(Anthology: The first piece is from April 2011, the competition was August and September 2012, ELEW’s piece is from October 2012, Dunlop/Ore 2014, and “Bye-Ya” and “In Orbit” were 2015. )

Philadelphia Story 

At 84, Martial Solal’s tremendous piano technique remains astonishingly fluid. The octaves are tossed off like single notes, the right hand cascades are precise, the left hand bounds about like a well-trained poodle.

I’ve never really connected with Solal on record, and regrettably last night’s solo recital in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center left me equally unmoved. However, he is a dedicated improvisor, so “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Cherokee,” “Corcovado,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and other standards will be entirely different on another night. A close friend assures me that sometimes he enters a phenomenal space and then all bets are off. That almost happened when an entrancing polyrhythm began churning on “Tea for Two.” His diffuse but sincere medley of “Prelude to a Kiss” and “Caravan” was good too.

Martial Solal is about to play a week at the Village Vanguard; all New York lovers of interesting piano music should go see a set.

Even on Solal’s best days, however, the constant cutesy endings must be a problem. To conclude a pointlessly abstract, incomplete “Begin the Beguine” (a wonderful song which must be played all the way through and fairly straight to make sense), he blasted off a left hand Hanon exercise in B major underneath a quote of the old blues “Frankie and Johnny” in C. Why do this? As a dumb joke? I don’t get it.

I admit I was in a bad mood. This concert was the final event of the 2010/2011 series Jazz Up Close Celebrates Thelonious Monk. Geri Allen, Randy Weston, and artistic director Danilo Perez also performed as part of this Monk-themed series. Last night Perez was on hand to have a pre-performance chat with Solal, and naturally Perez asked Solal how he responded to Monk.

Solal said he was impressed that Monk wore a hat onstage, but obviously Monk wasn’t a serious pianist. A composer, sure, but not someone who could make it in the Conservatoire.

Solal is not the only virtuoso who has dismissed Monk. Oscar Peterson and Lennie Tristano did, as well. Still, I was deeply offended that Solal chose this time and place, the last gig of the Monk series, to air this opinion. When will Thelonious Sphere Monk get the respect he deserves?

Solal is simply wrong, anyway. Piano technique doesn’t just mean playing fast, it means playing with great time, emotional projection, and a full tone. Who had better piano technique than Thelonious Monk?

Solal rummaged around inside “Round Midnight” during his set, smacking a few clusters and transposing themes into other keys. The audience murmured appreciatively, but all I could think of was Monk’s solo version recorded in 1954—just days after Solal and Monk met, and played back to back at the Salle Pleyel.

Update, December 2012: Red Sullivan believes that I misunderstood this interaction, and offered some relevant quotes:

Solal: “If Monk one Monday morning woke up, went to the piano and played like Tatum, there is not Monk any more. He had his sound because of his type of technique. So this is not automatically bad. But to lose the technique is bad, because when you lose technique, you still play what you have in your mind. You will play the same thing.

“But I have been very influenced by Monk. More than people believe. The way he thinks about the music and the way he was free about certain rules of the music interested me a lot. I love anyone who has personality, a strong style, le passion d’etre. And I repeat, I like only musicians who have a personal way.”

—

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that Monk is an effective interpreter of his own music?
SOLAL: Il ne pas comprende.
INTERVIEWER (2nd attempt): Do you think that Monk plays his own music with the proper technique?
SOLAL: Of course.

—

Before Solal came on I had to endure an hour of college jazz students reading down Monk music.

The kids were good musicians, destined to become professionals. However, the printed program (and Perez) claimed they were playing charts from the famous Town Hall concert. That wasn’t true: they mostly used contemporary, normalized lead sheets. The one big band arrangement, “Little Rootie Tootie,” was not Hall Overton’s stark transcription (and highlight of Monk at Town Hall), but some bland version influenced by Perez’s Panamonk. Like everyone else, I enjoy Panamonk, but I was really laying for that Overton arrangement.

And despite their burgeoning professionalism, the students showed no understanding of what makes Monk “Monk.”

—

For my money, Monk is the most poorly-performed jazz composer, simply because he still isn’t understood.

Monk’s material is always derived from the purest of jazz traditions, but his displaced accents and stark voicings are sometimes thought of as connected to European modernism. Indeed, Monk is a father figure to the avant-garde. But Monk’s own music is not particularly abstract. It is hardcore jazz with roots in the blues and Kansas City swing. Getting abstract with Monk can work—the George Russell/Eric Dolphy “‘Round Midnight” comes to mind—but it requires serious consideration.

Monk’s surrealism has been interpreted as clowning around or startling. “Oh, look! I just clanged a minor second! Isn’t that funny!” The Tom Lord discography lists songs called “Monkin’ Around,” “Monkin’ Business,” “Monk-ing Around,” and “Monking Business.” No. Monk never monkeyed around or did any monkey business. Sure, some of his renditions of standards like “Remember” or “Just A Gigolo” are among the greatest examples of jazz surrealism ever recorded. But they are still serious. And his clanging minor seconds come straight from boogie-woogie and Harlem stride, not the circus.

Monk’s music is more specific than many realize. Monk had very little to do with paper, although he could read music very well and write it, too. He just thought that paper missed the point, because you needed to learn it from him to get it all, and how was paper going to help you do that? Beginning with Miles Davis, many Monk interpreters have muddled the details.

Monk’s rhythmic concept is strong, obvious, and profound, and if you take that away, you miss the point entirely. Once in a while a ballad is out of tempo, although, even then, there is never any doubt as to where “one” is. Most of the time it marches and undulates, and there is also an Afro-Cuban or Caribbean element, brought out on Danilo Perez’s aforementioned Panamonk and Jerry Gonzales and the Fort Apache Band. But Perez and Gonzales really know what they are doing.

Am I saying that no one but Monk should play his music? No, he’s a great composer and a signal stylist who should be fair game for anybody.

Still, there are only two Monk tribute albums that I keep in steady rotation, and both of them feature special performances by great drummers. Evidence by Steve Lacy and Don Cherry has a divine turn by Billy Higgins. The horn solos are excellent, too, although they incorrectly reduce the melody of “Evidence” to a simple hemiola. (Who is Carl Brown?  This mysterious bassist plays great, too.) I also appreciate Tommy Flanagan’s thoughtful Thelonica with George Mraz, especially for a rare occasion to hear Art Taylor swinging so hard in the early Eighties.

However, Flanagan was regrettably part of one of the least successful Monk performances I’ve ever experienced, the duo with Barry Harris in the movie Straight, No Chaser. It’s not that Flanagan and Harris aren’t heavy, or that this version of “Well, You Needn’t” is so bad. In its way it’s very good—How could it not be, with Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris playing the piano?

But after an hour of Thelonious Monk on video, Flanagan and Harris look and sound like cocktail pianists. Monk is a major 20th-century stylist and artist:  every word, every suit, every song title, and every note was thought out and delivered with maximum intensity. It would have been unfair to make any other modern jazz pianist follow Monk and play one of his tunes in Straight, No Chaser.

To their credit, Flanagan and Harris couldn’t get on a bandstand without swinging. Martial Solal can swing, too, but he doesn’t seem to take that technique seriously enough. At least, I could have used a bit more of it from him last night, especially after he said that Monk couldn’t play the piano.

 

Rules of Grammar 

 

Sure sign that you’re a badass when ~60 yrs later the most basic facts of your work are still mysterious even to experts

Last night I interviewed George Cables for DTM. As soon as I arrived, George took me down to the basement. His house in Queens has been in the family since the mid-1960s, and over the years George has accumulated quite a collection of historical jazz treasures. The above poster is for a three week gig in Brooklyn at the East Inn in 1970.

Um. 9 to 4. By modern standards, that’s pretty unbelievable, especially for three weeks at a stretch. The piano had only 64 keys and not all of them worked. George told me one night near the end there was only one patron at the beginning of the set… and that the customer was asleep.

A few years later George was gigging with Max Roach. Thelonious Monk came out to hear the band, and at the party afterwards, Monk even hung out. Max told George later that Monk said he liked George’s playing. “I still haven’t come down from that one!” George said, his face lighting up like a little boy being introduced to a hero.

—

On DTM, I keep adding to a collection of rather heavy-handed assertions about how important it is to know the inner workings of Thelonious Monk’s music, to not treat it as jam-session style material. It’s an easy claim for me to make, partly because I’m personally convinced this is how the composer felt about it himself.

However, that approach is not particularly in the modern jazz tradition. Many of the greatest soloists, from Louis Armstrong until now, didn’t worry about the composer’s intent too much. George Cables told me last night that he thought it was important to change a person’s songs to make them your own, and that he even expected others to do the same with his own body of significant and detailed jazz compositions.

It was interesting to be reminded of this basic truth so directly one day after starting a minor Twitter war about the “correct” bridge of “Well, You Needn’t.”

