by
Don DeMicheal and Pete Welding
Source:
Down Beat Music '64 9th Yearbook
Of the
thousands of jazz LPs available, we have chosen 53 that we feel present a true
picture of the music's development and of its major figures. In selecting the
albums, we attempted to find ones that were representative of styles or of
major artists. In a few cases, the record by a certain artist or school finally
decided on was not as good musically as others by the same man or school, but
it was felt that the album chosen would either give a more rounded view of the
man or would offer the listener a variety that would have been unobtainable
except by listing a number of records from the same school.
After each
listing there are further recommendations for the particular artist or style.
This is meant to help guide those who are more interested in one phase of jazz
than they are in the others.
Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners
(Riverside 12-226)
Of the two
pianists developed and identified with the bop movement, Bud Powell and
Thelonious Monk, the latter represents a wholly divergent, if not totally
opposite, direction and stream of development. While Powell explored to the
fullest the horizontal approach represented by his cascading, overspilling, and
often brilliant extemporized lines, this was often achieved at the expense of a
commensurate harmonic development. (It is interesting to listen to Powell's
left-hand chord punctuations in the course of one of his dazzling linear
displays; the harmonic element is cut to the very bone.)
Monk on the
other hand was ever an exponent of a carefully marshaled and spare melodic
line; where Powell was prodigal, he was economical in the extreme. But he was
one of the great harmonic innovators and one of the most original and inventive
composers jazz has known. His taut, wry, epigramatic compositions are
masterpieces of construction, often suprising in their unexpected twists and
turns, but always wholly united by a tight, inner logic all their own. The
harmonic substructure underlying them represents a wholly original mind at work
and is of such a provocative nature as to prod all but the noncreative soloists
into stimulating work; they have to respond to the jagged, arresting power of
Monk's work.
This disc is a
prime example of this process of stimulation. On the LP tenorist Sonny Rollins
is the most forceful soloist (after Monk, that is), for he most fully meets the
challenge of the music, especially on the blues piece "Ba-lue Bolivar
Ba-lues-are." The pianist's music demands strong, individual musicians for
its fullest expression, and in this regard Rollins has it well over Ernie
Henry, the capable but scarcely individual altoist who is heard with him on
three of the tracks. Trumpeter Clark Terry replaces Henry on "Bemsha
Swing," and the difference is palpable. Rollins, Terry, and the rhythm
team of bassist Oscar Pettiford (who is replaced by Paul Chambers on
"Bemsha"), and drummer Max Roach all respond beautifully to the
music. "I Surrender Dear" is a Monk piano solo and is, of course,
completely remade at the pianist's hands, becoming distilled Monk in the
process.
Further
recommendations: At present a good number of recordings by the pianist are in
print. He recorded extemsively during the 1950s for the Riverside label, and
much of his most creative work is available on the discs made for that company.
Among the better offerings are "Thelonious Alone in San Franciso"
(12-312), a series of 10 unaccompanied piano solos, more than half of them Monk
originals; and "The Unique Thelonious Monk" (12-209), a trio disc on
which the pianist transforms a sheaf of standard tunes into virtually new
compositions, turning up unexpected delights and depths in them. A recent disc
on the Columbia label, "Monk's Dream" (1965), offers a highly
stimulating sampling of his present quartet with tenor saxophonist Charlie
Rouse.