_____One historic teaming was that of Thelonious Monk (bio) and John Coltrane (bio) at New York's 'Five Spot Cafe', beginning in the summer of 1957. Although the group remained together for only a half-year, those of us who heard it will never forget the experience. There were some weeks when I was at the 'Five Spot' two and three times, staying most of the night even when I intended just to catch a set or two. The music was simultaneously kinetic and hypnotic. J.J. Johnson has compared it to the mid-Forties union of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. "...Since Charlie Parker, the most electrifying sound that I've heard in contemporary jazz was Coltrane playing with Monk at the Five Spot .... It was incredible, like Diz and Bird..." Jay said.

_____Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane complemented each other perfectly. The results of this successful musical alliance were beneficial to both. In this setting, Thelonious Monk began to receive the brunt of a long overdue recognition. On the other hand, John Coltrane's talent, set in such a fertile environment, bloomed like a hibiscus. 'Trane's comments in a Down Beat® article (September 29, 1960), clearly describe how he reveres Thelonious Monk. "...Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way - through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all..." he stated.

_____Later in the piece, John Coltrane added; "...I think Monk is one of the true greats of all time. He's a real musical thinker - there're not many like him. I feel myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him. If a guy needs a little spark, a boost, he can just be around Monk, and Monk will give it to him..."

_____Thelonious Monk certainly brought John Coltrane out beautifully. It was in this period that John began to experiment with what at the time I called "sheets of sound". Actually, he was thinking in groups of notes rather than one note at a time. Thelonious Monk's practice of "laying out" allowed John Coltrane to "stroll" against the pulse of bass and drums and really develop this playing attitude - his own. Pointed examples of this can be heard here in "Trinkle Tinkle" and "Nutty".

_____Toward the latter part of '57. Ahmed Abdul-Malik took over Wilbur Ware's bass post. But in the three selections here, the original quartet is intact. Wilbur Ware and Thelonious Monk had played together on one of Thelonious Monk's visits to Chicago, and when Wilbur Ware migrated to New York he was Thelonious Monk's choice for the group. I find no coincidence in Martin Williams' statement that Wilbur Ware "...has something of the same basic interest in displacement of accents and rhythmic, shiftings and in unusual sequence of harmonics that one hears in Thelonious Monk..." Listen to Wilbur Ware's solo on "Trinkle Tinkle" for evidence.

_____Shadow Wilson was about 2 1/2 months short of his 40th birthday when he died on July 11, 1959, and another of jazz's tremendous talents had left the scene far too early. A great bigband drummer, Shadow Wilson had performed most notably with Count Basie and Woody Herman (the Woody Herman band once voted for him, en masse, when a replacement was needed for Dave Tough), but he was equally capable of ministering to the specific needs of a small group. His aware accenting on "Trinkle Tinkle" shows how well he understood Thelonious Monk's music and his nourishing beat, here and on "Nutty", is a rare combination of swing and taste.

_____As we were to regret the passing of Shadow Wilson in 1959, many of us, in a different way, bemoaned the demise of that particular Thelonious Monk quartet at the end of 1957. The fact that the group had presumbly not been recorded was especially distressing. Now we have three gems to hold in our hands and enjoy, facet by facet. All are Thelonious Monk compositions and it is interesting to note that they were originally recorded in trio contexts by him:

_____"Ruby My Dear", which I once described as 'sentiment without sentimentality', was first done around 1948, although it was probably written several years before. John Coltrane states its tender beauty with a tone that helps transmit the sadness pervading the melody. Thelonious Monk's half-chorus says more than most pianists do in a whole LP.

_____"Trinkle Tinkle" originated in 1952. There is some fascinating interplay between piano and tenor in John Coltrane's first improvised chorus. This is followed by some fantastic John Coltrane in the "strolling" section. If you close your eyes, it is easy to imagine a cello or viola being bowed by a demonic force of vivid imagination. Thelonious Monk rephrases his own melody in his inimitable manner before Wilbur Ware's solo.

_____"Nutty", written in 1954. swings relaxed in an optimistic mood. Coltrane spins out his amazingly long-lined offerings, hanging them together with shorter bursts and an overall personal sense of logic. Thelonious Monk again divides and subdivides his own theme, paraphrasing from one of his earlier speeches, as it were.

