Benny Goodman Tune, The Monk Swings

[BERIGAN]

I was watching the DVD from the Benny Goodman Centenial Collection CD/DVD set, and they showed a rehearsal for the 1966 Belgium Jazz festival with this song, which had supposedly just been written for the festival (Benny said it would be the highlight of the show) and they also showed the version they did for the concert.

Interesting little tune, but I couldn't find a listing for the song on Allmusic except for this DVD, and a google search kept bringing up reviews of the DVD as well.

So, was it ever on a record, was a tribute to Thelonius, or to Buddists?

[EKE BBB]

Highlights of this show were broadcast as a one-hour Bell Telephone TV special. Guess that´s what is on that DVD.

I will check Lord discography when I get home.

[Fer Urbina]

I was watching the DVD from the Benny Goodman Centenial Collection CD/DVD set, and they showed a rehearsal for the 1966 Belgium Jazz festival with this song, which had supposedly just been written for the festival (Benny said it would be the highlight of the show) and they also showed the version they did for the concert.

Interesting little tune, but I couldn't find a listing for the song on Allmusic except for this DVD, and a google search kept bringing up reviews of the DVD as well.

So, was it ever on a record, was a tribute to Thelonius, or to Buddists?

←

FWIW, in BG On The Record (first edition, so it's worth checking a more recent one) there are only three recordings of "The Monk Swings" (aka "The Swinging Monk"), first two on video: one from a rehearsal on August 6, 1966, and the other from the afternoon concert on August 7. Parts of these were recorded in Comblain-La-Tour (Belgium) and were broadcast by the NBC TV network on February 26, 1967. RTB (Belgium National TV) also recorded the whole August 7 concert, apparently.

There's a third version (audio only) recorded on December 31, 1966 in Las Vegas (a sustaining radio broadcast from the Hotel Tropicana).

All three takes by a sextet including Goodman and Doc Cheatham.

F

[AllenLowe]

just for the record, the monk it referred to (according to a documentary on Goodman) was a local guy whom Benny was told was a great jazz player but whose playing turned out to be a complete dud -

[brownie]

I was at that 1966 Comblain-la-Tour festival!

Doc Cheatham and Les Spann (on guitar) were in the Benny Goodman small band.

Other groups at the festival were Stan Getz, Anita O'Day, Paul Bley, Barney Wilen, Henri Texier, also Peter Brotzmann in one of his very first appearances!

Also Brian Auger with a very amateurish but lovely Julie Driscoll!

I remember reading somewhere that the appearance costs for the Benny Goodman group were so prohibitive that the 1966 festival turned out to be the last one! There was no money left in the books!

Edited November 15, 2005 by brownie

[BERIGAN]

Thanks for the info guy(s) Too bad it wasn't recorded for an LP, but them's the breaks. Brownie, could you hear much of Cheatham, or was most of his playing muted, so to speak?

[brownie]

Brownie, could you hear much of Cheatham, or was most of his playing muted, so to speak?

←

THe memories of the Benny Goodman appearance are a bit lost in a fog. I took photos from the set and most of them show Doc Cheatham play with a mute!

[AllenLowe]

there's very little of Cheatham on record for this middle period, at least as a soloist - he told me once that he made his living for a time as a section man with Latin bands - Doc also always said that he didn't really develop as a soloist until much later, but I HAVE heard recordings with Georg Wein's group - I think from the 1950s - that show him playing beautifully as a soloist -