Jazz-Pianister I 50'Erne
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Jazz-pianister i 50’erne, side 1 Monk, Thelonious (Sphere) (b Rocky Mount, NC, 10 Oct 1917; d Englewood, NJ, 17 Feb 1982). American jazz pianist and composer. Although he remained long misunderstood and little known, both his playing and his compositions had a formative influence on modern jazz. 1. Life. When Monk was four his family moved to New York. In the early 1940s he became house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where he helped to formulate the emerging bop style. In 1944 he recorded with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet, and in the same year his collaboration with Cootie Williams and lyricist Bernie Hanighen, the well-known tune ’Round Midnight (also known as Round about Midnight), was recorded by Williams (Hit). By this time Monk was playing at the Spotlite on 52nd Street with Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra. Between 1947 and 1952 he made recordings for Blue Note: Evidence, Criss Cross and a bizarre arrangement of Carolina Moon (1952, BN) are regarded as the first characteristic works of his output, along with the recordings he made as a sideman for Charlie Parker in 1950, which included Bloomdido and My Melancholy Baby (both 1950, Mer./Clef). [not available online] In 1952 Monk acquired a contract from Prestige Records, with which he remained associated for three years. Although this was perhaps the leanest period in his career in terms of live performances, in October 1954 he recorded an album with Sonny Rollins and, in a memorable session with the Miles Davis All Stars on Christmas Eve, he gave perhaps his finest solo performance on Bags’ Groove (1954, Prst.). In 1955 Prestige sold his contract to Riverside Records, where Monk remained until 1961. An album with Art Blakey for Atlantic (1957) and three of his albums for Riverside (Brilliant Corners, 1956; Thelonious Himself, 1957; Monk’s Music, 1957) were masterpieces, and almost overnight Monk became one of the most acclaimed and controversial jazz improvisers of the late 1950s. In 1957 he began appearing regularly with Coltrane, Wilbur Ware and Shadow Wilson at the Five Spot in New York. During the next few years his group included such note-worthy musicians as Johnny Griffin, Roy Haynes and Charlie Rouse, his lifelong associate. He began to tour the USA regularly and also to appear in Europe. In 1962 Monk’s popularity was such that he was put under contract by Columbia. He was also made the subject of a cover story by Time (1964), an honour bestowed on only three other jazz musicians. He made several overseas tours, including visits to Mexico and Japan. Around 1970 he disbanded his group and in 1971–2 worked in the Giants of Jazz together with Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey. In November 1971 he made solo and trio recordings for Black Lion Records in London, which some critics felt heralded a new era in his development, but shortly afterwards he suddenly retired from public view. He made three final performances with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and appeared with a quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival New York in 1975 and 1976, but otherwise spent his final years in seclusion in Weehawken, New Jersey, at the home of the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, his lifelong friend and patron. His life was celebrated in the films Music in Monk Time (c1985), Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (c1989) and A Great Day in Harlem (1995). 2. Compositions. Monk’s compositions fall into three periods: those recorded for Blue Note in the 1940s, his works in the 1950s, mainly for Riverside, and a few tunes written after 1960 for Columbia. Most critics consider those of his first two periods the most significant. Of the first-period works, Round about Midnight is his most popular, both with the public and with musicians. Evidence, Misterioso and particularly Criss Cross are considered his masterpieces in purely instrumental terms; quite different from each other, they are united by vigorous, angular melodies of a strongly pianistic character. The first eight bars of Criss Cross, for example, consist of two contrasting motifs and demonstrate Monk’s highly personal use of rhythmic displacement (ex.1). Each piece of this period reveals fresh facets of his thinking: Eronel demonstrates his affection for bop, and Hornin’ In his fascination with the whole-tone scale, which allowed him to suspend the work’s tonality for bars at a time (ex.2). Another aspect of Monk’s first-period pieces is his reworking of standard tunes, such as ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ (from Thelonious Monk Quintet, 1954, Prst.) and Carolina Moon, in which he dramatically alters and develops familiar material in an unorthodox and entirely characteristic fashion. In his second period Monk produced many carefree popular pieces such as Jackie-ing, but also substantial