Notes by Brian Priestley
* Trinkle Tinkle
(take 2) - solo;
* The Man I Love
- solo;
* Something In
Blue - solo;
* Introspection
(take 1) - solo;
* Trinkle Tinkle
(take 1) - solo;
* Crepuscule
With Nellie (take 3);
* Nutty (take
1);
* Introspection
(take 3);
* Hackensack
(take 1);
* Evidence (take
1);
* Chordially
(improvisation) - solo;
Thelonious Monk - piano, Al McKibbon - bass, Art Blakey -
drums.
recorded on November 15, 1971 in London.
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When Thelonious Monk was in London in 1971, few people could
have guessed how close he was to the end of his performing career. However, as
the film Thelonious Monk:Straight, No Chaser (directed by Charlotte Zwerin)
makes clear, he was just not available for most of the last decade before his
death on February 17th, 1982. He had fallen into a profound depression that was
worlds away from his earlier eccentric but self-contained and self confident
approach to music and life. A year before the London session (destined to be
his last) he had been threatened with eviction from his New York apartment, but
the main problems were inevitably tied up with his acceptance or otherwise as a
musician, composer and bandleader.
His association with CBS records, whose producer Teo Macero had
worked with him sympathetically during much of the 1960s, had ended in mutual
incomprehension. Doubtless under pressure from marketing and accountancy
personnel, macero had teamed Monk with arranger/conductor Oliver Nelson, whose
West Coast based studio band had destroyed the subtlety of Monk's music; and,
in the absence of any new material from Thelonious himself, Macero had composed
two facile Monk pastiches for the album. The next suggestion from CBS (whether
via Macero is not clear) was that he record a selection of Beatles songs, a
suggestion not taken up by Monk.
Paul Jeffrey, his last regular saxophone player, reported also
that Monk at this period often had rhythm-section players not of his own
choice; certainly this would explain the inadequate performers who came to
Europe with him in 1969. Talking to Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic Records, Jeffrey
said "Guys would come into his band and just want to blow instead of learn
his music as he intended it." This ought to have been less true of The
Giants Of Jazz, organised in 1971 around a rhythm section of Monk, Al McKibbon
and Art Blakey. And yet Blakey, also in conversation with Cuscuna, pointed the
finger not only at the tour promoters but also at the group's front-line
(including former Monk employee Dizzy Gillespie) when he claimed "The way
he was treated on that Giants Of Jazz tour was a disgrace. His music wasn't
played properly."
We should be grateful, though, that this all-star situation
effected the musical reunion of Monk with his most sympathetic accompanist
ever, namely Blakey, and that the tour schedule afforded them a spare day in
London in which to record together again. Their previous collaborations included
the historic first Monk sessions for Blue Note, trio sessions for Prestige and
Riverside, and the latter label's septet date ("Monk's Music") which
was by then 14 years in the past. Despites Blakey's comments on the
circumstances of the 1971 tour, Monk was certainly ready and willing to show
how his music could still be played properly. And while Blakey was relaxed yet
businesslike in the studio, Monk, for all his uncommunicative exterior, was
totally alert and his few spoken interventions were highly pertinent to the job
in hand.
The session was divided into a solo set spread over three
hours, most of which can be found on Volume One, followed by a three hour trio
workout re-presented on Volume Two. The remaining material heard herein
consists of titles squeezed out of those volumes but originally issued on Black
Lion in the early 1970's, together with items previously only available in a
Mosaic boxed set. This applies to the two takes of Trinkle Tinkle, one of
Monk's most pianistic tunes which becomes even more involved as he plays around
with the time during Take 2. (The only musical fault to be found with Take 1
may be a slight hesitation in the third middle-8, but the slight clicking noise
in the keyboard action on both takes disappeared after Monk's finger-nails were
trimmed!)
The Man I Love begins with an admirably straight reading of the
well-known melody, contrasted with an equally clear enunciation of typical Monk
voicings underneath, which sound so acceptable by now that they really ought to
be what Gershwin originally intended. Another one-take performance, Something
In Blue is such a simple blues that it's easy to miss how inventive Monk is
within the framework; notice, for instance, the subliminal quotations from
Blues Five Spot in the 4th chorus, from Rhapsody In Blue (end of 5th). Aunt
Hagar's Blues (8th), Straight, No Chaser (9th) and Blue Monk (10th).
Introspection, not hitherto issued on Black Lion, was performed at the
suggestion of Monk's wife Nellie, and the solo run-through was a demonstration
of its changes to Al McKibbon for the version with Blakey which follows later.
The trio makes it bow on Crepuscule With Nellie, the one piece
which Monk always played straight with no improvisation, and on the previously
unreleased take of Nutty which was mainly to acquaint Al McKibbon with the
chord sequence. The performance of Hackensack is from the first take, not
issued at the time because of a slight rhythmic misunderstanding after the drum
solo which is only resolved during the last 16 bars. Evidence, again not on
Black Lion before but also (like Nutty) not in the Mosaic edition, is a first
take of Monk's most minimal yet complex composition - at the opposite extreme
from Trinkle Tinkle while in the same key - and makes a fitting conclusion to
The London Collection.
Brian Priestley
(Co-author, Jazz: The Essential Companion. Grafton/Paladin)
Postscript: Chordially, was actually the first music from this session and is, in some ways, the most extraordinary of the entire set. Certainly it's the most unusual, for we seldom have the chance to hear nearly ten minutes of a major jazz musician warming up. That is, not so much getting himself in shape as checking out the responsiveness and state of health of the piano he has to work with - let us not forget that other performers carry their instruments with them but 'acoustic' pianists, and in more recent times drummers and occasionally bassists on international tours, have to make out with whatever is provided for them. But what is fascinating is that Monk, being a composer, is unable to carry out this routine task without at the same time experimenting with chord densities and creating potential new melodies. there are reminiscences of old melodies too (especially Pannonica and perhaps Monk's Mood), but Monk is not yet ready to play, merely to explore, and this one and only glimpse into his workshop is beyond price.