_____To round out the album, three alternate masters from previously released Thelonious Monk sessions are included. "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy" were heard on "Monk's Music" (Riverside BLP 242). It is stimulating to compare the different versions and how the solos vary and coincide from take to take. "Off Minor" has solos by Coleman Hawkins (bio), Ray Copeland and Thelonious Monk, but the bit, by Wilbur Ware, and Art Blakey (bio) are not as developed as on the original issue. "Epistrophy", in the original version, featured all the horns of the septet and Thelonious Monk. Here, only John Coltrane and Ray Copeland are heard in solo.

_____The first "Functional" is on "Thelonious Himself" (Riverside® BLP 235). This version is as different in individual idea and, at the same time close in spirit to the other, as two takes can be. It almost deserves a title of its own. I only wish I had two turntables. I think the two "Functionals" might make a wild duet for four Thelonious Monk hands.

_____But as intriguing as these alternate masters are, the main attraction here is the unearthing of the quartet tracks. These are milestones in jazz history and important to every serious listener.

_____Steve Lacy, the soprano saxophonist who worked with Thelonious Monk for 16 weeks in 1960, has said of Thelonious Monk's music: "...Monk has got his own poetry and you've got to get the fragrance of it..."

_____It is obvious that in 1957, John Coltrane was doing some deep breathing. (...original 1958 liner notes from Ira Gitler...)

Thelonious Monk: a bio
_________________________Thelonious Monk was born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and died February 17, 1982, in Weehawken, New Jersey. A giant within the pantheon of the legendary 20th century musicians, pianist and composer Thelonious Sphere Monk was a brilliant if eccentric artist who left an exceptional body of work which makes up in quality what it might lack in quantity. A distinctive composer belonging to an illustrious lineage that began with Jelly Roll Morton and continued with Duke Ellington, Monk was, along with Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, an architect of bebop during the 1940s. He has also been a major influence on emerging generations of musicians since the 1950s and was a mentor to Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, among others.

_____Monk made his recording debut as a leader on Blue Note and the trio, quartet, quintet and sextet albums he released from 1947-1952 with sidemen including Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Art Blakey and Kenny Clarke were instrumental in the label's transition from a company specializing in hot jazz and boogie woogie recordings to one documenting the revolutionary sounds of bebop's pioneers. Monk developed a remarkable piano style distinguished by dissonant timbres, tricky rhythms and percussive phrasing that has never been surpassed in originality or technique. He is also without peer in the imaginative manner in which he conveyed irony, satire, humour, sorrow and other emotions through both the unique themes he wrote and in the spontaneous solos he improvised.

_____Monk's historic Blue Note sessions, originally released as 78s, include a variety of modern masterpieces that reflect a spectrum of compositional styles. These range from the ballad "'Round (About) Midnight", to the love song "Ruby, My Dear" to the blues-based works "Straight No Chaser" and "Misterioso" to catchy tunes constructed from riffs like "Epistrophy" and "Well You Needn't".

_____As influential as he proved to be during the final decades of his lifetime, it appears that Thelonious Sphere Monk has only gained greater stature in the years since his death. Once considered too eccentric and complex to be appreciated, Monk has become a standard of excellence, as both composer and soloist, for those who seek to extend the jazz tradition to today. While born in North Carolina, Monk moved to the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan at age four; making him in effect a native New Yorker. By 1936 he served as house pianist at Minton's, the legendary Harlem club where drummer Kenny Clarke was also in the band and young musicians like Charlie Christian and Dizzy Gillespie liked to show up for after-hours jamming. The exchange of ideas that took place in these sessions led to the style later known as bebop, of which style Monk is a key contributor.

_____Monk's ideas regarding tonality, accent and dissonance were not typically boppish, however; and, except for a 1944 session with Coleman Hawkins where he made his debut, he was not recorded as quickly as the other modernists. As a composer; however; Monk made his presence felt and his "'Round Midnight", "Epistrophy" and "Off Minor" were all recorded by others even before Monk obtained his first session as a leader in 1947.

