Customer Reviews

Straight No Chaser

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This cd release is a showcase for Monk's last great group from the late 60's. Monk's piano is backed by the painfully underrated Charlie Rouse on tenor, Larry Gales on bass, and Ben Riley on drums. Monk's soloing is inspired and creative throughout. He swings hard on the title track, as well as the little know gem that opens the album, Locomotion. Of the two solo pieces, This is My Story, This is My Song stands out as a sweet soulful display of Monk's unique touch and harmonic sense. Charlie Rouse's warm round tenor remains with Coltrane, and Johnny Griffin as Monk's most complimentary soloists. His robust tone on the title track and Locomotion is countered by his sensitive interpritations of I didn't Know About You and Japanese Folk Song (Kojo No Tsuki). More beneficial to the listener than the standard "bonus tracks" are the restored bass and drum solos. Riley is a propulsive soloist, his bursting fills complimenting Monk's chording perfectly. Riley explores his instrument's range fully as a soloist and as an accompanist, developing consistenly interesting solos. The musicians are completely comfortable with the material, and each performance is definative, easily rewarding repeated listenings. The music benifits from superior recording quality as well, it sounds warm and full even on my $20 computer speakers! This is the first jazz cd I ever purchased, and remains a personal favorite. It not only is a perfect indroduction to Monk and Jazz, but will reward and delight long time fans of the man and the music. Highly Recommened!

This is a good album with lots of fine Monk tunes and should certainly be picked up by any serious Monk fan.

That said, I wouldn't direct anyone here first for the most essential Monk experience. Some bands can pull off long (8, 11, 14... minute) numbers where every second seems essential and you wouldn't cut any of it. Here, however, the length of some of these songs comes off as kind of undisciplined, and just seem like kind of extended blowing sessions or practice woodsheds. The original release edited some passages of these songs for length; I wonder if in the original recording sessions the band was instructed by the producer to just play out long, and the editing would make the final product.

Still, you could do a lot worse than long undisciplined blowing sessions with Thelonious Monk. Even so, I prefer the perfectly-constructed and well-balanced _Monk's Dream_ and _Criss-Cross_ (particularly the former) over this, which I personally find a bit hard to stick with all the way through. Between the extended song lengths and extra tracks, this CD gives more of a feel of a vault release of studio sessions than a single, cohesive album. It's not that I'm overly short of patience or some kind of jazz philistine; it's just the way it strikes me. I'll still get dinged on popularity points for having a minority opinion; oh, well.

*That* said, this record does have some of Charlie Rouse's (tenor sax) best work. On this one he finally gives up that one lick that he plays over and over in all the other Monk records I've heard with Rouse on it, and really seems to find his voice. And you've gotta love those irresistible Monk tunes like "We See" (and "Eronel" from Criss-Cross) that seem to have been written specially for Charlie Rouse; he captures the playful, light spirit so well.

If you love Jazz or just love great musical compositions, then Straight, No Chaser will become an instant favorite. Even if you have heard Straight, No Chaser, years ago, this updated reissue is something very special to the ears. Beautiful playing all the way around. Recording quality that will make you feel very good and tunes that will put bounce in your heart. Timeless Jazz that will quickly confirm why some people say that in Jazz, and music in general, never has there been anyone like Thelonius Monk. The other great thing about this CD is that it is a great value. Here is a whole lot of music and not a single cut will you want to skip over. Pop this in your player and be pleased.

Whenever I try to describe Thelonious Monk I keep coming back to, of all people, Douglas Adams (a former English writer, for those that don't know). Why? Despite all the obvious differences they shared a charming sense of humor, a skewed view of the world and each had a quirky approach to their craft that made them distinct from everyone else out there. Adams could take a story down every path imaginable all at once, and somehow wrap everything up beautifully, unconfusingly and with no loose ends. And that, for lack of any better analogy, is the same beauty of Monk's music. Where others breezed through solid scales and ear-pleasing harmonies, he had a way of plunking down unexpected notes and unusual harmonics that nobody else would have thought of. For me - and I'm sure I'm not the only one - after becoming used to the sound of piano virtuosi like Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, an introduction to Monk's quirky block chords and style of hitting 'wrong' notes was a jarring experience. But there was a method behind everything the guy did, and once you get used to the oddness of its approach, everything sounds exactly as it should be. It grooves and swings as easily as the smoothest ballad, and it sounds as if every note is just where it should be after all.

