his second Blue Note album as a leader; however, he soon entered into a dispute with Blue Note because he insisted on owning the rights to his compositions. As a result, Moncur left Blue Note and drifted into another direction - toward the younger musicians in the avant-garde. He recalls, “They respected what I was doing and pulled me into their thing. That saved me because I had nowhere else to go.” Another direction he tried was the stage.
In 1964, Moncur auditioned for a role in the original Broadway production of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mr. Charlie, directed by Burgess Meredith.
When Meredith asked Moncur to play for him, the trombonist thought to himself, “He’s not going to hire me anyway, so I’m gonna play some weird shit!” Moncur played several of his own pieces and when he got to Riff Raff, Meredith turned to him and said, “I like that! We can use it in the third scene!” Then he asked him to play along with a Muddy Waters record. After two bars he stopped him, saying, “That’s all I need to hear. Give him a contract!” In addition to playing solo trombone, Moncur also had a speaking role in the play, which ran for four months.
Moncur’s involvement with theater continued with his involvement on March 28, 1965, with a benefit concert for The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School at the Village Gate in New York City. A cornerstone of the Black Arts movement, the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School was founded by Amiri Baraka in Harlem in 1965. Baraka envisioned a black artistic school responsive and rooted in the same urban landscape as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Here’s an interesting, short video on the Black Arts movement:
The benefit concert featured an incredible collection of avant-garde artists like John Coltrane, Sun Ra Myth-Science Arkestra with Betty Carter, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Archie Shepp, along with Moncur.
Here’s a poster for the event:
In 1965, Impulse! released a live recording from the concert, The New Wave in Jazz:
Here’s Moncur’s composition Blue Free, a great opportunity to hear Moncur play during a live recording:
Another great song from that concert is Moncur’s The Intellect, an intense and introspective tune - when you have 24 minutes, I think it’s worth a listen here.
In 1966, Moncur joined Archie Shepp’s band leading up to their trip to Algiers for the Pan-African Cultural Festival and then on to Paris for the fateful week-long BYG/Actuel recordings in the summer of 1969.
On August 11, the first day of this legendary week in Paris, Moncur recorded the classic New Africa:
I find that the entire album has a Sun Ra feeling to it, and Moncur’s songs like New Africa, Space Spy, and Exploration could have come right off a Saturn record. From New Africa, here is Exploration. This composition is clearly a nod to Sun Ra’s Rocket Number 9 - I totally hear Sun Ra’s piano intro in Dave Burrell’s piano intro on this song:
Roscoe Mitchell’s solo on this song is fantastic and what a treat it is to hear Mitchell with such an outstanding band outside his usual Art Ensemble of Chicago.
In the 1970s and 1980s, while continuing to perform, Moncur moved increasingly into education. In 1982, he was composer-in-residence at the Newark Community School of the Arts. “We had students from eight to 80,” he recalls. “I did most of my teaching from the keyboard and grew with the kids! Teaching helped me develop my own musicianship.” He also conducted his own “Moncurainian” workshops with his wife, Tamam, a classically trained pianist and gifted arranger. The residency, unfortunately, ended in 1991, and he found it difficult to find another. He consequently stayed pretty much on the sidelines with minimal recording sessions until his death earlier this year on his 85th birthday.
In his lifetime, Grachan Moncur III became one of only a few trombonists to move the instrument beyond bebop. A true pioneer, whose compositions helped pave the way for the modern evolution of jazz. Rest in peace, Grachan.
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of Thelonious Sphere Monk’s Columbia sessions.
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Until then, keep on walking….
Great entry. Thanks.