Dunlop and Ore

[Hardbopjazz]

I often wonder why Monk had Frankie Dunlop and John Ore in his band. Listening to a live recording yesterday, Ore's soloing is just a walking base line, and Dunlop not much more creative. With someone as Unique as Monk, I would expect he would want musicians of a higher caliber. Ore did play with Hines, Webster, Powell, Hawkins and others, but I don't hear anything that impresses me. Do anyone else feel this way?

[JSngry]

Not me. Ore was in the pocket & Dunlop swung like crazy, with attitude.

"Creative" is relative to what is attempting to be created. With Monk, it's as much about a groove on the bottom as it is anything else anywhere else. Ore & Dunlop certainly created that.

Monk liked to dance.

[king ubu]

Yeah, Dunlop may be my favourite Monk drummer!

[Hardbopjazz]

What I was getting at was, these two didn't try to be very expressive. Maybe playing for Monk and trying to stand out would be futile.

[king ubu]

Dunlop not expressive? I respectfully disagree!

I can see how you feel about the "routine" that settled down in Monk's music at a certain point, but the quartet with Ore/Dunlop still recorded some of my favourite Monk music!

[JSngry]

"Expressive"?

I don't know what that means...at least not w/o an explanation of what the expectations/parameters/whatever are.

In some situations, the highest form of "expression" is to just play the music. I think a Monk rhythm section is one of those situations.

Others might have done different, but better? I'm not sure about that...that tandem had a pretty distinctive personality & they swung like a mofo. What other kind of "expression" would you be looking for?

FWIW, though, I feel about Ben Riley like you do about these two, more often than not. So yeah, a great deal of subjectivity is involved here...

[jazzbo]

Ore and Dunlop were an amazing team for Monk. I'm with Jim and Flurin.

Keep listening HB. Maybe or maybe not you'll swing your way into our corner.

[BillF]

I saw Dunlop and Ore with the Monk Quartet at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1961. Dunlop swung like crazy!

[jlhoots]

Ore and Dunlop were an amazing team for Monk. I'm with Jim and Flurin.

Keep listening HB. Maybe or maybe not you'll swing your way into our corner.

You are correct, sir!

[Stereojack]

I love Frankie Dunlop's playing with Monk! Always have, always will.

[AndrewHill]

I saw Dunlop and Ore with the Monk Quartet at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1961. Dunlop swung like crazy!

Lucky lucky lucky.

[Gheorghe]

John Ore can be heard as a soloist on many of Bud´s (mostly not commercially released) live tapes from Birdland 1964. He plays quite technically, using quite daring double grips or how you call it.

[Spontooneous]

In defense of John Ore: I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Monk asked his bassists to stick to that "walking" rhythm in their solos.

Check all those Larry Gales solos, too.

(Another pro-Dunlop partisan here.)

[paul secor]

Another for Ore and Dunlop.

[cymbalgroove]

Yeah I'm not sure here on what you're not hearing in Frankie Dunlop and John Ore? Frankie was my favorite drummer with Monk hands down! The way Frankie filled some of the holes with Monk on his tom toms really gave Monk's music even more spark then he and the rest of that band had. John Ore and Frankie had a great hook-up too. For me you don't have to play a lot solowise to be great. Shadow Wilson was another one of my all time favorites and he didn't like to play drum solos. He had a great beat which is most important.

[agriffith]

Check out Ore on Elmo Hope's "Final Sessions" also. Great playing on there! As far as, Dunlop goes, his solos are highly expressive and display a great understanding of Monk's compositions. I've listened to the "Monk's Dream" album hundreds of times, and the groove still knocks me out! And Rouse on there too; the four of them swung as one! (Hmmm........ "Four In One"; almost had a gag there son, uh joke that is..........")

[B. Clugston]

I'm a big Dunlop fan too. My favourite of Monk's drummers.

[Free For All]

In any walking swing feel it's critical that the quarter note bassline and the ride cymbal pattern hook up, and IMO Dunlop & Ore achieved that, which created a solid swinging foundation for Monk's explorations.

[WorldB3]

What I was getting at was, these two didn't try to be very expressive. Maybe playing for Monk and trying to stand out would be futile.

In the Robin Kelley Monk biography I forget the drummer but there is a part where Monk tells a new a drummer something along the lines of "don't play that Roy Haynes shit, I just want you to swing"

[Hardbopjazz]

So it comes down to Monk looking for someone to swing. I do admit both could swing. I just don't hear too much beyond that. I will have to do some more listening.

[JSngry]

Maybe listen less & dance more?

To the Monk music, that is.

Lots of people "swing". Not all that many swing.+

Just a thought.

[JSngry]

Need to follow up on that...might sound "mean" or something, not intended to...just mean that in some worlds, for some peoples, rhythm is its own reward & makes its own world, and its a world that runs deep...rhythm can contain all the energy/direction/etc that harmony, melody, or anything else can, if it's where you're at. And I think that that's where Monk, Ore, & Dunlop were at - just swinging the hell outta the music and letting that rhythm be its own end, as deep as it went.

You gotta remember - Monk played hard, Monk swung hard, and no matter how "abstract" he got, his time was always deep in the pocket. Monk's pocket was deep than many/most, so just laying it down so it could be all that it could be was not small feat and called for no small reservoir of resources and character. It's an expression and creativity all its own.

[Larry Kart]

From a 1964 John Litweiler review of "Criss Cross" (Columbia):

"Frankie Dunlop is certainly the major liability in this quartet. He is an exceptionally facile drummer, but it is amazing how a drummer can be so insensitive to Monk's playing. He has learned all the tricks from Roach, Blakey, Philly Joe, Elvin Jones, Baby Dodds, Joe Podunk and the rest of the gang, and he feels compelled to use every trick in his voluminous bag on every song he plays. It seems that way, anyway; good intentions do not a drummer make. John Ore is an asset to the group, in spite of his unwillingness to solo (he has an appealing habit of playing his solo choruses entirely in double stops); since he plays slightly on top of the beat, he keeps show-off Dunlop from dragging the tempo."

Dunlop seems to me to approach Monk's music as a more or less fixed object, like something in a museum display case, and have decided that it's "eccentric" stuff that calls for Dunlop to add external, ricky-tick cute decorations from somewhere outside anyplace where real rhythmic interaction might occur. At times he sounds like a way over-served Osie Johnson backing Spike Jones. For real rhythmic interaction with Monk, there's Blakey and Roach; for deep simpatico grooving, there's Shadow Wilson. Philly Joe, on his one encounter (I think it's just one), does quite well just being himself. Billy Higgins I'd have to listen again. If I had to chose between Dunlop and the rather faceless Ben Riley, I'd take Riley. IIRC, Riley's best Monk playing was on the first Sphere album; Rouse is in fine form there, too.

[JSngry]

Wrong!

[Larry Kart]

Wrong!

I'm not saying that John or I are "right" here, just that this is what two such people thought at the time, when we and Monk and all were still alive in the same continuum, for whatever that's worth.