Straight, No Chaser. The album title may imply something straightfoward and simple, but as always with Thelonious, the music is nothing of the sort. I'm not nearly familiar enough with the Monk catalogue to say how this disc ranks, but it's a stellar example of fine bebop on its own.. and a pretty good introduction to the man's work, if you're curious but don't want to settle for a compilation arbitrarily assembled by, for example, Ken Burns. The band is stellar as usual, including the wonderfully skilled sax of Charlie Rouse (who had a longer working relationship & closer musical telepathy with Monk than anyone). There's the smoky 16-minute groove of "Kojo No Tsuki" which never seems to get repetitive, there's the dreamy "I Didn't Know About You," there are two piano solo tracks that bop just as hard as the others even without the backup of the band. The title track is a universal standard, and rightly so; but Monk's piano still sets it apart from anyone else's version, starting out with a twistingly complex solo and becoming simpler and simpler as the track winds down. And since three extra tracks are included and three others have been restored to unedited form, the 51-minute LP is now stretched to a nicely full 76 in CD form. Not a bad deal for its price, especially when the music is some of the most quirky and interesting stuff jazz has to offer. I don't think I'd recommend this as a first jazz selection, but for the converted it should be essential.

Ok, I'm not a jazz expert. In fact, the reviews of this album already convey how special it is more than adequately, and the rating was already 5 stars before I posted. Still, in my inspired yet ultimately futile quest to review my entire album collection, I will chip in my 2 cents.

The first jazz album I ever owned, or even really listened to from start to finish, was "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis. Since then, whenever I think of the term "jazz music", my mind conjures the sounds of that album, and a few others, as a definition of the term. Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" is one of those few.

Although I love Monk's work with John Coltrane, I believe that this is his warmest, most accessible album. Monk's angular, overtly logical piano playing can come across cold or distant at times. Here, that's not the case, despite the playing being as brilliant as ever. You can enjoy this as background music at a low volume, or you can study the music intently, and it still bears several repeat listens.

Whether you think you like jazz or not, you should pick up this album. Pull it out on a warm spring or summer evening when you're entertaining a few guests, and throw it on. Accompany it with your choice of cigar and fine spirit (straight, of course) and enjoy.

One of the best, if not THE best, albums Thelonious Monk recorded during his time with Columbia Records, "Straight No Chaser" found Monk is his long-standing working quartet (tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Gales, and drummer Ben Riley) in fine form. Recorded in three sessions during 1966 and 1967, the album ended up being six tracks, three of which had to be edited down to squeeze it on an LP (and at 51 minutes, it evidentally required some "clever engineering" to do so).

Well one of the nice things about CDs is the capacity to not be limited by twenty-something minute side lengths, and when reissuing this, the decision was made to restore the pieces to their original performances as well as augumenting the session with two tracks recorded during the session but not used (one-- "This is My Story - This is My Song"-- ended up on "Always Know", but the other is wholly unreleased) and an alternate take of one piece from the record.

So what makes "Straight, No Chaser" so good? It seems as if the band and the leader were highly inspired-- Monk dug out a couple of originals that rarely see the light of day ("Locomotive" and "We See", both not recorded in over a decade) and both receive great readings. "Locomotive" seems to excel by Monk's brilliant accompaniment below Rouse, but it's Gales and Riley who steal the show, showing just how far this quartet has come in the couple years they'd been playing together. "We See" receives an extended workout with a chirping, positively ecstatic theme forcing Rouse in the extreme upper register before turning over to an extended solo by him that maintains a pretty much constant dialog with Monk at the keyboard before turning the preceedings over to Monk who takes a brilliant, fractured solo of seemingly endless inventiveness.

The standards performed were also not the usual ones in Monk's catalog-- Ellington's "I Didn't Know About You" receives a remarkably sensitive reading, with Monk and Rouse particularly lyrics while Gales offers delicate counter to Monk's accompaniment of the tenor. The piece originally titled "Japanese Folk Song" was a Japanese pop song from the '30s called "Kojo No Tsuki" (which the liner notes speculate Monk may have heard on a then-recent tour of Japan) that receives an extended workout-- totally sucked into the Monk idiom, it sounds as if it could be a Monk original with its angular sound and bizarrely lyrical sensibility. Rouse again solos to great effect, pushed on by the rhythm section-- Monk eventually drops out and lets Gales and Riley show just how tight the interaction of this band was, even without the leader.

