Thelonious Monk's playing on the Columbia albums

[Guy Berger]

In Chris May's AAJ review of The Thelonious Monk Trio (a classic, must-hear album), he writes:

Monk's compositions are still fresh (he wrote most of his signature works during the Blue Note/Prestige years) and his playing of them vigorous and exploratory (qualities which diminished alarmingly during his 1960s period with Columbia).

Now, it is an indisputable fact that Monk slowed down as a composer. (This happened well before 1960.)

It is also a commonly held opinion (though not a consensus) that Monk's pre-Columbia music is better than his Columbia music. There are lots of interesting explanations for why people hold this opinion and it's fully worthy of discussion in a different thread.

But what I'm interested in is the argument that Monk's playing deteriorated in the 1960s. While I've only heard a few of his Columbia recordings, I don't hear it. This may be because I'm listening to the wrong recordings or because my amateur ears aren't discerning enough to pick it up.

On the other hand, May might be wrong. It might be simply a case where the knowledge of history (he knows what came first) biases him toward Monk's early playing. Or worse yet, he's simply letting the conventional wisdom about Monk's music leak onto his assessment of Monk's playing.

Anyway, enough babble from me. Those of you in the know -- is May right or wrong? Did Monk's playing deteriorate in the 60s?

Guy

Edited July 4, 2007 by Guy

[Dan Gould]

My amateur ears don't hear it either, Guy.

[mikeweil]

I don't get this. I think these people are mixing up his playing and his composing all the time, as if it were one and the same. But he kept re-working his music by playing it and improvising on it all through his career. His execution as a pianist certainly was in peak form during his Columbia period. And he had a good working band and recorded with it much more often than in the previous decade - so it sounds like he repeated himself more, but in fact we just have a better documentation of what he did all his life.

"Consensus" - these guys should try to play like Monk, and exactly - then we'll talk again! Complete nonsense, IMHO.

[BruceH]

I don't get this. I think these people are mixing up his playing and his composing all the time, as if it were one and the same.

Agreed.

Granted, his composing slowed down to a trickle (and finally stopped) but to my admittedly non-musician ears his playing stayed sharp.

[Spontooneous]

Sometimes there's a perfunctory performance or two. It's the kind of staleness that inevitably sets in with regular performing and touring (which Monk wasn't able to do much of before the '60s). But there's no real decline.

And then listen to the London recordings from 1971, where he opens up another chapter or two in his own pianism.

Nosiree, no deterioration.

[AndrewHill]

Wow. Interesting. Man, I guess there's two things I enjoy about the Columbia's. One, he always seemed to be able to re-interperete his material in new and interesting ways and two, the players, namely Rouse, were able to express that material in new and exciting ways. Bye ya, stands as an example and I love how its played here than anywhere else!

[J Larsen]

And then listen to the London recordings from 1971, where he opens up another chapter or two in his own pianism.

I have kind of a strange reaction to the London recordings - on the one hand I feel like they aren't as "good" as, for instance, the classic Riverside recordings, but I enjoy listening to them as much as anything else he did.

[AllenLowe]

the Columbia solo recordings are wonderful -

in the film Straight No Chaser there are plenty of great clips of his playing from that era -

now, the last time I saw him (Central Park, maybe 1970) he was basically comatose on stage - but than, that was the beginning of the end -

[AndrewHill]

the Columbia solo recordings are wonderful -

in the film Straight No Chaser there are plenty of great clips of his playing from that era -

now, the last time I saw him (Central Park, maybe 1970) he was basically comatose on stage - but than, that was the beginning of the end -

The fact (for us younger ones) that you saw him AT ALL is amazing!

[AndrewHill]

the Columbia solo recordings are wonderful -

in the film Straight No Chaser there are plenty of great clips of his playing from that era -

now, the last time I saw him (Central Park, maybe 1970) he was basically comatose on stage - but than, that was the beginning of the end -

I also want to second those solo recordings (the 2CD 62-8). Those ARE amazing.

[jazzbo]

Monk was MONK by the Blue Note recordings and he remained MONK. Even in the end, lying on a bed days on end in Nica's apartment.

I think he was even more MONK by the final years of playing. I don't hear deterioration. Sometimes I hear. . .what MAY be "too fucked up" that night.

