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Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

January 14, 2019 by Doug Ramsey

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside)

The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, to the time of his death in 1982.

By the end of his career, Monk was venerated and adored in music circles. He has become even more respected and better known in the decades since. After he made the cover of Time magazine in 1964 he said, “I’m famous. Ain’t that a bitch?” In the decades since, he has become even more celebrated. His music is embraced despite—perhaps even because of—its eccentricities. It is in the mainstream via reissued performances by Monk’s own groups and countless “covers” by other musicians including some born long after he died.

A friend of pianist Frank Kimbrough, Mait Jones, suggested the comprehensive project. Kimbrough liked the idea and hired multiple brass and reed instrumentalist Scott Robinson, bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Billy Drummond for what turned out to be a trial run at aNew York club, Jazz Standard. Intrigued by the idea, veteran producer Matt Balistaris offered to be the producer. He recorded the group at his storied Maggie’s Farm studio in Pennsylvania. The sessions went on for days. Sound quality, balance and depth are flawless.

The claim of completeness may or may not hold up under close examination by Monk specialists. It is unlikely that anyone knows of everything that Monk wrote. For instance, he recorded “Chordially” for Black Lion in Paris in 1954, but it can be argued that the piece was a spontaneous invention and that he did not “write” it per se. Previous efforts to record complete album of Monk tunes have fallen victim to compromises, among them drastically short tracks and the incorporation of partial pieces into medleys. Here, we have a complete take of every piece.

Kimbrough has a long discography of his own, though he is perhaps best known of late for his extensive work with Maria Schneider’s orchestra. Here, he plays under Monk’s spell without ploys that could be mistaken for parody or stabs at comic effect. The box set is a major addition to his body of work. I am particularly taken with the measured thoughtfulness of Kimbrough’s solo on “Ugly Beauty” and his puckishness in “Little Rootie Tootie.”

Kimbrough, Reid and Drummond are among the most seasoned rhythm section players of the day. The evidence of the six Monk CDs suggests that they had an absolute understanding of the spirit of the project. On all of his horns, but notably on the tenor saxophone, Robinson further establishes his preeminence as one of the most imaginative, and daring tenor players at work today. That observation by no means downgrades his effectiveness  on trumpet, bass saxophone or the formidable contrabass sarusaphone, which has a sound so low that it might be coming from the bowels of the earth. However, the tenor sax comment leads to a tip that is only slightly self-serving: watch for the Robinson album Tenormore, due out soon from Arbors. Writing the notes for it, I basked in repeated exposure to his imagination, rhythmic drive and—not so incidentally—humor, on tenor. In the Monk box, all of that is present in abundance.

Anyone ready for renewed familiarity with the extent of Thelonious Monk’s accomplishment as a composer will welcome this collection—and its superb playing from four seasoned improvisers.

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Comments

  1. Orsolya Sarvari Bene says

    January 14, 2019 at 5:41 pm

    Didn’t know Thelonious Monk was on the cover of Time magazine. You had made it in those days if you made the cover of Time.

  2. Frank Roellinger says

    January 14, 2019 at 6:59 pm

    It’s a bit off the course of this blog entry, but I think worth mentioning to those who may not know (as I did not know myself for a very long time) that Monk was probably Bud Powell’s closest friend. The two of them spent a lot of time together and influenced each other. I learned that in this excellent book by Peter Pullman

    There is a clear recorded example of Powell playing a short phrase exactly the way Monk could have played it, made in 1951. I find such things fascinating. I own a copy of that recording (having purchased it only because of its mention in Pullman’s book) and when I have time I will locate it on YouTube or else put it there myself so that I can point it out in a subsequent comment here.

    • Doug Ramsey says

      January 15, 2019 at 11:57 am

      For a Rifftides review of Pullman’s Powell book, go here.

  3. Frank Roellinger says

    January 18, 2019 at 12:22 am

    Here is the performance where Bud Powell plays a very Monk-like phrase, from 04:18 to 04:22:

  4. Michael Cuscuna says

    January 21, 2019 at 10:33 am

    Thanks for the well-deserved write-up on Frank’s Monk project.
    “Chordially” was recorded for Black Lion in London on November 15, 1971 (not Paris in ’54).

    It was an extended sequence of Monk warming up and free-associating. It first came out on the Mosaic Monk Black Lion set and I named it “Chordially” (because I’m corny). It certainly was not intended to be considered a composition.

    • Doug Ramsey says

      January 21, 2019 at 7:51 pm

      Mr. Cuscuna produced The Complete Black Lion And Vogue Recordings Of Thelonious Monk, a five-LP box set released by Mosaic Records in 1985. It is also available in a CD version. We thank him for the “Chordially” recording-date correction.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

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A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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