Notes by Martin Williams.
Dinah; I Surrender, Dear; Sweet and Lovely; North of the
Sunset; Ruby, My Dear; I'm Confessin' that I Love You; I Hadn't Anyone Till You;
Everything Happens To Me; Monk's Point; I Should Care; Ask Me Now; These
Foolish Things; Introspection; (CD bonus track)
Here's Thelonious Monk, once considered the most far out of
jazzmen, opening this solo recital with a version of Dinah. And his left hand
strides with an oom-pa beat that might have come directly from the 1920s.
Monk's light-hearted spoof is a burlesque of the past, perhaps, but it never
ridicules or degrades this era. But it is funny, and if you have any doubts
about the humorous intent of this Dinah, listen to Monk's jingling ending. At
the same time, the performance bristles with Monkian melodic ideas and Monkian
rhythmic delays, which means that it is always intrinsically musical.
On the other hand, there is I Should Care, a starkly original
succession of piano sounds. Groups of notes sing out sustained, others are
abruptly dampened. Left-hand figures trip by lightly and briefly even while
previous right-hand notes are still ringing out. I Should Care is the work of a
man whose pianistic technique and control are as striking and musically
effective, it seems to me, as those of any pianist in any music.
Perhaps I Should Care holds the key to Monk's formidable
reputation as a pianist and musician. His point of departure is a superior
popular song; but as he transforms it, it is no longer a song - intended to be
sung - that happens to be played on a piano. It becomes a two-handed piano work
which Monk has recomposed in terms of the keyboard, recomposed in terms of his
own original pianistic techniques. Yet for all its originality, its subtlety
and its musicality, Monk's I Should Care is still as accessible to almost any
listener as the original song itself.
How many jazz pianists - how many popular artists of any kind -
would expose themselves so openly as Monk does here in the unaccompanied piano
solo album? Perhaps one should approach this recording as Thelonious Monk's
tersely individual history of jazz piano. From the point of view of the
completely un-initiated, there is definite pedagogical pleasure, for Monk once
again revives the traditional idea of basing his variations and improvisations
directly on the melody. While it is hard to lose the melody in these
performances, it is just as easy to realize that - by leaving out a note here,
adding a note there, delaying another note or a phrase, or adding a whole
handful of notes - Monkian alchemy can transform the most watery musical idea
into gold.
Similarly, Monk carries on the idea of a traditional, pulsing
oom-pa left hand in several pieces. He strides in Dinah almost like Fats Waller
or James P Johnson as he does on I Hadn't Anyone Till You. And he uses a kind
of light abstraction of stride bass on Sweet and Lovely and Everything Happens
To Me.
There are two pieces here in traditional blues form. Typically,
Monk reassesses the most basic blues ideas in the most remarkably unexpected
manner. Yet I am sure that what he does in North Of The Sunset would have
pleased an older blues man like Jimmy Yancey. Speaking of technique, in Monk's
Point is the most refined example I have ever heard of Monk's way of 'bending'
a piano note - not of slurring together two successive notes, but actually
producing a continuous curve of sound - an "impossible" technique
Monk achieves by a careful manipulation of piano keys, pedals, fingers and hand
positions.
For further contributions to tradition by T Monk himself,
notice the hefty clusters of notes on I Surrender, Dear. They are not always
'harmonious' in the traditional sense, but they are deliberate and effective,
including the frequent use of an obvious, quasi-amateurish bass note. Such
things save Monk's complex chords from the wishy-washy sentimentality and
over-ripeness of a double-dozen of other modern jazz pianists. Take Sweet and
Lovely, one of several unexpected revivals Monk has placed in the jazz
repertory. Here the pianist's crisp attack sings the theme so that it is both
sweet and lovely but never sentimental; it is not merely "pretty", it
is beautiful. Or listen to These Foolish Things and hear how Monk's obliqueness
has transformed a self pitying torch song into a wise and witty blues.
Fortunately, Thelonious Monk has included two of his own best
melodies: Ask Me Now, which he here plays with a ringing lyricism, and Ruby, My
Dear. Monk wrote the latter when he was still in his teens, I am told, and has
played it many times since. Yet he performs it here as if he has just
discovered it. This is a rare performance, uncompromisingly emotional and, in
the end, truly majestic. Monk's piano sings starkly, passionately, in one of
those miracles in which human emotion triumphs fully over the mechanics of the
keyboard and its hammers and strings. The final touch comes as Monk drops his
steady tempo at just the right moment for an ad-lib conclusion, without losing
musical momentum.
Ruby, My Dear is the work of a man whose technique is placed at
the disposal of music. But he does not dazzle us; indeed he does not
"show" us anything. He has the true artist's ability to involve us
with him so that we seem to be working things out together. He can take the
simplest note and make it count in every way because he knows the musical worth
of each sound he makes and each silence he allows. In the passion of the
moment, he may even strike a note in mistake (as did Schnabel playing
Beethoven), but we all know none of this detracts from his greatness.
Monk is a jazzman, surely, and a supreme one. But he is also
more than that. He is as rare as an
oasis found in the Sahara.
Martin Williams