Thelonious Sphere Monk

The Columbia years....

It’s not the notes you play, it’s those you leave out.

- Monk

In 1981, the very first album I pulled out of the stacks and listened to in one of the “Ground Zero” recording rooms was The Giants of Jazz:

The records in the stacks were organized alphabetically, so I suspect it was filed under “A” for Art Blakey, whose name is listed at the top of the album cover.

I wasn’t crazy about the album, but I do remember liking the third song on Side 2, Blue Monk.

This album was recorded live in November 1971 at the Victoria Theatre in London and released in 1972 on Atlantic Records. As I look back, what strikes me now is although it was the first recording I ever heard of Monk, it was nearly the last recording of his life. His final recording session would be for the Black Lion label the very next day.

Because of this early encounter with Monk, he always held a special place in my heart. But over the years, as my jazz journey expanded to musicians like Chet Baker and Sun Ra, Monk took a backseat. Then one day, nearly 10 years after I first heard Blue Monk, I heard it again - this time played by his 1963 quartet. For some reason, it felt like running into an old friend.

On this week’s journey, I want to focus on Monk’s Columbia quartet releases, featuring two of his longest working quartets: Rouse is with Monk for both, but the first featured John Ore on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums, and the latter quartet featured Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. I think this is some of Monk’s best playing, fueled by bands that were totally dialed into his music.

---

The second time I heard Blue Monk was in 1991, at a party at a friend’s house in Cole Valley in San Francisco. People were hanging out and playing random records when suddenly there it was. Here’s what I heard:

This is off Monk’s Dream, recorded in October and November 1962 and released by Columbia in the spring of 1963. It was his first Columbia album after five years with the Riverside label. Perhaps more than the beautiful tenor of Charlie Rouse, what struck me about this version was how tight the band sounded. I would find out years later that Monk’s quartet on this 1963 recording had been playing together for four years - they knew Monk’s music.

Criss-Cross was Monk’s next Columbia album. It was recorded in November 1962 and March 1963. It was also released in 1963.

This album features one of my favorite Monk tunes Crepuscule with Nellie. He wrote it for his wife when she had thyroid disorder surgery in 1957. The composition took time. Monk wanted to get every note right and intended for it to be played, not improvised. When he called it “Twilight with Nellie,” Monk’s long-standing patron and friend Pannonica de Koenigswarter, or just Nica - a Rothschild and baroness - just happened to be in the room. She insisted Monk turn up the diction and use crépuscule instead.

Here are Monk and his wife Nellie with their two children Barbara and T.S.

In early 1964, Monk started to hit his stride and his stardom even crossed over into pop culture. In February, he even appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

With the release of his third studio recording, It’s Monk’s Time, I think it was indeed finally Monk’s time.

With the departure of Ore and Dunlop, this was Monk’s first release with drummer Ben Riley, who does excellent work throughout. Butch Warren stands in on bass. The album includes great versions of Brake’s Sake and Shuffle Boil, two classic Monk tunes introduced on Gigi Gryce’s 1955 Signal release Nica’s Tempo.

Here is Shuffle Boil:

I find Rouse’s solos here every bite as engaging as Gryce’s solo on the same song from Nica’s Tempo - which is high praise.

In 1965, Columbia released MONK., his fourth studio release and first with his "most venerable" quartet. Monk, Rouse, and Riley are joined by bassist Larry Gales. This quartet would be Monk’s longest-serving band and perhaps his best.

From MONK., here is Pannonica:

Live at the It Club and Live at the Jazz Workshop were both recorded in October and November of 1964, but not released in 1982 shortly after Monk passed away. These releases offer an excellent chance to hear how this great quartet sounded live; however, for our journey, I’d like to feature a much more mature and I think better performance: an odd 1968 live concert at Palo Alto High School in the San Francisco Bay Area.

At the invitation of Danny Scher, a 16-year-old Palo Alto high school student charged with organizing school dances, Monk agreed to perform at the school’s auditorium on Sunday, October 27, 1968. He was already scheduled to be in the Bay Area for a three-week stint at the Jazz Workshop, a club in San Francisco.

Here’s the concert poster Scher posted in the Palo Alto area:

Monk’s son T.S. recalls, “I wasn’t even aware of my dad playing a high school gig, but he and the band were on it. When I first heard the tape, from the first measure, I knew my father was feeling really good.” Palo Alto was finally released on Impulse! in 2020. Luckily, one of the school’s janitors recorded the concert. However, the tape gathered dust during the 50-plus years it spent in Scher’s private collection :

This is from the CD’s liner notes:

Although ticket sales remained dismal up until Sunday, October 27th, the date of the concert, the skeptics showed up as promised and assembled outside of the school auditorium, in the rain well before start time to see if Monk would show up. Doubts evaporated as soon as Danny’s older brother Les pulled into the school parking lot in a white van, the neck of Larry Gale’s bass protruding from a window for all to see. As Monk, Gales, Charlie Rouse, and Ben Riley sauntered across the parking lot and made their way to the green room, which turned out to be an empty classroom with refreshments, the skeptics promptly lined up to buy their tickets. By the time the rain-soaked crowd filed into the auditorium to take their seats, the place was nearly packed.

Just two days before the gig, Scher called Monk at the Jazz Workshop to make sure it was still on, and it’s a good thing he did. Scher had only been working with Monk’s manager and Monk knew nothing about it. Scher recalls, “I said, ‘We’re really looking forward to seeing you at my school. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’” Scher recalls that Monk was worried about how he’d even get down there and then back for his evening Jazz Workshop performance. “I said, ‘Well, my brother’s old enough to drive to the city so he can come get you. And Monk said, ‘OK.’ So I didn’t think anything of it.”

From Palo Alto, here is Epistrophy:

The Giants of Jazz tour of 1971 - where it all began for me - was Monk’s swan song. During the final decade of his life, Monk disappeared from the jazz scene and made only a small and often private number of recordings and appearances.

In 1981, at the time I was listening to Blue Monk in “Ground Zero”, Monk was only 55 miles away. He was living in Weehawken, New Jersey at the home of Pannonica. As his health declined, Monk's last six years were spent as a guest in her home, and she cared for him during his final illness. Monk lived out the last few years of his life in silence and relative isolation. He passed away on February 17, 1982. He was 64 years old.

What I love about Monk is that he didn’t fit into the Dixieland, swing, or bebop categories of his time. He was left out in a labelless cold, and he thrived there. In the process, he profoundly reorganized jazz. Like Sun Ra, Monk was a pioneering musical explorer who mapped his own universe.

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, I celebrate two years of weekly jazz journeys. My first step was back on October 18, 2020. If you have enjoyed the journey, please consider starting my third year with a paid subscription.

Also, if you’d like to show your guide some appreciation for this and past journeys in another way, you can just hit this link to buy me a cup of coffee. Know in advance that I thank you for your kindness and support.

If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey and would like to share this with someone you think might be interested in learning more about our great American art form: Jazz, just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page. Also, if you feel so inclined, become a subscriber to my journey by hitting the “Subscribe now” button below.

From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey by Tyler King is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.

Until then, keep on walking….