Not that I back down from saying that caring about the details has worked for me. Anything I’ve played in public over the last 15 years, from Kurt Cobain to Stravinsky to Motian: I know the details. It’s part of how I make jazz. But I also admit that is not really the standard practice of many, if not most, of my jazz heroes.

It’s also a different time. None of the pianists in my class—or myself!—will ever get a chance to hit with Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw for six hours a night for three solid weeks in front of no people. I think I can be a little stern with my students about knowing the “correct” Monk before making his work their own.

However, if anyone reading my Monk missives thinks, “Jeez, Ethan Iverson is  a Nazi”: I hear you. My approach needn’t be for everyone.

Indeed, George Cables and every other significant pianist of his generation plays Monk with textual freedom.

I’ll keep it in mind.

—

Please the Committee

It’s no secret that the jazz economy is in a slump. In particular, if you play straight-ahead acoustic jazz, there are far fewer gigs than ever.

In recent years I’ve spoken to many great professional musicians who have needed to leave New York and begin teaching elsewhere in order to survive. The ratio of jazz college progams to jazz clubs is now absurdly imbalanced.

From what I know of jazz education, the issue of audience development is seldom addressed. A few times a year I see a “How do we develop the jazz audience?” essay on the internet. Usually the system is held up for blame. Rarely is it suggested that musicians themselves are on the hook to create engaging art that audiences demand to hear again and again.

—

I’m bringing all this up because the details of the next Thelonious Monk competition have been announced. If there is a valid art form, lots of young talent, and no gigs, competitions are the next logical step.

While I know and deeply respect some major players who have won jazz competitions, I firmly believe there is a dark side to getting judged for your art.

There have been competitions in classical music for many years now, and few observers would argue they have supported true artistic excellence. I highly recommend The Ivory Trade: Music and the Business of Music at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, by Joseph Horowitz.

It’s deeply ironic that Thelonious Monk is the name taken for our biggest jazz competition. Read Robin D.G. Kelley’s book. This man was frequently rejected by his peers. He didn’t have regular gigs until the late Fifties. He won over the hearts and minds of the general audience before many musicians accepted him. He is still controversial in some circles. 

Roy Haynes, Ben Riley, Peter Erskine, Carl Allen, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Brian Blade are the judges for this year’s Monk drum competition. Fine. I almost fell asleep while copying that list, but, fine. Two elderly authentic Monk drummers and four seasoned pros that can play anything.

Perhaps it’s the “play anything” aspect that really bothers me. Monk couldn’t play anything. He could only play one thing—Monk. And that one thing burned bright enough that anyone of any background could understand that it was beautiful…

… Unless just enough was known about the “right” way to play mainstream jazz in order to judge Monk “wrong.”

Monk wouldn’t have been a semifinalist in his own competition.

—

Everyone who reads this will already understand everything I just wrote. Why am I bothering?

I think it is because I don’t know any of the drummer semifinalists: Dor Herskovits, Noam Israeli, Kristijan Krajncan, Martin Krümmling, Julian Külpmann, Justin Brown, Dustin Kaufman, Abe Lagrimas, Jr., Kyle Poole, Jamison Ross, Colin Stranahan and Oscar Suchanek. It is exciting to think about a dozen cats who might be really, really great. We need charismatic and idiosyncratic drummers for the music to move forward. All the most innovative and most popular jazz is deeply connected to the drums.

If any of those dozen are thinking outside the box: my sympathies. I would break a cold sweat trying to play my jazz in a way that would win a competition judged by those six legends and professionals. (“OK, play ‘Confirmation’ in front of Carl Allen in order to make the money. Go!”)

We need more audience for jazz, and the way to get that audience is not to play jazz correctly. The way to get that audience is to make essential new music.

In 2012, trying to win a competition is probably seen as a valid career path for young players. Perhaps it is. But even though it will give them sleepless nights, I sincerely hope that at least some of these semifinalists, whether they win, place, or get knocked out right away, have bigger fish to fry than just playing jazz “correctly.”

How Many Dominant Sevenths Does It Take to Win a Monk Competition?

In the wake of posting about “Well You Needn’t,” I’ve kept thinking about Thelonious Monk’s chord progressions. My proposal that Monk didn’t play dominant or major sevenths on the bridge could have extended to the A sections, as there is no F7 in the first bar. While dominants do show up in the middle and end (the whole note left hand “thumb line” uses both sevenths), the “F7” at the top of the Real Book chart is just as wrong as everything else.

At least since Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, it has become standard to include a seventh in almost all chords used in conventional jazz. But Monk, Bud Powell, Herbie Nichols, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, and other canonical greats used plenty of triads and sixth chords.

Adding a seventh to a chord allows for a scalar approach to improvised melody. Each seventh chord has a related chord scale. Using a scale is a great way to play—but it is not the only way.

Sometimes chord scale playing can result in a tame, standardized way to improvise, where everything sounds the same. Looking at what Monk really played can be inspiring when searching for other solutions.

—

My argument against competitions is basically same thing. To my ears, there had been an astonishing amount of agreement about what jazz really is in most youthful swinging jazz since 1990. That agreement was one reason I rebelled against it. I just couldn’t see it as the jazz tradition—not my jazz tradition, anyway. I was delighted to be lifted out of the discussion entirely by Reid Anderson and David King in 2001.

 

My post “Please the Commitee” was for those who are wondering if they should think more about passing the bar or seek something more personal. In my opinion, don’t worry about passing the bar. Keep looking inside yourself. We have enough cats who can play, but not enough who connect with the bigger canvas of music, the arts, and life in general.

—

Several took my sleepiness at the drum jury to mean I didn’t like those drummers. Not at all! But that committee doesn’t seem likely to promote wild-cards over straight solids. Maybe I’m wrong. (I hope so.)

Let me put it this way: if I were on that jury, it would be impossible for me not to agree with whatever Roy Haynes and Ben Riley said. I love and respect them too much. I could not look them in the eye and and disagree with them.

And Haynes and Riley are old and potentially cranky. Just one Ben Riley story: some time ago, a great straight-ahead pianist was playing a week with Riley. Before the second night, two minutes before the set, Riley growled at the pianist, “Don’t play any of that Herbie Hancock shit.”

 

Of course Riley doesn’t want to hear any “Herbie Hancock shit.” And he’s also right! There’s too much Herbie out there now, everyone plays like that. Indeed, for my money, there is too much Herbie in the pianist he was talking about.

Whether he’s right about “Herbie Hancock shit” or not, he’s almost certainly not open to a bunch of new music, and why should he be? He played the new music with Monk and others in the Sixties.

I am glad Ben Riley is getting paid, though. I just wish he didn’t have to weigh in on the relative merits of youthful talent to get it.

—

I know, of course, that DTM is not going to stop jazz competitions! And, honestly, I wouldn’t want that responsibility, either. Surely some good does come out of them.

But I’d like room to keep asking the tough questions. Do competitions grow our audience? Do they help innovation? Are schools that train the young to win competitions a vicious cycle?

Those scoffing at such queries should look at the much longer history of classical piano competitions. Again, I recommend The Ivory Trade: Music and the Business of Music at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition by Joseph Horowitz, but admittedly that’s from a few years ago now. More recently and online there is 2009’s “The Dark Side of Piano Competitions” by Michael Johnson and 2010’s “Extreme Chopin” by Paul Wells.

There’s also a superb chapter by Charles Rosen in Piano Notes, “Conservatories and Contests,” which is shockingly honest about how some of the committee’s decisions get made.

On one occasion, many years ago at the piano competition at Leeds, I was on the jury: one pianist gave a tremendous showing of himself in the first round, and played very poorly in the second. My feeling was that one splendid performance deserves further hearing, and I lobbied successfully to have him succeed to the next stage. (You are not supposed to lobby on the jury… but it is almost always done.) He was subsequently voted into the final almost unanimously…

On this occasion the jury could not have been more distinguished… They disagreed radically about almost every contestant… It was Annie Fischer, a pianist for whom I (like almost everyone else) had the utmost admiration, who gave a good mark to the pianist I thought should get another chance; she was rather taken with a good-looking Korean contestant, so I voted for her candidate and she voted for mine. In the next round, I was sitting next to her while the Korean was playing, and she turned to me and said softly: “He isn’t very good, is he?” “No,” I replied, trying to invest my reply with the proper melancholy.

Perhaps jazz judges are always above being swayed by personal interests, sex, sex appeal, race, and other earthly matters when looking for the “best.” At any rate, none of those factors matter to Haynes, Riley, Erskine, Blade, Carrington, or Allen, right?

They don’t matter to me, anyway. I’m above all that. I promise! Especially if I’m getting paid five grand to judge you and I’m playing a gig later in front of the winner.

Joking aside, it’s certainly true that as a contestant I’d rather play for jazz cats than uptight classical musicians. At least with the jazz cats some fluffs are allowed, and, if all else fails, you can play some blues.

