The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and drummer, composer and bandleader T.S. Monk \u2013 Thelonious Sphere Monk III, the son of Monk himself. A new archival album, Monk Live in Paris, 1967, Volume One, featuring his longstanding quartet with tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Gales, and drummer Ben Riley, was released 24 April via the Thelonious Monk Estate\u2019s Rhythm-A-Ning Entertainment. Links to purchase the album and to T.S. Monk\u2019s website can be found at the end of this article.
By 1967, Thelonious Monk had already recorded the compositions that defined his repertoire. He took that material on the road with a steady quartet and played it night after night. He reset tempos and phrasing in performance, working the same tunes under changing conditions each night.<\/p>\n
The studio did not capture that process consistently. Audiences recorded him. Broadcasts, board tapes, and portable recorders documented concerts across the United States and Europe, then circulated among collectors for decades outside the catalogue.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, T.S. Monk and a family member entered those networks, located the recordings, and brought them back under the estate\u2019s control. They assembled a few hundred hours of live Monk from board tapes, broadcasts, and audience recordings made inside clubs and halls.<\/p>\n
Monk Live in Paris, 1967, Volume One opens the series with the 3 November 1967 Salle Pleyel concert. Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley anchor the quartet; Johnny Griffin, Phil Woods, Jimmy Cleveland, Ray Copeland, and Clark Terry join them. Several led their own bands, and all chose to travel with Monk. The recording documents how Monk plays from the piano inside that larger group.<\/p>\n
UK Jazz News: What should fans know about the trove of live Monk that\u2019s waiting to get out there?<\/p>\n
T.S. Monk: You know, it\u2019s a bunch of things, when you\u2019re initially told as a little child that your father is unique and a genius and this and that, and then you become a jazz musician yourself and begin to realise what people were talking about.<\/p>\n
I had come to the conclusion quite a few years ago, frankly, that if you\u2019re a Monk fan \u2013 I call them Monkians \u2013 you\u2019ve probably got everything he\u2019s done so-called legitimately for Riverside, Columbia, Prestige, Blue Note, those recordings.<\/p>\n
One of the really unusual things about Monk, which goes to the issue of his genius, is that he sustained a very healthy recording career, recording the same tunes multiple times. The reason he was able to do that, in my estimation, is because unlike almost every other jazz musician that ever lived, he was able to reimagine his improvisational efforts differently all the time.<\/p>\n
He never really ever played anything exactly the same way twice, and that\u2019s what people loved about Monk. That\u2019s why people could listen to Monk play \u2018Blue Monk\u2019 100 times and \u2018\u2018Round Midnight\u2019 50,000 times. Every time he would play it, he would play it differently.<\/p>\n
So, if you\u2019re a real Monkian and you\u2019ve got all of that legitimate stuff, what really becomes important is new performances. Thelonious\u2019 music and personality were unique, so people used to record him live all the time, because they wanted to take Monk home with them.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, myself and a family member started infiltrating chat rooms of these collectors, and they had all these crazy bootleg recordings. It\u2019s just unbelievable, the number of bootlegs there are for Thelonious Monk out there.<\/p>\n
My relative eventually started talking in these chat rooms, and he broached the idea: \u201cYou people really love Thelonious Monk and you hate the record labels, but the greatest thing you could do if you really love Monk is to actually give those recordings back to Thelonious Monk.\u201d They said, \u201cThat sounds like a great idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, I ended up with a couple of hundred hours of live recordings from all over the world, from all over the country \u2013 big concerts and little concerts, some little recorders in some Japanese guy\u2019s pocket and other recordings off the board.<\/p>\n
UKJN: Drill into the music on Monk Live in Paris, 1967.<\/p>\n
TSM: Yeah, that\u2019s Johnny Griffin, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Jimmy Cleveland, Charlie Rouse \u2013 all these great soloists on it. But dig what Monk is playing behind these cats. This is some other stuff! If you don\u2019t rehearse that Monk music, that music will kick your ass.<\/p>\n
One of the amazing things about Monk\u2019s music is that it\u2019s very, very easy on the ear. I think that sort of confused the critics in the early days, because Monk seemed in the music scene, for lack of a better term in their world, somewhat juvenile or elementary.<\/p>\n
But when you actually have to play it \u2013 I mean, if you want to expose somebody as a bullshitter on their instrument, give them a couple of Monk tunes and see what happens.<\/p>\n
UKJN: What values do you hope emerging musicians take away from your father\u2019s music?
TSM: I think, beyond the technicalities, ideologically: believe in yourself. Be yourself. It\u2019s the hardest thing for human beings to do. We\u2019re all brought up with the lesson, Don\u2019t rock the boat. Very early on: Everybody\u2019s wearing a T-shirt. I better put on a goddamn T-shirt. Everybody\u2019s wearing sneakers. I better wear some sneakers today.<\/p>\n
The hardest thing in the world is, when everybody\u2019s wearing a T-shirt, I don\u2019t feel like wearing a T-shirt. I\u2019m not going to wear a goddamn T-shirt. That is, to me, the object lesson of Thelonious Monk. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell you something that I only recently had the courage to say. When I was 15 or 16, I remember very clearly saying to myself \u2013 and I was ashamed of this for years \u2013 Why doesn\u2019t Daddy play like all those other guys? Man, if he just played like all those other guys, life would be so easy. He could make a lot of money and have no problems. Why is he so different? Why does he have to do his own thing?<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until I was about 19 and had really started playing my drums that I realised why he didn\u2019t sound like all those other guys, and it was because he had a measure of courage. A measure of f***ing courage that was so extraordinary and so rarefied.<\/p>\n
It is the stuff that Einstein and Ptolemy and so many genii over the centuries have had. It takes courage to be yourself, and most of us \u2013 99.9% of us \u2013 don\u2019t have that courage. Monk had that courage. That\u2019s the takeaway, man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and drummer, composer and bandleader T.S. Monk \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30],"class_list":{"0":"post-11566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-paris","8":"tag-paris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}