Edited July 4, 2007 by jazzbo

[Chuck Nessa]

Oddly no posts differentiate between his "technical" playing and his "idea" playing. It would be entirely possible for his "technique" to improve while the "invention" flags and the inverse too.

THAT is worthy of discussion.

[AndrewHill]

Monk was MONK by the Blue Note recordings and he remained MONK. Even in the end, lying on a bed days on end in Nica's apartment.

I think he was even more MONK by the final years of playing. I don't hear deterioration. Sometimes I hear. . .what MAY be "too fucked up" that night.

Amen to that. Monk WAS Monk and no one could take that from him. Just watch Straight No Chaser and I think you will get the point with the Columbia footage (just watch how Teo interacts with Monk). Monk was one of kind from beginning to end and I enjoy every second of it! No matter what criticisms one may have of Monk's later career, he was was still way ahead of the game. A complete genius from beginning to end, in my opinion!

[Guy Berger]

Oddly no posts differentiate between his "technical" playing and his "idea" playing. It would be entirely possible for his "technique" to improve while the "invention" flags and the inverse too.

THAT is worthy of discussion.

Definitely true. I'd be glad if someone would tackle this point.

Guy

[jazzbo]

The way I see it Monk's main modus operandi was to make his material even more Monk. So at one point (somewhere in the fifties I'd say) the way I sense it: it was less essential for HIM to come up with new material ("inventiveness" perhaps) and more essential for him to polish and hone the material he had into its definitive Monkishness.

I see him going deeper and deeper into his own musical world, and it's just great that he got to share it with us. But I think it was more important for HIM to dwell in it than to push it out there.

I may be mistaken, it's just how I feel after a few decades of Monkian listening.

[CJ Shearn]

well, I hear a definite thread in his ideas of expanding the melodic content, like on "Blue Monk" he often explores different facets of the melody in his right hand while trilling with the left. After hearing the "It Club" set, I find his playing, and comping to be pretty inventive, maybe also because there are tunes there that were not played as much on some of the Columbia albums. But then I haven't heard everything.

[Larry Kart]

Oddly no posts differentiate between his "technical" playing and his "idea" playing. It would be entirely possible for his "technique" to improve while the "invention" flags and the inverse too.

THAT is worthy of discussion.

I have no sense that Monk's technique notably faltered or improved over the course of his career. As for "idea" playing, I think the high points were during his Prestige days -- e.g. "Little Rootie Tootie," "Blue Monk," "Bag's Groove" with Miles, etc. IMO the "idea" playing got more formulaic during the Riverside and then the Columbia years, in part because there were voluble saxophonists to lean on in his working groups (Coltrane for a while, then Griffin, then Rouse); it seemed as though most performances by those working groups were set up so that Monk's solo would not be expected to be novel or climactic but rather a restatement of thematic material with trimmings/variations. The obvious exceptions would be the rediscovered '57 concert with Coltrane, where Monk is on fire, and the Columbia solo recordings, where Monk often finds the material inspiring and is also the whole show. Also, IIRC, he's at a higher than normal level for the period on the It Club recordings. Otherwise, though, I think a lot of Monk's solos during the Columbia era sound like he's filling in semi-predetermined patterns, at least by the standards of his varied and adventurous Prestige era work.

[JSngry]

I say that it's sometimes hard to discern between "refinement", "paring down", and "decline".

I also say that even more important/relevant than "technial" vs. "idea" is how inspired/engaged/etc/youknowwhatImean he was at any given moment. That seems to me the wildest of the wild cards right there, and with all the number of variables in play, hey.

I also say that for the longest, I had a really hard time reaching for a Columbia Monk session when I had all the other stuff on the shelf right beside it. That's opened up some over the years, but only some, if a lot of some.

In closing, I say that the cat's long dead, and will be for the foreseeable future. So hear what you want/need to hear, be inspired by it how you want/need to be inspired, and proceed accordingly.

[Simon Weil]

Well, there's a kind of verve - a spark - on his Riverside recordings, which I don't hear on his Columbia's. I mean, there's a thing that happens with young people - say people around 22 - where everything is fresh and new to them. Like there's this whole world of potential. And then, after a while, they settle down - and that newness goes. Because what is potential has eventually to be realised.

