Thelonious Monk 1957 (photo by Lee Friedlander)

(Source: africanafrican.com)

Thelonious Monk - (I Don’t Stand) A Ghost of a Chance with You (1957)

Here’s the next installment in an ongoing exploration of Thelonious Monk’s standard interpretations.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thelonious Monk - Liza (All The Clouds’ll Roll Away) (1964)

To this humble listener’s ears, Monk’s standard interpretations are an ongoing education in music and mood, light and life.

Close your eyes; all the clouds’ll roll away.

Thelonious Monk - Don’t Blame Me (1963)

From Jazz Standards:

“Don’t Blame Me” has long been a favorite of musicians and music fans, jazz or otherwise. Paul McCartney says of fellow Beatle John Lennon,

One of John’s favorite songs was “Don’t Blame Me.” People think of John Lennon as a peacenik, or a crazy man, or a great man, but they never associate him with the kinds of songs his mum taught him. His mum was a musical lady. She taught him banjo chords. I had to change him to guitar chords. We used to love “Little White Lies” and “Don’t Blame Me.”

I wonder if Lennon ever heard Monk’s version. Perhaps they perform this as a duet nightly in some musical Five Spot Cafe in the sky.

BeMonking.

(Source: drugsmusicandlivingaremylife)

Thelonious Monk - Just A Gigolo (1962)

This is perhaps his most beloved and personal interpretation; once you hear him play this song, it never sounds the same.

Thelonious Monk - I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You) (1964)

Monk’s standard interpretations touch a nerve.

Thelonious Monk - I Surrender, Dear (1956)

Another tidbit from Robin Kelley’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original:

After completing “Bemsha Swing” they had about twenty minutes to vacate the studio and were still five minutes short of a completed album. Monk saved the session, filling the void with a “flawless five and a half minutes of ‘I Surrender, Dear.’”

Thelonious Monk - I’m Getting Sentimental Over You (1957)

From Robin Kelley’s outstanding biography of Monk:

Perhaps the finest surviving example of Monk playing at home is an eighty-four minute recording of him working through one tune: Ned Washington and George Bassman’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” (1932). Best known as the theme song for Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra, “Sentimental” became one of Monk’s favorites—he recorded it more than any other standard. Nellie made the recording some time in late March or early April 1957, just before he took it into the studio.

The first take is painstaking; in five minutes, he gets through just one chorus of the melody. As he wrestles with each measure, every note in his reinterpretation of the melody is carefully placed. By the second take, played rubato (out of tempo) there are more alterations to the melody and increasingly dissonant harmonies. Toward the end of this take, Thelonious begins to integrate stride piano and improvises for the first time. Here he has reached a comfort zone, singing solfeggio and audibly enjoying himself.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth takes, which together add up to a little over an hour of continuous playing, are an exercise in discovery. Monk works through a wide range of improvised figures in a fairly systematic way. He repeats certain phrases, making small rhythmic and tonal alterations each time to see how they sound. Each take is successfully more adventurous; while still playing stride piano in tempo, his right hand is more off beat, his lines increasingly angular. What is most surprising to serious listeners is that this master of space and economy leaves very little silence between notes and plays nonstop for long stretches. He’s listening for different possibilities to construct a tight, “edited” performance.

His musical labors bear stunning fruit.