On Music
GOLDMAN, ALBERT
MUSIC By Albert Goldman Man, You Gotta Dig That Cat, Thelonius, The Thinker, The Skull, The Long Medulla THELONIUS MONK is a hard man to place. When you mention Monk to somebody who knows the...
...I guess what gasses musicians the most about Monk is this—no matter how gone he gets with his atonal jazz, he never loses a strong racial sound...
...used to play with Monk years ago...
...That's why you always wanna catch Monk inside a combo where he don't have to do the big solo bit...
...Monk's right hand isn't worth much...
...You see now what it is when a guy is always thinking—he can't get himself together so's he can play...
...No, man, you gotta dig Thelonius as the thinker, the skull, the long medulla...
...Now, there's a scene for you—imagine all those cool cats lobbed out in their seats getting up and firking around to that insane beat...
...Monk sounds like a cat who needs lessons...
...He don t hump over the keys like them studs who just wanna rave on all night...
...The cats who play with Monk are the most grooved men in America...
...He'll start in with some weird little blip he just picked up from outer space, and then, just when you're sure he s gonna make it, he gives the dial a twist, and his rig starts bringing in the funny old sound of some Harlem piano player, circa 1925...
...He don't wanna play for anybody, he just needs an audience so's he can be alone and work things out for himself...
...That left hand of his is always feeling around, grabbing chords nobody else would think to play...
...Then, there are the cats who go into a thing about "Monk, the Genius of Jazz...
...Sometimes he's thinking so hard, he don't even bother to get a sound...
...Even the Modern Jazz Quartet has picked up on Monk...
...Or, maybe he'll make two different rhythms fight it out, drums against piano...
...I wouldn't call what he does playing the piano, and you never hear those pieces of his played the same way twice...
...He'll set his bass player going in one key, then he'll come on strong in another key...
...He's like some old oil well that keeps pumping up the good black stuff when all the new rigs have gone dry...
...When you mention Monk to somebody who knows the jazz scene, they always give you the same bit: "'He's the guy who started Bop...
...Monk's ideas are mostly things he does with tonality and rhythm...
...They all took a little vacation up at Juilliard after the war, and before they got away they were hooked on Bach and Debussy...
...Sometimes you'll see him play something, and then look up to see whether he reached the other man...
...One night he got so far out he even tried to turn the audience on...
...Two bars of that jazz and the set suddenly jams on an African time–signal—one swinging note struck over and over again until you're ready to flip...
...Milt Jackson, their vibes man...
...He keeps feeding them crazy ideas until they're out of their skulls...
...Sometimes he tilts it so sudden and so sharp, like, the cat who's taking the solo comes tumbling down like a bottle off an upturned table...
...the man who plays and writes and arranges, and does everything the end...
...Compared to a great piano man like Bud Powell...
...Now, a man like Monk is good for these cats...
...He shuffled off the stand and started yelling at the people to dance...
...Monk's solos are the craziest things because every two bars he s off on a new idea...
...He has a hard time plaving what he hears in his head...
...Well, we all know that, but still y ou can t dig Monk as a Bopper—he's too individual for that tag...
...Monk's always sending messages like that and trying to turn the other boys on...
...I guess some of those rough chips must have stuck in his brain, 'cause every so often I hear a nutty sound in his playing, and I say to myself, "Now, there's a man that digs Thelonius...
...Every time he lays a strange chord down, the music tilts to a different angle...
...Just watch how he sits there on the stand...
...Sometimes he gets so frustrated trying to get something down, he just gives up and lets the other boys rave on without him...
...Well...
...Maybe he's got one leg over the other, sitting sidewise with his elbow on the rack while he flaps the keys with one hand...
...You see, most of the modern cats are pretty well hung up between jazz and the classical stuff...
...You dig right away the cat is thinking...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 38