Still On the Moon

Patrick Jarenwattananon offered an ABS think piece about the Monk competition, bouncing off my own posts. The comments section includes some spicy bits.

I remain surprised that my posts have been this controversial. “Artistic competitions have a dark side” is a supremely obvious truth from where I sit.

PJ seems to think the list of winners and finishers offers hope. Pianist Eric Lewis, a winner, says flatly in the comments, “Competition stimulates economic growth.”

That’s not what I see. I look at the list and marvel how many names I haven’t heard of. Did any of these bright talents get discouraged and leave the game because of post-competition blues? Of the names I do know, some virtuosos got pushed forward in the industry thanks to the win. Would they—and by extension, the overall charisma, economic growth, and audience development of this music—have been better served by being late bloomers, not competition winners?

Just to be extra clear, I admire most of the winners and the finalists that I have heard. Some of them are friends of mine—I hope we are still friends after all my ranting!  I’m not asking if any one player isn’t really great, I’m asking if the whole system is rigged to keep jazz in the margins. I began all this with the main point:

It’s no secret that the jazz economy is in a slump. In particular, if you play straight-ahead acoustic jazz, there are far fewer gigs than ever.

In recent years I’ve spoken to many great professional musicians who have needed to leave New York and begin teaching elsewhere in order to survive. The ratio of jazz college progams to jazz clubs is now absurdly inbalanced.

From what I know of jazz education, the issue of audience development is seldom addressed. A few times a year I see a “How do we develop the jazz audience?” essay on the internet. Usually the system is held up to blame in some way. Rarely is it suggested that the musicians themselves are on the hook to create engaging art that an audience demands to hear again and again.

Those are the kinds of questions I was trying to ask—and will keep asking! How many of the Monk finalists can regularly fill 200-seat theaters across America? Do any of them sell more than a few thousand records these days? In Eric Lewis’s case, I believe he was noticed by the general public only after becoming ELEW, and branding himself as the inventor of “Rockjazz.” I’d like to hear more from him on navigating a successful postmodern career.

Another good question remains: “Who is judging, and what are the criteria?” The drummers are up again in 2012. The last time there were drummers, 20 years ago, Harold Summey beat Jorge Rossy. At the time, I heard a lot about how the committee refused to give it to Jorge because he was from Spain. (Not from the modest Jorge himself, but from others.) Certainly the photo-op with Bill Cosby on the Monk site looks better with Summey than with some Spanish guy.

Nothing against Summey, of course. I don’t know his playing (he’s been on hardly any records) but I applaud those D.C. vets who stay close to home and keep an authentic scene alive. Of course, the fact that I am even having to weigh the artistic output of Summey vs. Rossy (the latter is on many important records and just off a summer tour with Wayne Shorter) is ridiculous! This futile task argues against competitions.

I admit that my contention that Monk couldn’t win his own competition was over the top; certainly, transposed into the headline of PJ’s piece, it looks rather sensationalist. I understand why Eric Lewis and another professional pianist, Ben Waltzer, leapt to Monk’s defense. I had a similar reaction when I heard Martial Solal publicly declare, “Obviously Monk wasn’t a serious pianist. A composer, sure, but not someone who could make it in the Conservatoire.”

I mistakenly took it for granted that my own extensive celebration of Monk’s excellence as a pianist would be known by everyone else. I’m bummed that Lewis and Waltzer think I have propagated (in Lewis’s words), “The popular and woefully ignorant notion that Monk had technique problems.”

I maintain that there is a dichotomy, though. Perhaps I should have written, “The fact that our biggest competition is named for someone that Miles Davis claimed couldn’t comp and Lennie Tristano said was the worst pianist he had ever heard is deeply ironic.”

Still too strong? How about this: “The man who said, ‘I’m not commercial. I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants—you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing—even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’ might be surprised to find his name attached to star-studded galas sponsored by luxury vehicles celebrating youthful virtuosity.”

Sure, as Waltzer points out, Monk won teen talent competitions. Even more impressively, he was accepted by the Harlem stride masters as one of their own, and then became the tireless engine behind horn players of every description at Minton’s. But he turned against conventional expression to find his inner self. Eventually, he was almost outside of normal jazz.

You can hear a rare example of mature Monk playing normal jazz on Clark Terry’s In Orbit. Monk sounds wonderful, of course, but to my ears the diverse styles hang him up a little bit. There’s tension in the slow blues, the uptempo chase, and the light Latin number as Monk struggles to remake them in his own image. Finally, on the one Monk composition, “Let’s Cool One,” a masterpiece emerges, not least because it shows that Philly Joe Jones and Monk should have made at least a dozen more records together.

After the days of teen competitions, rent parties, and jamming at Minton’s were over, Monk only played Monk. Everyone he played with had to go to him. As the Robin D.G. Kelley biography shows over and over again, Monk paid very heavy dues to achieve those personal results. Even Bird and Diz wouldn’t feature him on the one record they all made together.

Today, I know of a prominent American jazz pianist who questions how great Monk really was—just like Oscar Peterson, who said, “Thelonious Monk is limited technically… I don’t think Monk is a linear player. Usually someone who’s not a linear player is hamstrung.”

The modern gentleman (and very fine player) has been invited to judge competitions. I may have stated my case in an over-top-fashion, but I’m not crazy.

—

One last thing about the Monk competition: it would be nice if the composers got a little more juice. They are the ones who sit in the dark, working on pitches over and over again, frequently to no applause. (Just like Monk himself before he broke at the Five Spot.) I can get behind a gala for young composers in a way I can’t for young players. But on the Monk competition site, I see a list of names that I don’t know… and that’s it. As far as I can tell, none of the winning compositions have been archived online or released on CD.

I informally studied under the winner of the very first composer competition, Patrick Zimmerli, so I know the piece he won with, “The Paw.” He had to pay his band (Kevin Hays, Larry Grenadier, and Tom Rainey) out of pocket to play the work at the finals: he knew there was no way it could be read on-site by any professionals anywhere. One reason I’m not so interested in most of the current crop of intellectual jazz is because Pat nailed it way back then. There were Elliott Carter rhythms, Milton Babbitt harmonies, fierce post-Coltrane solos. Everyone who has ever heard “The Paw” has never forgotten it. It was insane.

Pat won the contest, but “The Paw” has never been commercially available anywhere. You can’t argue that the Monk competition did anything for “The Paw.” I wonder how many other winning composers in the last 19 years have written music that might change the world if it could only be heard? The least the competition could do is archive the scores and performances online. Hell, I’d even pay a subscription fee to get a taste.

Congratulations to Competition Drummers

After all my gloom and doom here on DTM, I admit I kinda wanted to be there yesterday and tonight to check out the cats.

I’m certain there was fierce talent onstage both days. The winner, Jamison Ross, is a new name to me but I’ll be listening to him soon. These posts were never meant to take away from the abilities of those who are competition winners! I absolutely wish Mr. Ross the very best.

As for the other contestants: I hope no one who didn’t win or place is discouraged from pursuing weird and exciting music. As I wrote in the beginning, “We need charismatic and idionsycratic drummers for the music to move forward. All the most innovative and most popular jazz is deeply connected to the drums.”

Five Questions for Eric Lewis

I was distressed when Eric Lewis left a negative comment at A Blog Supreme bouncing off of my criticism of the Monk Institute Competition. After I said as much, Eric and I connected through Twitter. We agreed that I should ask him some questions for DTM.

It’s an honor to present such forthright contemporary history on my blog!

—

1. I first heard you playing wonderfully well on The Magic Hour with Wynton Marsalis. Describe your path of your earlier, “straight-ahead” career and how you got to play with Wynton.

I started classical piano lessons at home at the age of 2 or 3. I first met Wynton at a concert of his in my hometown of Camden, NJ when I was about 13. At that time, I didn’t know how to improvise effectively, however, my teacher, Gerald Price, and I worked out an arrangement of “Lush Life” for me to perform and look hip while I was waiting for my Jazz teeth to come in. So after getting cussed out backstage, in the band trailer, for proclaiming that I liked Chick Corea’s Electric Band record, Marcus Roberts was assigned to listen to me play and give me a critique. So I played “Lush Life” and was told to check out Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and Monk’s music after receiving a bit of a pat on the back for my embryonic playing. I was deeply affected by how the mystique of New York meshed with the expensive suits and the high minded, semi-militant Afro swagger of those jazzmen — as well as the fact that two of the prettiest cheerleaders from the high school I was illegally attending (out of district by 40 miles) had come to Camden to see young Marsalis swing.

So from then on I was sold on New York and Monk and suits. And I wanted to prove to Wynton that I would become a bad mofo on my instrument, even to the point of playing in his band. And it all happened.

Here’s a photo from that fateful night:

If you manage to scour through the Origins of ELEW pt 1 and pt 2, you will find shots of me with everyone from Billy Eckstine  to Kenny Kirkland to James Baldwin.

Here’s what a typical Marsalis Youth moment looked like:

Notice I went from sweatshirt and baseball cap to suit and tie. I was into the change, at the time.

