Monk: The High Priest of Jazz (1964) | Hacker News Reader

Monk: The High Priest of Jazz (1964)

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91 pointsbrie2214 comments

In Robin Kelley's excellent recent biography of Monk, he discusses this article: "for all his defense of Monk's sanity, Lapham fell for the oldest myth of all: 'An emotional and intuitive man, possessing a child's vision of the world'". I highly recommend the book if you like the music. The context is a series of critics who failed to grasp Monk's sophistication and described him, incorrectly, as an untutored musician who had some original improvisatory talent. All these misapprehensions are almost comically reproduced in the Monk entry in Baker's biographical dictionary, for example.

I consider Monk to be one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.

The Transformer is a double CD of Monk's home recordings of practice sessions. He is iterating (I'm tempted to say hacking on) a 'standard' and leading to recordings of three live performances of the piece with a quartet. Taught me lots. A bit intense for non-pianists but will put paid to the 'random happy eccentric' stuff. This guy worked in a systematic way and lead his bands.

Kelly's book is just required.

I'm delighted to share that I'm currently reading Kelley's book right now. Great read thus far!

It's refreshing to see a story on Monk make the front page of HN.

Reading Kelley's book, I was just fascinated to learn about the process by which Monk created music. He composed on paper, at the piano, but was loath to let people see his charts -- possibly due to justified fear of having them stolen and used by others. Instead, he expected his sidemen to learn his tunes by ear, on the bandstand. That would have been a real trial by fire!

It's a lot different than how jazz players develop repertoire today. The standard repertoire has largely been codified in "fake books," mistakes and all. Reading and improvising from fake books has become part of basic training.

I'd like to learn more about what playing jazz was really like during that time period, and as a player, experience it that way myself if possible. I'm intrigued by the question: Would I have been able to hack it at all in that environment?

Didn't expect to see a Thelonious Monk article on HN! He's my favorite piano player, hugely influenced my own playing.

And I'd to see more advanced music being discussed here. Just to see how technical minded people are approaching music.

Me too :-)

The issue for Thelonious and all people non-White was the weird things critics would say to make them inferior to White players. "the elephant on the keyboard" "... his music was still regarded as too 'difficult' for more mainstream acceptance." His music didn't sell very well. "They said he was a self-taught mad genius but had no interest in 'serious' music." "He was naïve, brooding and primitive." "He was gifted with a childish vision but exiled from reality."

If you play music you will find it funny how Thelonious would always play the song in the hardest possible key. I found it almost impossible to play them. He was smart.

And still, to my non-musicians ear, Monk sounds very sweet, gentle, and melodic. I absolutely love Monk.

Doesn't Coltrane (as the most prominent musician to have a religious movement inspired by him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane#Religious_figure) qualify more so as the high priest of jazz?

The article was written in 1964, and as noted in the post above about Robin Kelly's book, is not uncontroversial. Today, a title like "high priest of jazz" would probably elicit snickers from jazz lovers and musicians.

Context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_royalty

It was said that "Trane was the father, Pharoah was the son and I am the Holy Ghost" by Albert ayler, referring to three different saxophone players. I suppose this completes the religious metaphor

Here's a nice comic by John Wilcock about Monk's arrest.

http://boingboing.net/2013/02/01/john-wilcock-thelonious-mon...

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