This is a new album by
Thelonious Monk, and therefore it is an important event -- because everything musical that Monk does is of real importance.
This is not a matter of choice, but of inevitability. It would no more be possible for Thelonious to be trivial or casual or superficial than it would be for the sun to decide some morning to rise in the west. It is true that there is nothing specifically new or startling here: Monk is working in his customary quartet context, with tenor saxophonist
Charlie Rouse, his constant associate since the start of the 1960s, and with a bassist and drummer who have also long been at his side. The repertoire includes three Monk compositions that are more than a decade old (although the very fact that two of them have not been re-recorded until now is in itself highly intriguing and promising).
However, one does not look for new ground to be broken every time Picasso paints. The comparison is of course inexact as are all comparisons in art but the point is surely valid: a master has produced here a further example of his unique and valuable work and that is quite enough reason for us all to be pleased and to hasten to treasure and enjoy it.
These opening remarks may seem rather extreme. That is exactly the way they are intended; after having heard and known Monk for nearly two décades, I have extreme feelings on the subject. I first met Thelonious in 1948 and was awed by his earliest records; subsequently I have written about him and produced about a dozen of his albums on another label. And I continue to listen to him avidly. As a result, I have long been thoroughly convinced of his abiding importance. It is not just that he was a founding father of modern jazz and has for twenty years been a vast influence on so many musicians. This is accurate, but it is not the essential truth. That truth is that Thelonious is important because he exists, because he and his music form an immense, unavoidable and inevitable presence, like an Alp or the Mississippi River or summer.
Many people believe that Monk is a musical revolutionary. But this is simply not the case: such a revolutionary takes part in a deliberate overthrow or change of regime; by doing so he inaugurates a chain of events that will almost certainly lead to further stylistic upheavals and render him passé. But mountains do not overthrow anything; nor do they ever become obsolete. Thelonious began to play in his own way at a particular time -- about 1940 -- and a revolutionary new form of jazz called be-bop eventually grew up around him. By now, be-bop is rather old hat; but immutable Monk, who still sounds much as he did in the Forties is entirely alive and fresh. In a way, you might say, he has always had old-fashioned roots, deriving from the Harlem stride pianists of the Thirties. (There's a lot of that feeling in the unaccompanied Monk treatment of
Harold Arlen's 1931 « Between The Devil And The Deep Blue sea »; in particular he brings to my mind that other great musical humorist,
Fats Waller.) But it is equally true that he is of the avant-garde:
John Coltrane is close to being the patron saint of today's newest jazz wave, and many people, including Coltrane readily grant how much the tenor player owes to a late-Fifties period spent in Monk's quartet.
Yes, Monk can be quite a paradox. More accurately, by being so completely himself he is often a source of confusion to would-be analysts, leading them to stumble into paradoxes. His work has been described by adjectives like harsh, lean, angular which are accurate enough -- except, what about the fact that he is also the composer of the incredibly lovely « Round Midnight », or that he can play as tenderly as he does here on
Duke Ellington's « Didn't Know About You »? It has been said that he lacks a sense of form and structure -- and he often does seem to be attacking notes and even phrases at random. But its also true that so many of his solos are remarkably faithful to the melodic line. And to choose one arbitrary example, what could be more strikingly well-constructed than his accompaniment to Charlie Rouse's solo on « Straight No Chaser », the albums title tune -- complex at first, then progressively simpler and finally silent for a few choruses before surging in to make his own statement.
As initially noted, there is some not-new music here. The « Japanese Folk Song » is new; it may be an original number inspired by a recent tour of Japan, or it may actually be a native folk tune (but no one's going to discover which by any such simple means as directly asking Thelonious!). Also, the two standards have not previously been done by him.
But « Straight, No Chaser » dates back to the late 1940s and a Monk recording quintet featuring
Milt Jackson and
Art Blakey, while both « Locomotive » and « We See » were first presented in the early 1950s by a group that also included Blakey. However, one of Monk's most intriguing musical characteristics is his ability to adapt the performance of a number to fit specific instrumentation and personnel. Thus, all three are quite different from the original models -- as good as new, and in the case of the « neglected » two, perhaps even better, representing as they do the uniquely crosshatched mosaic created by superimposing mid-sixties performance onto earlier compositions.
Orrin Keepnews, 1967.
