Customer Reviews

Monk's Blues

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been listening to this for the past 30 years, during which Thelonious Monk has always been my favorite pianist and composer. It is very far from my favorite Monk albums, but not as horrid as the jazz snobs may tell you it is. By 1968 Thelonious Monk was no longer trendy, and jazz was proclaimed dead, or at least smelling funny. Columbia Records had Monk under contract and hoped for something other than the typical brilliance the Monk quartet with Charlie Rouse, Ben Riley, and Larry Gales had been performing live for years. Monk's style hadn't changed much for 20 years. Some A&R man thought that it would be interesting to put some thelonious assaults at the keyboard in front of a Hollywood studio big band arranged by Oliver Nelson. For some strange reason, Monk agreed to do this, even allowing the inclusion of two compositions by producer Teo Macero.

Monk never made a record like this before or since. For most listeners, this is an Oliver Nelson period piece, like Jimmy Smith's "Monster" from 2 years before where someone convinced another keyboard wizard to play "The Theme from the Munsters" and the latest James Bond movie theme songs. Nelson's simplified arrangement of "Brilliant Corners" overlooks the way Monk composed it, perhaps since it's such a tricky tune, which couldn't be mastered by a large band with limited rehearsal time. Macero's "Just a Glance at Love" is embarrassing, and I think Monk obliged his boss just as he must have obliged drunks who requested "Melancholy Baby" on paid gigs in his earlier years.

Once Columbia realized that the stubborn individualist Monk acquiesced to this, they tried to get him to make an album of Beatles tunes. They actually sent someone to Monk's apartment to play him the songs, assuming that Monk couldn't read music or figure out the songs his son had been listening to. Monk promptly cancelled his Columbia contract.

Did Monk sell out with this one? I'd say no. His playing is up to his usual standards, if you can ignore the crass background. He seems to have fun with his runs on "Blue Monk" and even "Consecutive Seconds" where he is telling his producer that he's still the onliest despite the rock beat and the commercial band behind him. Alter-ego Charlie Rouse is also true to himself despite the environment. The album ends with my favorite version of "Round Midnight", included here because Columbia realized they had never recorded a solo piano version of this famous composition, and Monk gave it his best. I'd surmise that Monk's band appeared on this album out of obligation, and not because they needed to cash in or try to appeal to a new audience.

Thelonious Monk never made a bad record. If you want a "sellout" by a jazz artist in need of money or looking to find a larger audience, listen to Chet Baker's "Mariachi Brass", "The Return of Bud Powell" (Roulette), Freddie Hubbard's "Windjammer", or Pharoah Sanders' "Love Will Find A Way". "Monk's Blues" gets the worst reviews of any of Monk's albums, but has some solid playing and provides the only glimpse of how Thelonious dealt with the squares who tried profit by making him even hipper. Monk had the last laugh on this, and I enjoy laughing with him almost 40 years later.

I acquired the rather small Columbia Years box set of Monks work where they respond to the criticism of the album. At the time his Columbia output was being greeted by critics and fans alike for being too much of the same old thing. He debuted a few new tracks but never broke the same ground using new exciting musicians in his studio band, so in response to this he went to California and had Oliver Nelson set up a big band for him to play with. His live big band albums are truely classic and this album simply cant match the greatness of those two live masterpieces("At Town Hall" and "Big Bandl, Quartet Live"). This album was the last of his Columbia albums and it was attacked by everyone the minute it hit the shelves.
I can say I do enjoy this record. Even though it isnt up to the standard of the live albums he did in this vain it is still very good. I do recommend this album if you are a fan of big bands and Oliver Nelson and not if you are seasoned veteran of Monks music if you are willing to accept it as a change of pace and that it is and with its flaws it still can stand on its own two feet.

This was the first Monk album I ever bought, and while it might not be as finger-snappingly Hep as some of his work in more typical, smaller groups, it's still a slamming set of songs, and an album that I play quite often, even after owning it for about a decade. And while the whole thing is quite nice, I have to agree with the earlier reviewer about the solo rendition of 'Round About Midnight at the end...it is well worth the price of the CD for this track alone. It's Monk, you know you want it, don't be scared.

This album was recorded in 1968 - produced by Columbia, somebody thought it'd be a good idea to have Monk play arrangements with some musicians in the film industry. I approached this album with trepidation because critics consider it to be his 'worst'.

With some relief and surprise, I can report that this album is not only good, it's actually a lot of fun. It's a little like seeing your favorite serious actor in a really bad movie. The arrangements have these big, sweeping flourishes like you'd expect to hear in a film score, and there's Monk, sitting in the calm eye of the schlock storm, playing along in his brilliant, weird way. It's at times strange, funny, and kind of wonderful.

This isn't 'difficult listening hour'; there's nothing groundbreaking here. It's not going to engage the thinking part of your brain (or ears) at all. But it's fun - I challenge anyone to sit through the first five tracks without breaking into a smile. Things get really unhinged in the middle - the arrangement of 'Consecutive Seconds' being something like if Monk had lived long enough to have been a guest star on The Love Boat, and 'Monk's Point' sounding like something from an Austin Powers-esque film of the era. On 'Trinkle Tinkle', there's an echo effect on the sax that made me groan, thinking 'who invited the special effects man"?

The best tracks, arrangement wise, are 'Straight No Chaser' and 'Blue Monk' - Monk plays superbly on these but he's really great throughout. There's also a solo version of 'Round Midnight' at the end that he spot-on nails on the first take, and probably is worth the price of the album just to hear.

So, have fun, don't take it to seriously, and enjoy a little vacation in Hollywood, Monk style.