_____After losing his New York cabaret card, Monk had to confine much of his playing to his kitchen (where young acolytes like Sonny Rollins rehearsed). In 1955, Monk signed with Riverside Records. In a series of albums that quickly came to feature his music, as well as the best players of the period (including Rollins, Coltrane, and Monk's former boss Hawkins), Monk's music finally grew to be appreciated.

_____In 1957 he began an extended stay at the Five Spot with a quartet featuring Coltrane that was hailed as the most profound meeting of jazz giants since Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Over the next 15 years, Monk became an international jazz star; touring with a quartet that, after Coltrane, featured Johnny Griffin and Charlie Rouse. He also made brilliant solo recordings and led large ensembles in concerts and live recordings.

_____After touring with a giants of jazz sextet that also featured his old friends Gillespie and Art Blakey, Monk withdrew from the public eye and spent the final decade of his life in seclusion. His music continued to gain popularity, however; and shows no sign of losing its influence as younger musicians continue to mine his ideas for further inspiration.

John Coltrane: a bio
____________________Few artists have been as influential in jazz music as saxophonist John Coltrane. Each of the several major periods of his career produced classic works that remain to this day models for jazz musicians worldwide. Born in Hamlet, N.C., on September 23, 1926, Coltrane began performing publicly in 1947, after leaving the military, where he performed in the Navy band.

_____During the next few years Coltrane drifted from band to band, but didn't achieve much fame until the mid-1950s, when he began to refine his sound under the tutelage of jazz legend Miles Davis. In 1955 Coltrane joined the Miles Davis Quintet as tenor saxophonist; he quickly evolved into one of the already formidable group's strongest performers. Unfortunately, in 1957 Coltrane was fired from the Quintet due to his use of heroin.

_____After quitting drugs, Coltrane briefly worked with Thelonious Monk, then formed his own group. In 1957 Coltrane recorded his first great album (some say his best) as a band leader, "Blue Train". The next year he returned to the Miles Davis Quintet, where his fierce sheets of sound playing style earned critical raves and, soon enough, a solo deal with Atlantic Records. Coltrane's 1959 solo effort "Giant Steps", recorded with a piano-bass-drum accompaniment, certified his place in jazz history.

_____Following the success of "Giant Steps", Coltrane left the Miles Davis Quintet to begin a new group consisting of himself, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. The John Coltrane Quartet's 1960 masterpiece, "My Favorite Things", introduced a new period in Coltrane's career marked by a more minimalist, hypnotic sound and extended, repetitious solos. Though dismissed by some critics as "anti-jazz", Coltrane's new style made waves in the music world. Not long after the release of 1964's seminal work of reverence, "A Love Supreme", John Coltrane began to pursue a more avant-garde direction with his band, which now featured several horn players and a second bassist (and later, a second drummer).

_____Eschewing melody for sonic adventure, Coltrane's music became more improvisational and intense. Tragically, by 1966 his health was beginning to fail; some blamed overwork, as Coltrane was said to practice up to 12 hours a day. He passed away on July 17, 1967 of liver cancer and was buried in Farmingdale, New York.
(from Downbeat^® magazine)

Coleman Hawkins: a bio
____________Coleman Hawkins was taught piano from the age of five by his mother, a schoolteacher who played organ. He took up cello at about the age of seven, then requested a tenor saxophone, which he received on his ninth birthday. By the time he was 12 he was performing professionally at school dances. He went to high school in Chicago, then (by his own account) attended Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, for about two years, during which time he studied harmony and composition. Coleman Hawkins' first regular job, beginning in the spring of 1921, was playing in the orchestra of the 12th Street Theater in Kansas City. That summer, Mamie Smith performed at the theater and offered Coleman Hawkins a position touring with her group, The Jazz Hounds. By March 1922, Coleman Hawkins was working with Mamie Smith at the Garden of Joy in New York. He made his first recordings with her shortly afterwards, but his contributions are frequently indiscernible, a notable exception being on "I'm Gonna Get You".

