Oxford University Press 2001<\/p>\n
\u00a9Laurence Svirchev<\/p>\n
Genius musician Thelonious Sphere Monk died in 1982, a young 64 years old. Monk was a man who had long captured the attention of the press because of his enigmatic demeanor and awry music, but amazingly the first book about him only appeared in 1987. After German musicologist Thomas Fitterling\u2019s incisive commentaries, three other books in the French language followed. Laurent de Wilde\u2019s and Fitterling\u2019s books were later translated into English. Only in 1997 did an American-written book appear. Now we are fortunate to have The Thelonious Monk Reader<\/em>, the first anthology of short writings about Monk.<\/p>\n The collection covers the entire professional period of Monk\u2019s life, including the years when vapid comments on his personal appearance contained more substance than the reviews of his music. Thus we can read the great jazz photographer Bill Gottlieb making a fashion-plate statement for an article in a 1947 Down Beat<\/em>: \u201cEven without his music, which was wonderful, you could recognize his cult from his be-bop uniform: goatee, beret, and heavy shell glasses.\u201d\u00a0 And in hind-sight, we can only shake our heads at the musically illiterate comments of an un-named Down Beat<\/em> reviewer. This journalist had so little insight into the beautiful composition \u201c\u2019Round About Midnight\u201d that he gave it two stars, saying that it was for \u201cthe super-hip alone.\u201d\u00a0 Of course this composition is now considered a classic standard.<\/p>\n The media-patente myths surrounding Monk\u2019s aura were so strong that even astute writers seemed compelled to begin their articles by exposing the falsehoods. Paul Bacon, writing in Record Changer <\/em>(1949), called Monk the \u201cHigh Priest of Bebop\u201d and stated: \u201cIt has become fashionable to think of him a greatly overrated musician, something of a charlatan, a mystic whose very mysticism is calculated to conceal a rather prosaic flaw: poor musicianship. That is utter nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n Monk himself even flummoxed experienced music journalists Ira Gitler (1957) and Leonard Feather (1966 Blindfold Test) when they attempted to interview him. Yet Monk could be entirely scrutable when he wanted to be. In a 1956 interview with Nat Hentoff, Monk opens up his world with a bit of criticism and self-criticism: \u201cDo you think I\u2019m difficult to understand?\u2026Some of my pieces have melodies a nitwit can understand. Like I\u2019ve written one number staying on one note. A tone-deaf person could hum it\u2026.Some people say I don\u2019t have enough technique. There is always something I can\u2019t express that I want to\u2026I haven\u2019t reached perfection. Maybe people with those opinions have reached perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n Hentoff\u2019s interview had broken the critical ice, and once that happened, a higher level of journalism began to appear. The stellar French critic Andr\u00e9 Hodeir in 1959 wrote an essay on Monk. He calls Monk\u2019s solo during a Miles Davis recording of Bag\u2019s Groove<\/em> \u201cThe first formally perfect solo in the history of jazz.\u201d Hodeir analyzes and praises \u201cthe catalyzing effect that asymmetrical structures can have on symmetrical ones\u201d and \u201cthe acute struggle between the disjunct phrasing and those pregnant silences.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 1970 essay from his book The Jazz Tradition<\/em>, the apperceptive Martin Williams puts Monk\u2019s previously alleged lack of technique in context: \u201cObviously Monk sacrificed techniques of manual dexterity for techniques of expressiveness\u2026Not that Monk\u2019s whole tone runs are easy to play [but] the unorthodox fingering that gives him the sound he wants.\u201d Williams offers as an example of Monk\u2019s virtuosity the situation where he simultaneously plays an inside trill with the first fingers of his right hand while playing melody notes with his outer fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, the pianist Ran Blake (The Wire, 1984) comments on Monk\u2019s technique during the composition \u201cEronel\u201d: \u201cAt the beginning of the first solo chorus and again at the beginning of the second, he plays a trill with the with the thumb and index finger of his right hand while the fourth and fifth fingers articulate the accented melody notes\u2026this feat of pianism certainly merits the term \u2018virtuosity.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Blake also donates stunning literary phrases to describe Monkish musical phrases, e.g., \u201ca twilight zone of tonality.\u201d<\/p>\n This book contains valuable insights into how Monk was viewed by non-musicians during his working life. From a journalists\u2019 point of view, it is a case study of how glib attitudes about an artist can chill a career. But most importantly The Thelonious Monk Reader<\/em> is replete with highly literate writing that enhanced Monk\u2019s career and helps future generations understand how great Monk actually was. In his introduction, van Bliek is careful to state that due to copyright and other publishing conditions he was not able to include some historic works by other authors. Let us only hope that the success of this book permits those other sources to be re-published.<\/p>\n Originally published in Planet Jazz, Montreal, Spring\/Summer 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oxford University Press 2001<\/p>\n \u00a9Laurence Svirchev<\/p>\n Genius musician Thelonious Sphere Monk died in 1982, a young 64 years old. Monk was a man who had long captured the attention of the press because of his enigmatic demeanor and awry music, but amazingly the first book about him only appeared . . . → Read More: The Thelonious Monk Reader, Edited by: Rob van der Bliek<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","odd"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/misterioso.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}