So this is how I feel about Monk. Up to the Columbia period he is bursting with ideas - not just in terms of playing, but in terms of group concept, composition, whatever. After that, he settles down. No, that doesn't mean he stops being creative, just that he stops being creative in the global, earthmoving, jazz-changing way he was before.

There's something of the concert pianist about his technique on the Columbias - to do with knowing his style so well he now gets especial pleasure in the nooks and crannies of its perfection.

Maybe it's to do with knowing he's a Jazz Great.

Simon Weil

[Shawn]

I'm assuming that the recording situation at Columbia was probably quite different from Riverside or Prestige. I'm guessing more rehearsal time, more studio time, bigger budget, etc. To me the Columbia albums seem a little more "controlled" than their earlier counterparts. It's possible that the atmosphere of the sessions themselves might have had their influence on the finished products.

Personally I detect no "decline" during this period. However, like many, I prefer the Riverside/Prestige/Blue Note recordings.

[AllenLowe]

" there's a thing that happens with young people - say people around 22 - where everything is fresh and new to them. Like there's this whole world of potential. And then, after a while, they settle down - and that newness goes"

scary thing for us old guys, but too often true - something to fight and fight against - but than, that's a whole new topic in itself -

[ghost of miles]

Well, there's a kind of verve - a spark - on his Riverside recordings, which I don't hear on his Columbia's. I mean, there's a thing that happens with young people - say people around 22 - where everything is fresh and new to them. Like there's this whole world of potential. And then, after a while, they settle down - and that newness goes. Because what is potential has eventually to be realised.

OTOH Monk was already 30 the first time he set foot inside a studio for a leader date... the Blue Note/Prestige/Riverside period captures him in his thirties and early 40s. All in all I'd say he was an extremely vital guy who weathered the life better than some of his fellow geniuses (I'm guessing in part, too, because of Nellie). Will be interesting to see what Robin Kelley's forthcoming bio has to say about the Columbia years/recordings... like others here, I tend to favor the 2-CD solo set and the It club performances, but I haven't even heard all of the albums from that era yet.

[Teasing the Korean]

For a long time, I was more into the Riverside albums than the Columbias.

A while back, during a period in which I was moving, there was a point when I had only a few jazz albums with me. One of them was a Monk Columbia collection called "Always Know." It was a double album with previously unreleased tracks or longer tracks that had been issued in edited form. Because I only had a few jazz albums with me, I put this on a cassette and listened to it non-stop for a few months. It changed my view about the Columbia period.

Granted, one of the drawbacks about the Columbia albums is there are a huge number of quartet dates and not enough guest musicians. But I love that quartet!

[ep1str0phy]

Re: the "idea" v. "technical" matter--I'm not sure about the notion that there's an inverse proportionality between the two (i.e., one will go up when the other goes down), but then you'd have to wonder just what "staleness" means to the listener. The ideational element of Monk's music was so wrapped up in performance--perhaps increased facility in the latter variable just concretized the Monkian "concept", and from there the music just got a little less dangerous.

Or maybe it's a matter of the nature of Monk's ideas evolving. I hear a strong degree of invention on many of the Columbia recordings (Underground, the solo stuff), but it's because of and not in spite of an increasing technical facility--remember, Monk didn't stop playing like Monk (e.g., un-straightening his fingers on the piano)--though I wouldn't necessarily say that he learned how to play Monk better.

But--there's some value in those later recordings, as you can hear a musician whose ideas have adapted to different environmental stresses--constant performance, regular recording--though not in the most creatively "adventurous" way. But that's all the documentation we have of a musician of Monk's personality and intellect struggling "into" complacency, and I think it's arguable that he didn't stop trying to play interestingly the minute his technique got "better"--if easier to predict.

Edited July 5, 2007 by ep1str0phy

[clifford_thornton]

I'm not a huge fan of the band on the Columbia records, though Monk and Monkishness are still there in full force. I'd say the records themselves, and the compositions, are certainly fine.

I like "roughness" and, to a degree, have felt that the Columbia production did not serve that aspect of his music. But it's also true that most composers do want their work to be polished, so I may be in the perceptual minority here.