_____Early in 1923, he toured with The Jazz Hounds as far as California, where the group performed in the revue "Struttin' Along", but he left after it returned to New York in June. Coleman Hawkins then worked as a freelance player with various musicians, including Wilbur Sweatman, whose group opened the new club Connie's Inn in June 1923. Fletcher Henderson heard Coleman Hawkins with Wilbur Sweatman and employed him to record with his band the following August. During this period, Coleman Hawkins also joined the pianist Ginger Jones and the trumpeter Charlie Gaines at the Garden of Joy, and played with Cecil Smith and Lou Hooper at the Renaissance Casino. Both Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson appear to have played under the violinist Ralph "Shrimp" Jones at the Bamville Club near the end of that year. The association with Fletcher Henderson proved decisive for Coleman Hawkins, as Fletcher Henderson engaged him when he formed a band to play at the Club Alabam in early January 1924. Coleman Hawkins remained with the group until March 1934, making numerous recordings and attracting worldwide notice.

_____In his first substantial recorded solo, on "Dirty Blues" (1923), he reveals an authoritative style, big sound, and fast vibrato. Until the end of 1930, Fletcher Henderson's band spent most of each year at the Roseland Ballroom, although it played occasionally at other venues in the New York area, particularly the Savoy Ballroom. It also traveled widely throughout New England, the East Coast, and the Midwest, and made a tour of the South during the first two weeks of 1933. Finally, when a tour of Great Britain fell through in 1934, Coleman Hawkins contacted the English bandleader and impresario Jack Hylton and arranged to tour the country on his own with local groups. He had clearly become the star of the Fletcher Henderson group and felt it was time to move on. Coleman Hawkins arrived in England on March 30, 1934 and toured as the guest of Jack Hylton's band and Mrs. Jack Hylton's band.

_____His success was such that he decided to stay in Europe, performing with The Ramblers early in 1935 in The Hague, and then playing freelance in Paris, Laren, Zurich (with the Berry's), and elsewhere. He also made numerous recordings with The Ramblers, the Berry, and other groups assembled for studio sessions. Perhaps the most famous of these sessions was one in Paris on April 28, 1937 that included Django Reinhardt and Benny Carter; Coleman Hawkins played with fervour and rhythmic drive, even beginning his solo on "Crazy Rhythm" with repeated riffs. Coleman Hawkins returned to England on March 11, 1939 and commenced a tour sponsored by the Selmer instrument company, where he was accompanied by local musicians at each performance. He finally returned to New York in July 1939. American musicians, generally unaware of Coleman Hawkins' European recordings, anxiously awaited his return. He formed a nine-piece band and opened at Kelly's Stable on October 5. At the end of a studio session a few days later, he improvised two choruses on "Body and Soul", a recording that was a commercial and musical success, and which reestablished his importance to musicians while introducing him for the first time to an American mass audience. At the end of 1939, readers of Down Beat magazine voted Coleman Hawkins "best tenor saxophonist." He then formed a big band and played in New York at the Golden Gate Ballroom, the Savoy, and the Apollo Theatre, and he also went on tour. In 1941, he resumed working with small groups, however, and for the next two years played mostly in Chicago and the Midwest before returning to New York.

_____Coleman Hawkins spent most of 1945 in California, performing and recording with a group that included the modernists Howard McGhee and Oscar Pettiford (this ensemble also appeared in the film "The Crimson Canary"). He returned to the East Coast, then joined a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour which took him back to California in April 1946. During the next five years, Coleman Hawkins usually joined these tours for at least a few concerts, while spending most of the year with his own groups in New York. He returned to Europe in May 1948, in late 1949, in 1950, and again in 1954, the last as part of Illinois Jacquet's tour of American service bases. He continued to lead recording groups with such new talented players as Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, J. J. Johnson, and Milt Jackson. Around 1948, he recorded a fascinating unaccompanied improvisation, "Picasso", a feat that was still beyond many of the younger generation.

_____During the late 1950s, Coleman Hawkins continued to appear at all the major jazz festivals, often as leader of a group with Roy Eldridge. He joined the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of 1957, the Seven Ages of Jazz tours in 1958 and 1959, traveled to Europe for brief engagements, and played on television in "The Tonight Show" (1955) and "The Sound of Jazz" (1957). He also recorded prolifically during this time, beginning with a series of albums for the subsidiaries of Prestige in 1958 and followed by several for Impulse, including his only collaboration with Duke Ellington (1962).