Moving forward, I won the Rodgers and Hammerstein Full Scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of Music and was accepted into the studio of Jaki Byard, with whom I studied. I kept in touch with Wynton and following graduation and a tour with Cassandra Wilson, drummer Ali Jackson (who I’d met during my tenure as house pianist for the epic Craig Bailey jam sessions at the Dean Street Cafe in Brooklyn) recommended me to play with Wynton’s unit. I became one of Wynton’s pianists. Over time, I recorded 6 or more small group records with him and some film scores and J@LC Orchestra recordings. My Magic Hour work with the Skain-ish One is a fine example of the types of contrapuntal and micro-polyrhythmic initiatives I favor, experimenting within Swing (…especially when things aren’t swinging that hard for whatever reason). A good example of my swingingest work with Wynton can be heard on his Live at the House of Tribesgem. My solo on “What Is This Thing Called Love”  was pretty well done. (Video is on YouTube.)

I’d also recommend checking out my work with him on his poignant Jack Johnson document, Unforgivable Blackness.

Along with recording and touring with Cassandra Wilson (Traveling Miles was a fun record and HBO special), I toured with Jon Hendricks, who told me great stories about growing up in Toledo with Art Tatum as a neighbor and boyhood pal. Touring with Elvin Jones for two years was beyond epic. Whole different conversation to be had there. After Elvin was Roy Hargove briefly before finishing up the apprenticing with a final bit of Marsalis/LCJO work.

2. When Ted Panken played me a track of you and Clark Terry together for a blindfold test, I couldn’t guess who it was. You were playing virtuosic stride piano, and I hadn’t heard you play that way yet. Is it important for all jazz pianists to learn some stride?

 “Importance” as well as some of the other words that are going to come up soon, set the tone for debate. Debate is such a luxury at times.

Suffice it to say that if a pianist wants to get the comfy, well-paying gig with Wynton, they will first need to accrue the physical and emotional acumen to execute stride piano playing. And, if they happen to get the Wynton gig and are subpar in the stride piano department, their employment will be put at risk by some other pianist who can play stride piano. The point is… tools do what tools do. The usage of the term “Importance ” to me implies something pursuant the endeavors concerning human survival or artistic achievement. Having made a point about keeping a rent gig, when it comes to artistic achievement, stride piano provides a useful foundation for genre—centric left hand implementation. Left hand Oom-Pah derivatives and comping variants are rather ubiquitous in jazz piano performance practice today, so one’s assimilation of said proxy and protocol remains a factor in determining the extent of one’s success in efforts of contrapuntal synchrony or the efficient delineation of tension harmony, as in the Blues. Powell, Monk, Garner and Tatum employed left hand configurations with rhythmic acumen and idiomatic aplomb. It came from Stride. And also Boogie Woogie. Which are both technical forerunners of my Rockjazz piano method.

Here’s my Stride take on The Doors’ ” People are Strange.”

3. I’ve heard it said that you were the favorite for winning the Monk Institute Competition. Tell us how you worked on winning the comp, how the judging went down, and what happened for your career as a result.

I didn’t know or think that I was considered a “favorite” in the political sense. In the aftermath of it all I was inclined to believe that I was not the “favorite” but overcame the politics of winning the prize thru the sheer force of compelling playing. But let’s save that for a moment.

My preparation was multi-platformed. I had a home-made international spy network sending me bootleg recordings of the other competitors so that I could analyze their strengths and weakness. I studied the playing styles of the judges to best guess what kind of playing they would want to hear. I mentally conditioned myself to believe that everyone in the contest would sound as emotionally compelling and technically dominating as Art Tatum. I designed my repertoire based upon the idea that most would try to impress the judges with obscure Monk tunes. So I prepared the most famous Monk tunes. I figured most would do 2 songs with the rhythm section, so I only used the rhythm section on one song. I figured most would use the rhythm section for their uptempo piece so I did my uptempo piece solo (which clinched me a spot in the Finals. It was my rendition of “Cherokee”). I figured most would play one Monk tune and then play other composers’ pieces, so with the exception of “Cherokee,” I played all Monk tunes. I played my medium tempo tunes as fast as everyone’s uptempo tunes, and my uptempo was faster than that and it was solo piano with stride to boot. My slow tempo was also slower than everyone’s. I was the only one to play a Monk blues and it was “Blue Monk” which was a big hit at the finals. For the cheering audience at least…..

Here’s the arrangement of “Cherokee” with me in my LCJO Brooks Bros suit, overweight, with a campy intro from Wynton and a primitive video (more about that in a minute). And yeah, yeah, I know. Notes notes etc. Whatever. I won with it. And I certainly needed that win….

The judging process was a bit nerve-wracking and I’m glad that it worked in my favor. When I was on America’s Got Talent I was reminded of that feeling. I was a chess gambler at the time of my Monk trial and had a sizable debt waiting to be paid as well as at 26, I had just quit Wynton’s band amid frustration with his way with me, depression and panic attacks. With no big gigs happening, I needed things to go my way and the process of watching others decide my fate was a bit creepy.

Following the win, shaping forces came into my career that finally would lead to ELEW. I was led on and blown off by Herbie regarding some deal he was going to set me up with. The then-president of Verve, Richard Seidel, who approached me at the competition, never followed thru with me. Bob Belden, who was at one point doing A&R for Blue Note, had already seen to officially blowing me off after I had met with Bruce Lundvall so the Blue Note avenue was already closed by the time I won the Monk. (At the office, Belden played Kevin Hays’ record with Dejohnette and was smugly explaining to me how my homemade demo didn’t sound warm enough…) The Times‘ article on my Monk win was unenthusiastic. Jazz journals made no real feature about my win. So….that was that. No-one was impressed. I did get called to record a track on Clark Terry’s One on One (“Liza”) and maybe a performance at Wolftrap.

After I paid my street debt, I got the Elvin Jones call and life was moved forward. Two years of father and son exchanges. I was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. But I was getting close to 30 and while Keiko and Elvin were tranquilly just finishing out his career, I had yet to truly get mine going as a leader. I had to quit that band amid the unfulfilled promises of recordings with Elvin and a Yamaha Piano endorsement. I ran into Hargrove at a jam session and learned he needed a piano player. So after we recorded Jimmy Cobb’s “Purple Haze” record with Michael Brecker, I joined his band. It was an educational, exciting, turbulent and sophomoric 3 months before I quit amid differences with management. I rejoined Wynton and the LCJO for the last time, having mastered my mind and instrument far more, thanks to Elvin, and the former adolescent clashes with Wynton subsided….. mostly. I was able to do some good work for the man and have always and conceivably will always, along with a host of others, appreciate him as THE Jazz Artist of the Turn of the Century.

But the Monk win has been a saving grace for me at the authenticity level. While the jazz gatekeepers and covert naysayers have done their filibustering, suppressing  and dismissing of my work, none can argue or dilute the fact that I won the Monk Competition, and no matter who I mention that win to, it carries decisive, validating weight. Had I not won, the ELEW brand initiative would have had much tougher weeds to cut back in the outside world where people only care about winners, solid credentials and capitalistic bottom lines.

Four years after the Monk, I actually made a record called Hopscotch which was pretty cool in places but the indie producer/label president screwed up the distribution and humiliated me with his video techniques. I became more desperate than ever after that debacle. I was pretty overweight too.

Here’s “Pinocchio” (brace for humiliating video work).

4. Many in the jazz community were astonished by the emergence of ELEW. To many, it looked like you were selling out and going for the money, but I suspected you were actually embracing something you wanted to do all along. How did ELEW happen, why did you do it, and what has happened for your career as a result? If you feel like talking about this, who has accepted ELEW and who hasn’t?

OK, let’s see if I can convey this information efficiently. There is a lot to categorize and many points of reference to integrate succinctly.

A. Key challenges –  Age, glass ceilings, Physique

While in what would be my last contract with Wynton’s LCJO, we played in various millionaires and billionaire residences etc. He was doing fundraising for the Time – Warner Headquarters. It was my first time being around individuals with that type of wealth. In Wynton’s band you get to meet people from Hollywood to the White House on out to International politicians and captains of industry. But having just gotten out of chess debt (for the last time) I was far more sensitive than before to the economics of Life. I was turning 30 and my twenty-something-major-label-jazz-record-deal-getting chances looked deader than Dillinger. Which pissed me off. Because I was getting hard-earned respect from Master musicians and thrilling audiences yet getting no shots for an independent career from the jazz gatekeepers who were passing on me.

And even when Wynton got around to feeling enough conviction to stop calling me crazy and somewhat champion my cause, it was ineffective. He once brought me to George Wein’s apartment to get that guy to give me a shot, and afterwards nothing happened.