works, including Pannonica, the highly dissonant Crepuscule with Nellie and Gallop’s Gallop, a tour de force of ‘wrong’ notes Jazz-pianister i 50’erne, side 2 which unexpectedly interrupt the conventional harmonies. His most important composition of the 1950s, and perhaps the most unorthodox work of his career, was Brilliant Corners whose melody skirts the whole-tone, chromatic and Lydian scales and is furthest removed from his African American roots. Criss Cross (1951, BN) Ex.1 Hornin’ In (1952, BN) Ex.2 3. Piano style. It is as a performer that Monk was most misunderstood. He did not always exhibit the customary right-hand dexterity of most jazz pianists and, more importantly, his fellow jazz musicians quite often disagreed with his choice of notes. But his style, based on the Harlem stride tradition, had many strengths: a highly distinctive timbre, an ability to provide uncanny rhythmic surprises, and a wide variety of articulation. Some of his performances, such as I Should Care (from Thelonious Himself, 1957, Riv.), show a fresh use of rubato quite different from that of other jazz or lounge pianists. Monk also favoured ‘crushed’ notes and clusters which ‘evaporated’ to leave a few key pitches. But his most important contribution as a pianist was his remarkable ability to improvise a coherent musical argument with a logic and structure comparable with the best of his notated compositions. Monk invented and developed ideas rather than merely embroidering chord changes. Brilliant examples can be found in his solos and accompaniments on the recordings of Misterioso (1948) and especially Bags’ Groove, both with Milt Jackson. The album Thelonious Monk (1954, Swing) offers great insight into the audacity of Monk’s music, his solo version of Eronel in particular being outstanding for its considerable pianistic demands. Although many young musicians have borrowed and reinterpreted Monk’s melodies for their own improvisations, most jazz pianists seem incapable or unwilling to pursue the introverted, quirky, yet meticulous thought processes that inspired Monk’s greatest solos. Jazz-pianister i 50’erne, side 3 Bobby Timmons b. Robert Henry Timmons, 19 December 1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 1 March 1974, New York City, New York, USA. Timmons studied with an uncle who was a musician, and then attended the Philadelphia Academy for a year. After playing piano around his home-town he joined Kenny Dorham’s Jazz Prophets in February 1956. He next played with Chet Baker (April 1956 to January 1957), Sonny Stitt (February to August 1957), Maynard Ferguson (August 1957 to March 1958) and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (July 1958 to September 1959). Although this last stint was no longer than the others, it was with the Messengers that he made his name. He replaced Sam Dockery to become part of a classic line-up, with Wayne Shorter on tenor and Lee Morgan on trumpet, and recorded Like Someone In Love. His composition ‘Moanin’’ became a signature for the Messengers, and has remained a definitive example of gospel-inflected hard bop ever since. In October 1959 he joined Cannonball Adderley, for whom he wrote two more classics ‘This Here’ and ‘Dat Dere’. He rejoined Blakey briefly in 1961, touring Japan in January (a broadcast was subsequently released as A Day With Art Blakey by Eastwind) and recording on some of Roots & Herbs. From the early 60s Timmons led his own trios and appeared regularly in Washington, DC. In Spring 1966 he had a residency at the Village Gate in New York and played throughout Greenwich Village in the early 70s. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1974. Timmons was a seminal figure in the soul jazz movement, which did so much to instil jazz with the vitality of gospel. Although best known as a pianist and composer, he also played vibes during the last years of his life. Powell, Bud [Earl] (b New York, 27 Sept 1924; d New York, 1 Aug 1966). American jazz pianist. Following classical piano studies, from 1940 he took part in informal jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse, New York. There he came under the tutelage and protection of Thelonious Monk and contributed to the emerging black American bop style. By 1942–5, when he played in the band of his guardian Cootie Williams, he had already developed his individual style in most of its essentials. After sustaining a head injury during a racial incident in 1945, he suffered the first of many nervous collapses which were to confine him to sanatoriums for much of his adult life. Thereafter, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he appeared intermittently in New York clubs with leading bop musicians or in his own trio. From the mid-1950s, as his mental health and musical powers deteriorated, he gradually restricted his public appearances. He moved in 1959 to Paris, where he led a trio (1959–62) with Kenny Clarke, the third member of which was usually bassist Pierre Michelot, and enjoyed a certain celebrity status.