And yet it can't be the unusualness of the material that was inspiring-- the band certainly digs in deep on the title track-- one of Monk's best known pieces gets a fierce rendition, with Rouse positively on fire and both Gales and Riley taking brilliant solos.

The bonus material is equally valuable-- standard "This is My Story, This is My Song" is a lovely, brief piano statement of the theme, with minimal improvisation (except in phrasing) that feels like exactly what you need after the hard blowing "We See". The alternate of "I Didn't Know About You" is curious because it's really quite good, and it's hard to say why Monk rejected it-- nonetheless, it provides a nice second rendition of the piece. But it's "Green Chimneys" that's probably most interesting. A never-before recorded composition, it was decided to withold this performance (although Monk must have thought highly of it as he tried again on the next LP he cut for Columbia). The piece features an arhythmic line phrased first by piano then in harmony with the tenor. While both Rouse and Monk song a bit tentative on the theme statement, Rouse's soloing is superb and it works to be a nice performance.

One thing deserving note is the liner notes-- Riverside Records producer Orrin Keepnews, who wrote the liner notes for the original album and produced the reissue, includes both his original essay and a set of new notes about the restoration of the album. The album sounds to have been remastered, but it isn't quite as good sounding as the remasters from 2001 that CBS/Sony did, it'd be nice if this one got the 24-bit remastering treatment at some point.

This album may be a bit of a dense place to start with Monk-- it IS a bit long winded, but his records rarely got better. Highly recommended.

If you don't have this in your collection, you don't have a Jazz collection! It's just that simple. The most definitive recording of "Straight, No Chaser" available. I've been playing Tenor sax for over 15 years and I play this CD whenever I want inspiration to play something innovative.

There is an internet clip of Monk playing "Straight, No Chaser" at a concert. Playing with both hands, that is. At some point, he needs to play the keys to his extreme right. Rather than shift his hands over to his right side to compensate, HE REACHES ACROSS WITH HIS LEFT HAND OVER HIS RIGHT HAND and continues to play without missing a beat! Someone remarked that this is very, very hard to do. I guess it has to do with how the mind works. Try reaching over with your left foot on the gas while driving in rush hour traffic, and you get the point. Remember he is at a concert, where mistakes could be magnified. That is the best analogy I can come with.

Why do I say this? He was so unusual, yet so talented. Monk is pure genius. And you can't teach genius. He, along with Larry Gales, Charlie Rouse and Ben Riley held nothing back on this album. Rouse is often said to be underrated. In this album, you hear why. In the "Japanese Folk Song" and "We See," you hear the sheer power of his sax. If he was no Coltrane or Charlie Parker, then he is right up there.

Even though I had no idea what to expect when I bought it, this is easily my favorite Monk album. And that's saying a lot. I have my fair share of Monk CDs. This might be heresy, but I think I prefer this album to Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue." I agree with someone here that the Japanese Folk Song is worth the price of the CD alone. How each of the guys does his solo and hands over to the next guy is breathtaking. If you don't have this album folks, run and get it. I mean it.

This album was one of the first jazz albums I ever bought. It was one of m first loves. Sincerely. Thru this album I was introduced to an astounding pianist. I was a kid but I knew it was something different. And Thelonious Monk WAS different and played like no on else. He changed music as a whole. This is a great opportunity to hear his incredible sounds and with the CD you get bonus tracks. EVERY song here is great of course but stand-out tracks include: "Green Chimneys" 'I Didnt Know About You" & "Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea". Awesome! Buy it and cherish it. You will NOT be disappointed. I promise ya! xx

This was the first Thelonious Monk CD I ever bought, and it remains one of my favorites. After getting a few more of his albums from this period and hearing what this group was capable of, this album in my opinion is one of the most cohesive recordings he made with this band and really showcases their strengths as a unit. Charlie Rouse solos fluidly on this album, and I liked his playing so much that it prompted me to get a copy of his solo CD "Unsung Hero", which is phenomenal if you can find a copy. Monk himself is great throughout and the song selection is varied. If you are just getting into jazz this is a good place to start your collection, although any jazz fan should find this CD to be an instant favorite.