Consider my astonishment. How could I win competitions, thrill audiences, tour and record with the Masters yet be regarded as a bum steer by the jazz industry heads? Of course, there were certain musicians creating blocks behind the scenes at the social level. I was more into the Music than keeping up with the social needs of the industry execs and their sycophants. While hanging at the Zinc Bar, A&R men would try to get me to disclose personal things about other musicians etc. I NEVER played that game with those types and since they had corporate position and influence they punished my blowing them off socially, by blowing me off professionally. Plus there were plenty musicians that were fine and mellow with being social with those touristy types so I wasn’t missed. Or needed for that matter.

Oh, yeah. Let’s not forget. I was overweight. Not marketably like Cyrus Chestnut I suppose, but fatter than most all of the signed pianists. I didn’t want to believe it could be that shallow. Never wanted to believe that for all the meritocratic rhetoric about jazz INTEGRITY, it was just about powerful friends and/ or projected sexiness, no different from the Pop industry. Now this component of the music business doesn’t have to be demonized, but I think the people who never bothered to tell me where I was going wrong, suck, frankly. (I look good now tho. Sexy even. Took a while.)

B. Pivotal individuals – the Aspirant, the Eccentric, the Mighty One

On one of the Marsalis fundraising trips to LA I met the husband of a very rich lady. He was pretty demure. The next time I saw him was at the grand opening of the J@LC facility. He was freakishly Eccentric. His wife had passed away and he was partying like a rockstar with the money. He caught me backstage and complained that Wynton didn’t let me really show my talent on the show and that he wanted to hear me play the way I had at his wife’s home, where I really opened up on everyone and just plain threw down. So by this time, all of the chess hustler training was deeply ingrained in me, from spotting opportunity to exploiting it. I was still running the jam session at Cleopatra’s Needle so we jumped into his limo and hung there. After that, he introduced me to his rich lady friend who in turn introduced me to Lee Iacocca. Suddenly I was socializing with icons and wealthy individuals completely outside of the Wynton sphere. But this time I had enough understanding to make sure I took care and jubilantly fostered those non-music relationships.

Meanwhile I had a young fellow by the name of Rylan Smith, become a fan of mine. There is a club called HR-57 in DC that kept me working during the period just before and right after the break from Wynton. I sometimes would sleep on the couch there after the gig to save on hotel costs etc. Anyway, Rylan was the Aspirant. He was a college kid per se but he was also a salesman. He refused to accept that I should give up my dreams of a big phat solo career and he wanted to be a part of it and get us highly PAID thru it. He became my first manager.Entourage was on TV and we began to act like we were living it. That optimistic camaraderie helped my wounded self-esteem.

While still at the LCJO, I lost a bunch of weight amid a breakup with a girlfriend. I was looking good and started getting some rhythm from a lovely lady in the office. She was just flirting but I still was game to chase her. She expressed her admiration for my energetic performances nite after nite with Skain and coyly hinted that there had to be some way for me to get my career going. One night she invited me to a lounge and when I walked in, she was dancing with the individual who would change my life most profoundly. The Mighty One. Nancy J Hirsch. The young lady from the office used to work for her at Nancy’s PR Firm. Nancy had already been told of me and wanted me to perform at J@LC in some clothes of one of her fashion clients. That basic collaboration led to more and more collaborations and familiarizations with her company and my skill set.

The Aspirant didn’t last as my manager due to a gross screw up that the Mighty One had to fix for me. Shortly thereafter, Nancy became my manager and Publicist. The Eccentric has disappeared.

C. the ELEW Initiative – mechanics, implementation, backlash, success

So. I have to believe that I’ve given adequate attention and detail regarding the not-so-ideal harmony between my former jazzworld ambitions and the receptivity of that pre iPod, Tower Records, jazz community/industry. Should be clear.

Moving forward. After quitting LCJO for the final time amid indifference and apathy towards my attempts to make an independent name for myself, I went to war. I quit mollycoddling my fear of reprisals from the “jazz community”. The idea of being broke but rich with “jazz integrity” became beyond abhorrent to me.

ESPECIALLY SINCE PRETTY MUCH ANY AND EVERYTHING SWINGING AND NON-SWINGING HAD PASSED FOR JAZZ FOR QUITE SOME TIME BY THEN. 

I come from Camden, NJ. Brutality and Poverty are native to the city. There was a child beheaded by his suicidal dope fiend mother around the corner from my mother’s house. Crackheads stealing copper wires out of the lampposts. Machine gun deaths in the alley behind Mom’s home. That kind of stuff is a vivid reminder that at the end of the day, I either have people helping me or leaving me to the wolves. So I became determined to take care of my primary investor, Nancy, and to Muspelheim with the rest.

Now, after I noticed that the rock angle was the way to go for me, given my emotional connection to the cutting lyrics found in it, along with the genre’s marketable use of blazing instrumental improvisation, and because Mehldau and the Bad Plus had gotten such industry kudos for their deconstructionist spins on mainstream covers, I knew that I would get all kinds of “jazz community” backlash etc. when I finally began to get my more mainstreamy, straightforward versions of the fusion going.

So I went underground, as Wynton put it. To physically master my conception, to experiment with various instrumental formatting of the playing style (the Ratliff NYT article documented a less academically successful night during one of those band experiments before the concept was very ready for critical evaluation. However that is the nature developing a concept in public. Some will be somewhat more patient with failures than others but that fact is a thing to experience and celebrate as a mature participant in the Arts, no matter the degree of initial dismay), to prepare the industrial attack and bide my time like Ivan the Terrible. For a couple years. And by the way, I never moved to LA. Please smack R. Glasper for spreading that rumor because it’s all I hear: “Hey man, I heard you moved to LA.”

What happened was that while most assumed I had dropped out of the scene to professionally languish in post Marsalis limbo, I was quietly absorbing and being absorbed into the worlds of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the Obama Campaign, Nascar and High Fashion. It was those quiet alliances that continue to provide my team with opulent business opportunities.

Anyway, it was all starting to crystallize by the time I went sans band. Playing guitar power chords on piano was physically reminiscent of playing McCoy Tyner. Playing rhythm guitar patterns and rock singer screams was physically reminiscent of playing Erroll Garner. Plugging in emotional content was no problem. All else was technically echoing blues piano or Euro-classical preludes and fugues. Rounded out by Ragtime/parade oriented duple beat patterns, where the endurance developed in stride piano training came in handy again. The lyrics and energy of the rock tunes facilitated my sharing of pain, loss, joy and defiance thru a medium and a sound that was immensely gratifying to mainstream audiences.

Here’s a Rockjazz piano take on “Believe” by The Bravery

The familiarity of the tunes brought the audiences’ perceptual ears into a position to further appreciate my variations in the music, no matter how slight. I could improvise for 2 minutes or 2 seconds and be equally appreciated as an improviser. With the increasing momentum around my conceptual shift, I pursued more experimentation with the art of Branding and Marketing. I changed my name to ELEW in accordance with a branding book, to be further absorbed into the mainstream psyche like other celeb instrumentalists such as Kenny G, Yanni, Liberace — or even Rachmaninoff and Liszt for that matter. I named my extroverted post-Boogie Woogie, piano centric genre, Rockjazz, to distance and distinguish it, for my potential clients, from the either nostalgic but geriatric brand image of jazz or the achingly academic yet snobbishly casual brand image of jazz. I donned Armor and began to adopt a benchless Stance to be in associative brand congruence with the rock guitar player tradition. The photographers loved it. And suddenly my audiences became more and more diverse. Hollywood celebs started showing up. Supermodels. Silicon Valley tycoons. But also construction workers, social workers and military personnel all looking to rock out with the ever stalwart ELEW. And then more calls started coming in for high-end private performances. I was finally able to earn my compensation in a way that surprisingly became just as gratifying and academically interesting as the former ecstasies I had known with Cassandra and Hendricks and Wynton and Roy and Elvin.

Nancy and I became busy little bees during those two years before the CNN feature on me awoke my native “jazz community.” The critical backlash from the jazz world finding out in full what I was into was upsetting at first, mainly because I was still working on making the style sound really good and smooth so I knew what they were hearing but couldn’t fix it. But I also knew that the vitriol had its roots in competitive dispositions. I was stepping on the toes of Authorities who felt comfy being in charge of classifying stuff in Jazz. I had hacked the socio-economic mainframe. And the Rockjazz brand was mine. My business technique was being furnished with a premium level of mainstream media recognition. Egos, hubris and opinions vainly spiked for a short moment, etc.

People don’t often realize how powerful a thing is until they experience the results of neglecting to effectively employ it. Branding. A completely essential, overwhelmingly powerful tool. The ancient Africans were the last to discover gunpowder. They paid dearly for their lack of information regarding the technology that would eventually be used against them. Kenny G outbranded the traditional jazz players so severely that he became the populace’s idea of what or who a Jazz player was, much to the impotent chagrin of the Jazz community. And they didn’t learn from his success either. The IAJE brand managed to go broke, depriving the jazz world of a sorely needed outpost while Kenny G sold hundreds of millions and bought a plane. And Starbucks.

