Talk:Thelonious Monk
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Much more is needed here!
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[edit] Spatial relationships
What is meant by this? I think some clarification is needed. 80.221.213.232 20:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, it's meaningless. I guess whoever wrote it was referring to the wide intervals in the melodies & improvisations? I have revised the sentence. --ND 07:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Riverside buyout
possibly a minor note, but to say that buying thelonious's prestige contract out for a 'miserly' sum seems to imply that riverside was cheating him, which is unfair to a label that gave him new opportunities, new work and a recording environment responsive to and respectful of his personal genius. $108 was the asking price set by prestige.
- I think it was myself who incorporated "miserly" in to the article. "Mere" seems better; even allowed for the last half-centuries inflation and Riverside's relatively marginal status at the time, the figure still seems low. Philip Cross 19:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Monk and Bop
What else is "bop" besides an abbreviation for bebop? In the given context, I'm sure that's what it is. -- Merphant
I'm currently reading The making of Jazz, James Lincoln Collier, who uses "bop". I think the friend whose copy it is mentioned bop and bebop are not the same, but I'll need to check. -- Tarquin 10:48 Nov 28, 2002 (UTC)
- FWIW both of the external links mention Monk as a key player in bebop, so the article tells the truth as it is, although bop probably has some other meanings too: for some reason I don't think The Big Bopper was referring to bebop in his name :) -- Merphant
It seems a bit awkward that the documentary about his life is introduced in the paragraph after it's referenced. (I'm not sure how best to improve it, though.)
Hey I believe that bop is short for Bebop and nothing else because that is just what I have heard
Bop and Bebop and synonymous. Both were used (initially by the press, later by the musicians themselves) to refer to the jazz style popularized by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, et al. in the early 1940's. The term was derived from syllables typically used in scat singing (vocalizations with asensical syllabels instead of words). -- Matt 10/8/05
Monk said in the Time feature: "I was calling it bipbop, but the others must have heard me wrong."
[edit] Census info
Good information, but we probably don't need to have his childhood street addresses and the number of lodgers in the article. I've incorporated some of the information into the rest of the article, and left all of it in comments. --ajn (talk) 20:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
- Agreed. --Viriditas 22:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Learning and technique
There is not much about how Monk learned to play and not much about his playing technique. As far as I know, despite of being perhaps the most legendary jazz pianist, Monk's technique and improvisation was self taught and his technique is not very uhm... technical... I think he did not study much jazz but learned improvising just by improvising. Somebody who knows better should write about these matters. --128.214.69.47 15:53, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
As I understand it, Monk never took lessons, per se, but his sister Marion did, and he 'sat in', so to speak, watching over her shoulder. When the lessons were over he would sit at the piano and practice whatever she had been taught that day. No doubt the two of them talked about it, as well.
Two other things to note: I'm pretty sure Monk's family moved to NY (San Juan Hill neighborhood) in 1920, not 1930. And, I believe in addition to a sister he also had a brother, named Thomas.12.221.85.24 03:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)Gabriel
From what I have read and also from watching "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", its my understanding that Monk began taking piano lessons at the age of 11 and actually spent a little bit of time studying piano at Juilliard. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Monk's family moved to New York in either 1923 or 1925. I seem to remember that he was about 5 years old when moving to the city, and with his D.O.B. being in 1917, that would be around 1923.
[edit] Composition/soloing technique
Lots of biography, but not much here that would give a reader not already familiar with the music much info as to why Monk was important, or interesting, either as a composer or as a player.
I'd note his tendency, somewhat counter to the rest of early bebop, to strip out lots of the "ornamentation" in his playing, to favor tempos ("tempi"?) well slower than the usual bebop tempos, and to abstract extremely from "standard" changes when working from a standard tune. Examples of Monk compositions based on standards which come to mind are
"Evidence" = "Just You, Just Me" (the explanatory pun, is supposeedly "Just You, Just Me" = "Just Us" = "Justice")
and
"Ask Me Now" = "Diamonds are A Girl's Best Friend". Silverlake Bodhisattva 15:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
To me, what characterizes Monk's improvisations are:
- a deliberately rough-edged playing technique, compared with the relative smoothness of typical bebop dynamics and technique
- unusual melodic phrasing, often with long silences, lots of repetition, and heavy emphases on dissonant chords
- use of dissonances like bare minor seconds and minor ninths that are unusual even for bebop. (Of course, minor seconds and ninths show up in jazz voicings all the time, but strongly emphasizing them by themselves with no other supporting tones is unusual.)
- long whole-tone runs (an instantly recognizable signature--pretty much no one else does this unless they're quoting Monk)
--Rictus 07:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Genius of Modern Music LPs
The article asserts that this was his first LP but to my knowledge it's a later compilation of singles--surely jazz LPs only really got going later on? The original liner notes for that matter imply previous release. ND 06:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
- NDorward, the two 10"LPs under this title surfaced in 1951 and 1952 respectively and the 12" versions in 1956. (Source: Goldmine...Jazz Albums 1949-69, 1994) Philip Cross 19:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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- OK, & the individual singles date originally from the late 1940s I believe? ND 20:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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- There's no information about release dates, but you can see the catalogue numbers of the original formats (78rpm shellac "singles") and work out the tracklistings here (recording sessions 1947-1951) [1]. Richard Cook's Blue Note Records says that Blue Note hadn't released any of Monk's recordings until after the third session. --ajn (talk) 21:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] early history
The details on his early life seem sketchy, the official site http://www.monkzone.com/ claims he began learning the piano at age 9 and Marion´s piano teacher had taken him on as a student. Any references saying otherwise?
[edit] Narcotics
There are a couple of references in the article to narcotics being found during searches. Marijuana was legally classified as a 'narcotic' at the time and hence the police reports no doubt refer to narcotics; but that word is more commonly used today to refer to 'harder' drugs. Could this be clarified? What was it the police found - weed, pills, or something stronger?
- The Leslie Gourse bio (which is a P.O.S. by & large but I think can be relied on for this detail) says that it was heroin found in the car with Monk & Bud Powell. ND 23:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
It’s surprising, and very sad, that a huge proportion of bebop (or bop – I prefer "bebop" as the term for the initial movement begun by Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Powell, et. al. What followed was hard bop (Blakey, Silver, Morgan et. al.) musicians became addicted to heroin. One of the few exceptions was Dizzy Gillespie who was determined to stay married and whose wife told him in no uncertain terms that she’d leave if he took up the drug. The hard bop cats were just as badly affected: Coltrane, Davis, Blakey, Navarro, etc. And all the musicians on 1959’s Kind of Blue were junkies, except for Cannonball Adderley.
[edit] fair use
As per Wikipedia:Fair use, Image:BrilliantCornersTheloniousMonk.jpg should not be used in this article. (It's OK to use in the Brilliant Corners article, because that article is specifically about the album in question.) The inclusion of Image:Timethelonious.jpg is questionable, see counterexamples -- the magazne cover is mentioned but I'm not sure it's a "topic" here. I thought I would mention this here first, though the guidelines seem clear regarding the album cover. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
- I've replaced the album cover image with commons:Image:Thelonious Monk 1967.jpg, which only requires attribution (I've credited the source in the image's caption). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 23:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Birth name
I noticed at the beginning of the article (in the box/sidebar) Monk's middle name is mentioned as "Sphere" at birth. I didn't think he was born with that name, but he changed it to contrast with the slang "square," meaning conformist, unhip, etc. Just checking on this. M. Stern 22:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