_____During the 1960s, he appeared in films and on television. He often recorded and performed at the Village Gate and the Village Vanguard with a quartet comprising Tommy Flanagan, Major Holley, and Eddie Locke. Coleman Hawkins began to exhibit signs of emotional distress during the last two years of his life and was seriously affected by alcoholism. He collapsed while playing in Toronto in February 1967, and again in June while on the last tour of Jazz at the Philharmonic. He traveled to Europe with Oscar Peterson's trio and played for a month at the end of the year in Ronnie Scott's club in London with an English rhythm section, but a tour of Denmark at the beginning of 1968 was canceled owing to his ill health. His last concert was on April 20, 1969 at the North Park Hotel in Chicago.

Art Blakey: a bio
____________Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh on October 11, 1919 and died in New York on October 16, 1990. In the '60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another thirty years, the music's mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favour of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of 'swing' and 'blues', characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the '60s,'70s, and '80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the '40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the '80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey - as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent - was its master.

_____The Jazz Messengers had always been an incubator for young talent. A list of the band's alumni is a who's-who of straight-ahead jazz from the '50s on - Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, Joanne Brackeen, Billy Harper, Valery Ponomarev, Bill Pierce, Branford Marsalis, James Williams, Keith Jarrett and Chuck Mangione, to name several of the most well-known. In the '80s, precocious graduates of Blakey's School for Swing would continue to number among jazz's movers and shakers, foremost among them being trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis became the most visible symbol of the '80s jazz mainstream; through him, Blakey's conservative ideals came to dominate the public's perception of the music. At the time of his death in 1990, the Messenger aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past twenty years.

_____Blakey's first musical education came in the form of piano lessons; he was playing professionally as a seventh grader, leading his own commercial band. He switched to drums shortly thereafter, learning to play in the hard-swinging style of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. In 1942, he played with pianist Mary Lou Williams in New York. He toured the South with Fletcher Henderson's band in '43-'44. From there, he briefly led a Boston-based big band before joining Billy Eckstine's new group, with which he would remain from 1944-47. Eckstine's big band was the famous 'cradle of modern jazz', and included (at different times) such major figures of the forthcoming bebop revolution as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. When Eckstine's group disbanded, Blakey started a rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers. He also recorded with an octet, the first of his bands to be called the Jazz Messengers. In the early '50s, Blakey began an association with Horace Silver, a particularly like-minded pianist, with whom he recorded several times. In 1955, they formed a group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, calling themselves 'Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers'. The Messengers typified the growing hard bop movement - hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the music's primal rhythmic and harmonic essence. A year later, Silver left the band, and Blakey became its leader. From that point, the Messengers were Blakey's primary vehicle, though he would continue to freelance in various contexts. Notable was a 1963 Impulse record date with McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, and Art Davis; a 1971-72 world tour with 'The Giants of Jazz' an all-star venture with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Al McKibbon; and an epochal drum battle with Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Blakey also frequently recorded as a sideman under the leadership of ex-Messengers.

_____Blakey's influence as a bandleader could not have been nearly so great had he not been such a skilled instrumentalist. No drummer ever drove a band harder; none could generate more sheer momentum in the course of a tune; and probably no drummer had a lower boiling point - Blakey started every performance full-bore and went from there. His accompaniment style was relentless, and woe to the young saxophonist who couldn't keep up, for Blakey would run him over like a fullback. Blakey differed from other bop drummers in that his style was almost wholly about the music's physical attributes. Where his contemporary Max Roach dealt extensively with the drummer's relationship to melody and timbre, for example, Blakey showed little interest in such matters. To him, jazz percussion wasn't about tone colour; it was about rhythm - first, last, and in between. Blakey's drumset was the engine that propelled the music. To the extent that he exhibited little conceptual development over the course of his long career, either as a player or as a bandleader, Blakey was limited. He was no visionary by any means. But Art Blakey did one thing exceedingly well, and he did it with genius, spirit, and generosity until the very end of his life. (...from Chris Kelsey...)