ELEW Rockjazz Vol. 1 was the top selling jazz cd for CD Baby. We had no major American distributor but we did have AVEX in Japan. It was on my label, NINJAZZ. I toured it internationally and made fun videos. After becoming a Paradigm Agency artist and appearing on America’s Got Talent, Josh Groban selected me to open for him in arenas throughout North America. I had the great impish pleasure of playing “Inner Urge” at Madison Square Garden in front of traditional American grandmothers and mothers and girls dolled up to go to a cotillion. Oddly,  Lil Wayne’s people got wind of me from that tour and checked out my new record. And so now our duet will be heard on his new record I Am Not Human 2.

ELEW Rockjazz Vol. 2 is out and pleasing the fans. And sounds great. There’s lots of cool video stuff happening plus I’m in my best physical condition ever and playing great. And the fun just keeps comin.

Here’s “Human Nature.”

So in the end, everyone has played their part right out of a movie script: angel investors, stalwart supporters, masters, fans, haters, paramours, mentors, rivals, critics etc.

As far as who likes me or my work and doesn’t, my latest recording and my Facebook page photos will give anyone interested a fair taste of what my current music and lifestyle is composed of. And who likes it. My detractors have been pretty public so a Google search or Twitter search will reveal them rather neatly.

I’m a regular at NY jam sessions but I’ve never had an actual encounter with a musician or critic bluntly attacking me etc… but I’d probably like it.

Anyways, Jazz beefs tend to get sorta pathetic. Mastercard, take me away. I scare some NYC taxi drivers because of what they interpret about my intentions towards them, as a so-called Black guy. So they don’t pick me up. Some pick me up and take me where I want to go with no hesitation or fear. So it is and so it shall be, conceivably. I’m happy to talk piano technique, jazz theory and the occasionally incisive debates about what I’m doing are super fun. Im also happy to not suit some peoples tastes, at times. I don’t suit my own tastes, at times. No big deal.

#Fahrvergnügen

5. I wrestle with this last question myself: What are the dangers and benefits in playing many styles and many ways?

Exercising the fingers along with perceptual reflex pathology is good regardless of musical format if we are purely talking piano for piano’s sake. Try it all, I say. In every direction there is knowledge. There is only benefit.

Danger comes when we introduce the element of branding. Are you tired of hearing that word yet? I am tired of saying it. Trying to manage the marketplace expectations is more than a slack notion. It is a critical skill.

The customer wants to know what to expect from the vendor. What are you selling?, says the customer. The shrewd vendor needs to quickly and ever efficiently, disambiguate themselves to their potential customer before the potential customer works with a different vendor.

I consider anything that can bring a threat to the implementation of my industrial tools, a Danger.

……………..

I thank you Ethan for your invitation to present my sentiments and reflections.

I dig your blog and how you truly endeavor to Do the Math on our beloved Art form, Jazz.

Best to you, Broheim

ELEW

Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

Thanks again to Eric Lewis for yesterday’s post.

Nothing Eric said was really a surprise to me, but I can’t remember anyone else being so frank in print before. I remain thrilled that he entrusted DTM with such a valuable document.

Just a few final thoughts:

1) In some ways, Eric’s recap and analysis of the Monk Competition validates my criticism. As I’ve said all along, the more personal and vulnerable aspects of art are jeopardized at these sporting events. In my opinion, if you are a musician looking for a more private path, stay away! You don’t need the grief.

The year Eric won, the other finalists were Orrin Evans, Sam Yahel, and Jacob Sacks. It makes me queasy imagining them trying to best each other for a purse and a shot a record deal. Those four outstanding pianists should all be on the same side.

But, also as I’ve said before, DTM obviously isn’t going to end competitions (and I wouldn’t want that responsibility, either). So: if you are a musician who is a natural athlete and competitor, Eric offers valuable advice. Research your fellow contestants and the jury. Figure out how best to please the committee and the audience. Prepare your mental state and each detail of your presentation in order to dominate and win.

Just make sure that’s the path you want to be on if you decide to go for it, for Eric makes it clear that competitions don’t always do so much for the winners.

Indeed, he only turned that win into a decent-sized poker chip outside the jazz industry! Perhaps in the future other powerful musicians will follow Eric’s path, first gaining respect at straight-ahead competitions before settling down into a crossover career. Robert Glasper said something like that recently as well—that he made conventional trio albums first so that nobody could say he couldn’t play when he moved into hip-hop. Interesting stuff to think about.

2) In the video of “Cherokee,”  especially in the blistering stride chorus, Eric plays a lot of A-flat dominant on the A sections. That is what everybody plays these days—Wynton, Marcus Roberts, Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Brad Mehldau…

In my opinion, A-flat 7 is a misreading: the real chord is E-flat minor sixth. Relisten to Bird and Bud again—they don’t really play A-flat 7, or at least they don’t play it in a “Get your A-flat 7 licks in while you can” way. Especially Bud: in his left hand, E-flat is the lowest voice, not A-flat. Bud does this because he knows the next chord is B-flat, which of course in first inversion, with D in the bass.

If bar 7 is A-flat, then someone should write a contrafact of “Cherokee” where bar 9 is D-flat.

3) My favorite of the links is Eric’s stellar rendition of “Pinocchio,” which has some great Ralph Penland; the snare commentary in particular is outrageous. In the Nineties I saw Penland play with Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton. I also have him in my library with George Cables and other groups recorded on the West Coast. Undoubtedly Penland is underrated, especially out East. It’s a good move to have an older cat playing with some post-Marcus and Tain types: Penland warms the beat right up, making it instantly more like old-school jazz.

“Pinocchio” reminded me to look again at this tiny Kenny Kirkland clip with Penland, which is about as good as this style ever got.

Kirkland’s untimely death left a hole in the scene that hasn’t been filled. My only regret about ELEW is that I personally am more intrigued by Eric Lewis, one of Kirkland’s best successors. Eric notes that The Magic Hour has “the types of contrapuntal and micro-polyrhythmic initiatives I favor experimenting within Swing.” I believe those initiatives would occasionally surpass Kirkland or eve Roberts in complexity and intensity.

Frankie Dunlop and John Ore 

Thelonious Monk emphasized rhythm in a manner that encouraged drummers. Some of the most exciting moments of Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, and Max Roach on record are occasions when they sparred with Monk.

Naturally, Monk couldn’t always get the big stars for his working band, so he looked for the best available swingers that could keep his furnace heated. Frankie Dunlop held it down for about three or four years in the early 60’s.

Dunlop was a big band drummer who hit hard. Before Monk, Dunlop played with Maynard Ferguson, afterwards with Lionel Hampton. For Modern Drummer, Dunlop talked about Monk and big band music, especially Jimmie Lunceford, in one of the most interesting interviews ever done by a Monk sideman. (The best parts of this interview can be found at Todd Bishop’s site.)

There was something else that Dunlop had besides swing. Something a little surreal in the language. It’s not totally slick and level-headed like Ben Riley or Shadow Wilson. There’s a hint of clunky and disorganized, like a little kid beating on pots and pans. For a big-band drummer, he can be unusually indifferent to setting up hits during the heads of Monk’s tunes.

(This sounds like Paul Motian, and, indeed, in my opinion, the two are very similar. Interestingly, Motian credited Lunceford’s drummer Jimmy Crawford as a primary inspiration.)

Dunlop sounds wonderful on the Columbia studio records with Monk, but even better are the many live documents of the working quartet with Charlie Rouse on tenor and either John Ore or Butch Warren on bass.

John Ore was also a kind of rogue musician. His lines don’t outline the changes so much as create a groovy and grinding lower space. I admit to loving Butch Warren even more but there’s no doubt Ore sounds truly great playing with Monk as well.

To close out Monk’s contract with Riverside, Orrin Keepnews put out Two Hours with Thelonious, live gigs of the quartet with Rouse, Ore, and Dunlop in 1961. While seldom cited in jazz histories, this two-record set has always been beloved by musicians. There’s just something really correct about it.

Just for fun, here is Dunlop setting up “Jackie-ing.” He couldn’t play the melody more clearly, but somehow Rouse doesn’t know where to come in.

 

Apparently it was always Dunlop’s gig to be misunderstood, underrated, or mysterious. To my mind he was always one of the great jazz musicians, and arguably the most perfect drummer for Monk, but I didn’t even know he had still been alive when he passed away this past summer. John Ore wasn’t my man the way Dunlop was, but when he passed away in late August I was still ashamed at not knowing that he had been around, either.

Neither man has had a proper obituary that I’ve seen.

To celebrate them at the close of this rather rough 2014, here’s Thelonious Monk’s solo on “Bemsha Swing” from Two Hours with Thelonious. Monk starts strong, but he gradually plays less and less. Perhaps he’s listening to his great rhythm section and realizing he doesn’t even need to be there. Eventually he winds up mid-chorus, and Dunlop and Ore just keep swinging.