What a delicious irony: it turns out that one of my favorite Monk albums of all time, Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Monk, is a compilation of the first nine tracks from this much maligned album and five big band tracks of a Monk album that is as highly praised as Monk's Blues is panned, namely Big Band and Quartet In Concert. Yet to my ear, Monk's playing is deft and satisfying on both recordings. True, those two cuts on Monk's Blues written by Teo Macero (Just A Glance At Love and Consecutive Seconds) are completely superfluous and un-Monkish, but perhaps Monk was humoring his producer, without whose participation this album never would have been made. I guess producers get those kinds of perks ... Still, when the album was reissued on CD, two bonus tracks from the same recording session were added -- Blue Monk, and a very respectable take of 'Round Midnight -- and they easily substitute for the Macero flubs if you prefer an all-Monk playlist.

I would have liked to hear Monk's piano more clearly in Rootie Tootie as the arrangement tends to overwhelm it in places, but having said that, I still like most of the arrangements on this album. I really enjoy hearing Monk's music played by a big band: to me, it works. Brilliant Corners and Trinkle, Tinkle are particularly fun. And doing big band arrangements of his music at a time when big bands were effectively dead, except for Duke's and Basie's touring bands, took some nerve. We'll never know just how satisfied Monk was or wasn't with the results, but clearly, he was satisfied enough to leave his name on them and let them be released. Judging by the result, he owes no one any apologies.

As for those silly enough to associate these arrangements with Sinatra (you must be kidding, folks!), either you weren't listening to these or you don't know anything significant about Sinatra. First, Sinatra never would have been comfortable with someone as wry, dry, and wickedly playful on the keyboard as Monk, and he wouldn't have known how to sing a Monk tune, unlike, say, Carmen MacRae. Second, Oliver Nelson is a far cry from Nelson Riddle -- and that's to Oliver Nelson's credit. Riddle was far more commercial on even his 'artsiest' days than Nelson ever was, and certainly on any of these cuts. I find the Oliver Nelson arrangements to be far more reminiscent of later big band recordings by the likes of Don Ellis, Bob Florence, and Bill Holman.

Skip the critics' reviews and give this one a listen, along with Big Band and Quartet In Concert. Or better still, find yourself a vinyl copy of Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Monk and forget the rest. If you're really a Monk fan, you won't be sorry.

I enjoy listening to this once in a while, especially while driving. I've only been a Monk fan ten years, but a jazz fan for 50. Monk has become my most frequently listened to pianist, and I've owned about 12 of his CD's over the past decade. I think that if you like Monk, you need on your shelf at least two CD's of him solo, and maybe three; at least three CD's of him playing with various small groups, and at least one of him with a bigger band. This item could fill the bill for the bigger band sound. Thelonious loved to play his own compositions, about 15 of which he recorded over and over again. He also had a dozen or so tunes by others that he loved and repeated. But the cool thing is that if you buy and listen to the same title, as it was recorded in different decades with different musicians or solo, you don't get a sense of him repeating himself, but rather expanding his original idea. Some of Monk's most famous tunes can be found in versions ranging from solo to six or more artists, and every number inbetween. They vary in length from the three-minute maximum for an early '50's 78-rpm single, to eight or nine minutes ten to 20 years later, using quartets, quintets or big band. So in any ten Monk CD's you are likely to find the same song five times, but get five distinct emotional experiences out of hearing it. He wrote well, he played well, he arranged well, and he's nothing to be afraid of. This item should not be used to judge whether or not you like him as a jazz pianist, but I find it hard to believe that this item would turn off any jazz fan too much. It is not the best or the most representative product out there with which to evaluate his talent, but it can be an accessible beginning for lots of music lovers.

I love the music of Thelonious Monk, but in this big band setting the arrangements are a bit bombastic. The only thing that really stands out is Monk's piano, playfull as ever, twirling around. Suggestion: play the last song of the album again and again and again and again and... His solo Round Midnight is one of the highlights of 20th century music. And that's even an understatement (I really like it).

I fell in love with this cd as I heard him performing in a big band setting. Monk is still Monk, and that's what really matters to the music.

Yes, this is a strange album: at some points one could expect Sinatra bursting into one of his bravado and macho performances, but it's Monk, not Sinatra this album should be about...

One of the most idiosyncratic and brilliant musicians jazz has ever produced is somewhat suffocated by the arrangements but, than again, when he solos, he seems to mock the arrangement, playing at times even more analytically and cynically than usual.
I still LIKE these orchestrated charts (well played- no doubt about it), but it was a mistake to include Monk's solo performance at the same album... That performance merrits at least six stars and it brakes the coherence of the album.

I like Sinatra as well, don't get me wrong, but one should distinguish between things one likes and things one finds brilliant, magnificent, monkish... Orchestrating Monk is a good idea, but this is not sufficiantly Monkish...
Is there an album of Mingus or Gil Evans orchestrating Monk? Now that's something I would like to hear...

Monk made idiosyncrasy a way of life and a way of music--all without artifice or cliché. He was unrepeatable and unforgettable. No one else sounds much like him, although I have a George Russell recording where Russell (more known as an arranger than a soloist) betrays some influence.

Monk is most known for his quartets, but this is a big band setting with multi-layered and swinging arrangements by Oliver Nelson. Yet Monk is still Monk: the use of space, always playing the melody, the long, inimitable arpeggios, the percussive sensibility, the serious playfulness and earnestness without being precious or pretentious.

Yes, Monk tended to play the same tunes repeatedly at this point in his career, but these renditions shine, nevertheless. Listen. Enjoy. Be thankful. Human are bestowed with the ability to manifest beauty--at times.