Subdominant 

Many of the most interesting musical tweets come from Miles Okazaki. Today he hit this one:

After You’ve Gone, Remember, Just Friends, Stardust…(start 04/04 with IV)

This means on April 4, you should play tunes that begin on the four chord, the subdominant change.

Jacob Garchik then suggested a whole lot more including “Bye-Ya” by Thelonious Monk.

The first chord of “Bye-Ya” is D-Flat but isn’t the tune in E-flat?

WAIT.

Holy moly, the whole tune of “Bye-Ya,” the bridge and everything, is in A-Flat! It’s just that final cadence of the A sections that makes it E-flat. Garchik is the man!

For fun, here’s my quick rather unswinging version of “Bye-Ya” with the final cadence in the right key at last. Happy April 4!

 

It Ends in E-flat 

In the wake of my humorous “solution” to the key of “Bye-Ya,” Twitter kept going with a certain amount of debate about whether “Bye-Ya” is in A-flat or E-Flat.

I admire the Monk Fake Book edited by Steve Cardenas and Don Sickler very much. There’s still no substitute for going back to the record, but for a quick fix, Cardenas has your back. Every editorial decision was considered.

In the book “Bye-ya” is in four flats. I emailed Steve about it, and he replied,

This comes up every once in a while, among some the things Sickler and I debated over. There was no Monk chart on this one. It’s a true anomaly, I’ve never felt settled on what key this was and ultimately came to the conclusion that it resides in both keys. Sounds like the key of Ab up to the E7, then somehow resolves to Eb. It’s one of the things I love about this tune. Seems it can be convincingly argued one way or the other. When we were working on the book, Sickler was convinced it was in Ab, so that’s where it went. Maybe putting it in C was the way to go, use accidentals and let eveyone else decide. Without a chart, the tune sounds the same no matter what key one thinks it’s in, so for me, I’m not invested in trying to nail down one key. Sort like trying to decide what key “Giant Steps” is in, but in this case, we’re not dealing with such disparate keys, which I think adds so much fuel to the debate as with the keys being so close, it’s easy to think it must be one or the other. I say both. Wonder if Monk ever wrote a chart out or if he thought there was a definitive key? Unanswerable unfortunately. “Giant Steps,” 3 key centers. “Bye-Ya,” 2? No? Yes….

I posted some of this response to Twitter, which provoked a whole new slew of comments about the key of “Giant Steps.” Some very high level cats were involved: Look at the threads of Josh Redman, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Darcy James Argue, and Miles Okazaki for more.

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For both “Bye-Ya” and “Giant Steps” I don’t have an inflexible opinion. In the case of “Bye-ya” I always thought E-flat before, but now I love the possibilities of A-Flat.

As far as “Giant Steps” goes, it seems to me that while E-flat has the strongest case in the abstract, B is also a worthy contender. When it comes around to the top I feel a good strong tonic downbeat. In the case of playing it through the keys, in my mind I’m like, “Ok, start with B,” not, “Start with E-flat.”

At any rate, “Steps” is arguably more of a study than a finished piece. Coltrane was working out his material. My own sardonic tweets were: “In my view it was hipper when Trane put all those sequences over D minor. Therefore, my answer to ‘what key is Giant Steps in?’ is: D minor.”

I’m joking but I also think it’s important to remember that Trane didn’t stay with “Giant Steps,” that he searched for a more folkloric-sounding and harder swinging music that could use the same information.

—

“Bye-Ya” remains a bit more intriguing for me, partly simply because I’m wondering about how I’ve possibly misunderstood it for about 25 years. The confusing tonality (the parameters of which are clearly outlined by Cardenas above) shows how advanced Monk really was.

Going through the fake book I noted some other unusual uses of key in Monk’s music.

“Introspection” seems like “Bye-ya,”  the final cadences are so strong it invalidates previous movement. Therefore, both D and D-flat.

And similarly “Played Twice,” which is mostly C but ends firmly D. Again, kind of like “Bye-Ya” in a way, except nobody would argue that “Played Twice” is in D (I hope).

While I always think of “Coming on the Hudson” as in F, there’s not one F chord in the song!

A section of “Criss Cross” is in what key? G minor? — but it still sounds like B-flat, even before bridge and no B-flat chords?

“Monk’s Mood” and “Pannonica” are firmly in C, but both only end in D-flat.

“Ruby My Dear” is one of the hardest to parse. Roland Hanna talked about mediant movement…I’ll call E-flat, but really that’s just the first phrase.

What key is “Epistrophy” in? One could argue for D-flat, but…

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Not satisfied, I decided to transcribe the piano part of the first recording of “Bye-Ya.” This is from Trio on Prestige, which has always been one of my favorite records. The piano is out of tune, the bassist is barely competent (apparently Gary Mapp was mostly a policeman) and on “Bye-Ya” the unnamed amateur clavé player clashes cruelly with Art Blakey’s wonderful beat.

It all adds up to local music. Kind of like the cats on the corner making up a song, except of course one of the cats was Thelonious Monk.

Cardenas also reminded me of how the piece was titled, at least according to Robin D.G. Kelley’s biography.

Thelonious also dusted off his composition “Playhouse,” another danceable upbeat tune but with an even stronger Latin flavor. Weinstock wanted to call it “Go.” Hearing the Latin/Caribbean influence, he asked George Rivera, Prestige’s accountant who was in the studio that day, for the Spanish translation. Somehow “Vaya” became “Bye-Ya.”

H’mm. The song is misspelled, maybe even mis-titled. Seems totally appropriate!

It’s funny how strong E-flat comes across considering how little Monk plays that chord! I wrote it four flats for convenience but am in no way married to that key signature.

Part of it is Mapp, who often is playing in E-Flat, like in bars two and four. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling Mapp just didn’t really know the tune. Throughout his whole career, Monk seemed to have a carefree attitude to his bassist’s notes in general. (Al McKibbon seems as lost on early Blue Notes as on the final Black Lion trios.) If Monk taught by rote, which I believe he did, I feel bad for those in the studio trying to learn this music and nail it without a chart or much guidance.

Mapp’s beat is fine, but some of his notes are truly incorrect. At the end, he tags “D-flat, D, E-flat” twice when Monk just plays D-flat. Paradoxically, Monk’s concluding D-flat argues strongly for E-flat being the key. He ended on the flat VII a lot (“Nice Work if You Can Get It,” “In Walked Bud”) but ending on IV would be really weird.

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Part of the problem with all of this is that classic jazz does not submit smoothly to European-style harmonic analysis. Not to say that Monk’s pitches don’t “work” according to Old World harmonic rules: On the contrary, they usually do. Still, another mysterious part of his music is the blues, black music, and all that stuff comes from a different perspective entirely.

Both Monk and Claude Debussy featured the whole tone scale, but the emotions each conjure with that whole tone scale couldn’t be more different.

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Ending in E-flat was the true specialty of one of Monk’s influences, bluesman Jimmy Yancey. Yancey would always play a certain tag in E-flat no matter what the key. As far as I know, he recorded in C, F, B-flat, E-flat, and A-flat. But the ending is always E-flat.

This isn’t to suggest that Monk’s E-flat cadence at the ends of the A sections to “Bye-Ya” and Yancey’s abrupt tag in E-flat are structurally the same. They aren’t!

But nevertheless Monk and Yancey are in the same family: Afro-American, resolute, unexplainable. Both made sure to never record a single track that didn’t have personal and inimitable calligraphy.

—

The most shocking Yancey tag is probably at the end of 1939’s “Yancey Stomp.” If there is a piece in C major, it is “Yancey Stomp.”

I didn’t include the Mp3 of “Bye-Ya” here, because I know all DTM readers have Prestige Trio on their computers already. (Right?) But I’ll give you “Yancey Stomp,” which is comparatively obscure.

The complete Yancey on Document is a valuable purchase; for the less committed, any Yancey anthology will probably do.

He recorded only after his prime and never quit his job as groundkeeper at Comiskey Park where his team was the White Sox. Yancey died in 1951: I wonder what he would make of his immortal music still flourishing years later, transcribed and studied all over the world?

 

In Orbit 

In May 1958 Clark Terry went into the studio with Thelonious Monk, Sam Jones, and Philly Joe Jones for Orrin Keepnews and Riverside Records. The resulting album, In Orbit, is almost certainly Terry’s best known as a leader, simply because Monk is such a giant and there are so few documents of Monk as a sideman.

Even though it is famous, In Orbit probably isn’t Terry’s finest personal showcase. Recordings with Oscar Peterson or Bob Brookmeyer or some of the Ellingtonians might offer a better example of Terry’s bluesy insouciance in full unfettered effect.

It’s not that Terry isn’t great on In Orbit. But he’s leading a quartet date of conventional tunes, and look who he’s got on piano! Monk always remakes the jazz at hand into his own image. There’s seldom much room for anything in the frame but “Monk” when he’s around.

It would be one thing if Terry had played a bunch of Monk tunes or repertoire specially tailored for the date. Instead the set list is essentially what Terry would play with anybody. If In Orbit has classic status, that status is testament to Terry’s grace under pressure.

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“In Orbit” Appropriately enough, the album begins with an abstract fanfare: Piano, flugelhorn, and bass all emit bizarre thumps before Philly Joe plays a fast two-bar break. That drum break is easy to follow, but only Sam and Terry come in correctly with Philly Joe on “4.” Monk (rather unmusically) thunks on the following “1” instead. It’s probably not an accident: Monk refuses to play that hard-bop “4” hit throughout the head in and the head out. (Philly Joe is there every time.)

The changes of “A” are what I think of as “Perdido” changes, although “Perdido” was surely not the first iteration of these fairly basic moves. “Argentina” on this album is also “Perdido” changes, so this progression was clearly on Terry’s mind.

When Terry blows, he confidently bops his way through the fleet tempo.

Monk isn’t quite as comfortable. Indeed, might this be the fastest BPM we’ve ever heard from the High Priest? Even though it’s not his usual turf Monk is coherent enough when connecting Harlem Stride and whole tone patterns at speed.

However, it gets a little weird when Monk comps so little during the trades. In my opinion, too much of In Orbit is a trio of flugelhorn, bass and drums. Shouldn’t the piano back Terry when trading with Philly Joe? The second chorus of trades is better but there are still holes. The last melody statement is pretty empty as well. It’s not clear whether Monk is being deliberate with a certain sparse aesthetic or just doesn’t have his head fully in the game.

“One Foot in the Gutter” Terry gets to lay his trademark talking gutbucket on us during this bluesy AABA song in F.

Monk is really amusing during the “waltz” bridge. The bridge changes are:

G-/ C7/ F/ F7
Bb/ B dim/ G7/ C7

At first glance, this seems fine…But when you look closer, there’s something that isn’t totally unforced: B diminished going to G7.

Monk must agree, because he steadfastly avoids that G7, no matter what. After B diminished, his hands close naturally on F second inversion instead.

Unfortunately Terry’s tune highlights the G7 with a sustained B natural in the melody before going to a syncopated hit on the upbeat of C7. Sam and Philly Joe try to honor the chart but Monk doesn’t care. He isn’t gonna play that G7. Fuck that G7.

Monk’s authoritative comping makes anything sound cool, even when “wrong,” so the first three choruses – melody, Terry solo, Monk solo – skate the debated moment smoothly enough. But when Terry comes back for more, Monk stops playing nice. Monk refuses to play the bridge at all. Instead of a “B,” Monk just plays “A” again. Terry’s second go becomes four “A’s” in a row. Wow!

Terry retires to think this over, during which Sam gets a shot, who gamely outlines the “correct” changes on the bridge. (Monk is utterly silent.) Kind of a long song at this point. Terry takes it home from “B,” still without a G7 from Monk of course.

No second take! Apparently they all thought, “OK, that was cool, time for the next number.” And it is cool: swinging jazz, the truth of the blues, warts and all.

Monk’s mischief may be teaching a greater truth. I’d argue that his lesson is that Terry’s tune doesn’t need any waltzing “B” section whatsoever. The nice melody of “A” could just be 16 bars, two 8s with different closures, something like Horace Silver’s “The Preacher.” This folkloric solution would be more groovy than going to further progressions for a bridge.

“Trust in Me” Monk’s superb intro toys with the tune before a trademark cascade ends with a perfectly uniform downbeat by whole band. You aren’t going to get that to happen again, better make this the take!

Monk frequently played standard ballads, but usually they were trio or solo. I can’t think of a Tin Pan Alley number at drag tempo with Charlie Rouse in the lead.

How lovely to hear Terry’s sympathetic statement over those sweet and sour piano voicings. “Trust in Me.” This is essentially perfect music. If I have a quibble, it is with Sam Jones, who occasionally “waits to see what happens” instead of offering an unrepentant voice. In the liner notes to the collected Riverside Monk, Orrin Keepnews says that Wilbur Ware was supposed to be on the date but didn’t show. I would love to have heard how “Trust in Me” would sound with Ware, who (along with Mingus) was the most rogue bassist of the era.

I certainly don’t mean to criticize Sam unduly, who’s generally fabulous on In Orbit. Keepnews in the collected set: “Thelonious was particularly pleased with the work of Sam Jones, who was making his first Riverside appearance, and several months later asked Sam to join his group.”

“Let’s Cool One” The original liners of In Orbit conclude with producer Keepnews noting that Philly Joe, “…Fulfilled a long-standing ambition to record with Monk.”

This makes sense: All great drummers love Thelonious Monk.

As far as I know, Philly Joe would end up working with Monk infrequently. Certainly In Orbit is their only studio meeting of consequence, and on In Orbit, “Let’s Cool One” is the lone Monk tune.

It seems like Philly Joe might have guessed that his was his only chance, for he makes the absolute most of playing a Monk tune with the composer.

Monk’s incandescent mind was always working on several levels. The title “Let’s Cool One” may refer to the white West Coast “cool school,” who in 1958 were probably making much more money than the black East Coast cats. If so, the march of quarter notes in the first three bars is reasonably condescending: “When we are ‘cool,’ we can’t syncopate for shit.”

Philly Joe can lay down a carpet as well as anyone, but when playing the melody of “Let’s Cool One” he chooses to be fiercely interactive. Perhaps he is making a point about playing with Monk; perhaps he’s making a point about conservative West Coast drummers who always stayed in the background.

I like a lot of West Coast cool school jazz myself, but also love the vicious attack on the style that is the first chorus of this “Let’s Cool One.”

Admittedly, I might be overthinking all of this. At any rate, I can’t imagine Philly Joe playing this freely in a first chorus with his usual pianists Red Garland or Wynton Kelly.

The drummer keeps up the heat for the solos of Terry and Monk. Indeed, he’s so strong at the top of Terry that Sam falters for a moment: “Oh, wait, is this the drum solo now?” Eventually, Philly Joe does get a chorus of immortal unaccompanied statement. It’s so good that he seems to think he’ll go again, and rolls for a bar when Monk and Sam begin recap.

Terry joins for last “A” only. Clearly Monk never gave him any paper, for Terry (who was famous as an impeccable studio musician) actually manages to fluff the tiny little “cool” tune.

No matter. This is Thelonious Sphere Monk and Philly Joe Jones jazz at its finest. It simply doesn’t get any better.

“Pea-Eye” Terry’s memorable ditty is two choruses of up E-flat blues with different endings. Monk seems to eye the conventional hard bop offbeats in the second chorus with suspicion, and decides that pedaling offbeat left hand B-flats is (just barely) enough.

Terry’s solo is perhaps his finest of the date. Terry was Miles Davis’s teacher, and this blistering fast blues (against nasty Philly Joe fills!) shows that the teacher still has the measure of the student.

Monk hangs in there, although he’d probably be the first to declare that his solo isn’t giving Bud Powell anything to lose sleep over. The way he lays out at the very end is just weird. Maybe he’s looking for his beer or something.

“Argentina” The other “Perdido” number is a mellow swinger that suits this band almost as well as “Let’s Cool One.”  How wonderful to have a vital Monk solo on something we’d never have the chance to hear him reframe otherwise.

Sam gets an impressive statement, and Terry offers some improvised Monkish straight-eighths.

It’s going great, but by this point, nobody expects Monk to help the band find the most appropriate ending. This sleeper track (again) awkwardly concludes as piano-less trio.

“Moonlight Fiesta” However Philly Joe found what he found, Afro-Cuban was a part of it, and this novelty number gives him a chance to honor that debt. Sonny Greer and Ellington “jungle music” are also in the mix, especially since this was a Juan Tizol work originally written for Ellington.  “Fiesta” is nice and short and not too serious. Bravo.

“Buck’s Business” Another up blues, now in F, and Terry is more like Miles Davis than ever (except, of course, that the influence went the other way around). Maybe Monk is getting to like these fast tempos, because for the first time it doesn’t seem like he’s ready to quit after a chorus or two. He’s there, but then he’s not: After the piano solo, it seems like Monk has left the studio, but then he sits back down and grudgingly participates in the final melody. Those chiming major seconds sound almost atonal considering the context.

“Very Near Blue” Sara Cassey wrote interesting mood pieces recorded by Johnny Griffin, Elvin Jones, Hank Jones, and others. “Very Near Blue” is something rather heraldic and mysterious in dark E minor. In descending order of excellence: Terry knows exactly what to do, proud and committed; Philly Joe on mallets hints at double-time Greer; Monk offers loud footballs that come across as more unsettled than helpful; Sam tries a walking march but eventually seems dogged rather than essential.

“Very Near Blue” is almost a truly unconventional masterwork but not enough consensus is reached within the ensemble. The track also lacks a real ending, as it seems like the producers looked for the most harmless (unplanned) fadeout.