Thelonious. . .

(from http://www.monkzone.com/monkzone.htm)
Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm—notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell. Monk’s harmonic innovations proved fundamental to the development of modern jazz in this period. Anointed by some critics as the “High Priest of Bebop,” several of his compositions (“52nd Street Theme,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy” [co-written with Kenny Clarke and originally titled “Fly Right” and then “Iambic Pentameter”], “I Mean You”) were favorites among his contemporaries.

Yet, as much as Monk helped usher in the bebop revolution, he also charted a new course for modern music few were willing to follow. Whereas most pianists of the bebop era played sparse chords in the left hand and emphasized fast, even eighth and sixteenth notes in the right hand, Monk combined an active right hand with an equally active left hand, fusing stride and angular rhythms that utilized the entire keyboard. And in an era when fast, dense, virtuosic solos were the order of the day, Monk was famous for his use of space and silence. In addition to his unique phrasing and economy of notes, Monk would “lay out” pretty regularly, enabling his sidemen to experiment free of the piano’s fixed pitches. As a composer, Monk was less interested in writing new melodic lines over popular chord progressions than in creating a whole new architecture for his music, one in which harmony and rhythm melded seamlessly with the melody. “Everything I play is different,” Monk once explained, “different melody, different harmony, different structure. Each piece is different from the other. . . . [W]hen the song tells a story, when it gets a certain sound, then it’s through . . . completed.”

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The roar . . .

. . . of the Lyons. . .

Jimmy Lyons alto saxophone player best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit, being the only constant member of the pianist's group from the mid-1960s to his death, after which Taylor never worked with another musician as frequently. Lyons's playing, which usually retained a strong influence from bebop pioneer Charlie Parker, helped keep Tayor's often wildly avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.

He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and brought up firstly there for his first 9 years, before his mother moved the family to Harlem and then the Bronx. He obtained his first saxophone in the mid-1940s and had lessons from Buster Bailey.

After high school, Lyons was drafted into the United States Army and spent 21 months on infantry duty in Korea, before spending around a year playing in army bands. On discharge, he attended New York University. By the end of the 1950s he was supporting his interest in music with day jobs in the Postal Service.

In 1961 he followed Archie Shepp into the saxophone role in the Cecil Taylor Unit. His post-Parker sound and strong melodic sense became a defining part of the sound of that group, from the classic 1962 Cafe Montmartre sessions onwards.

During the 1970s Lyons also ran his own group with bassoonist Karen Borca and percussionist Paul Murphy, taking performance opportunities at the loft jazz movement around Studio Rivbea. His group and the Unit continued a parallel development through the 1970s and 1980s, often involving the same musicians, such as trumpeter Raphe Malik, bassist William Parker and percussionist Paul Murphy.

Lyons died from lung cancer in 1986. The recording legacy of his own group was relatively sparse, though that situation has been rectified by a 5 CD boxed set of archive recordings from 1972 to 1985, released on Ayler Records.  (from wikipedia.com)

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Ah, the critics . . .

. . . gotta love 'em. . .

2012 marks 50 years of the Beatles. On Jan. 1, 1962, the Beatles flunked an audition at Decca Records in London. Label executive Dick Rowe’s brush-off: “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

Tommy Dorsey claimed, "Bebop has set music back 20 years."

Louis Armstrong complained that beboppers were playing wrong chords.

A prominent New York critic said, "Bebop sounds to me like a hardware store in an earthquake."

"He plays like somebody is standing on his foot." Miles Davis on Eric Dolphy

One critic said that Monk's music was "like missing the bottom step in the dark."

Critics called Thelonious Monk "the elephant on the keyboard."

Emperor Joseph II on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozars's The Marriage of Figaro,  "too many notes, Mozart"

Diana Krall is this decade’s Harry Connick Jr., Krall is popping up everywhere these days at festivals, in clubs and on CD sales and airplay charts. An adequate pianist, she’s a tentative, dry-voiced vocalist whose torpid, sorority-girl versions of classic songs barely measure up to hotel piano bar standards. Her eminence must seem like a slap in the face to vastly more gifted and creative singers, like Rebecca Parris and Ian Shaw.

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Underappreciated. . .

 . . . undervalued . . .

(from Wikipedia.com)
John Gilmore (September 28 or October 29, 1931 in Summit, Mississippi – August 19 or August 20, 1995 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States) grew up in Chicago and played clarinet from the age of 14. He took up the tenor saxophone while serving in the United States Air Force from 1948–1952, then pursued a musical career, playing briefly with pianist Earl Hines before encountering Sun Ra in 1953.

For the next four decades, Gilmore recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra. This was puzzling to some, who noted Gilmore's talent, and thought he could be a major star like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. Coltrane, in fact, was impressed with Gilmore's playing, and took informal lessons from him in the late 1950s. Coltrane's epochal, proto-free jazz "Chasin' the Trane" was inspired partly by Gilmore's sound.

In 1957 he co-led with Clifford Jordan a Blue Note date that is regarded as a hard bop classic: Blowing In from Chicago. Horace Silver, Curly Russell, and Art Blakey provided the rhythm section. In the mid-1960s Gilmore toured with the Jazz Messengers and he participated in recording sessions with Paul Bley, Andrew Hill (Andrew! and Compulsion), Pete La Roca (Turkish Women at the Bath), McCoy Tyner (Today and Tomorrow) and a handful of others. In 1970 he co-led a recording with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece. His main focus throughout, however, remained with the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Gilmore's devotion to Sun Ra was due, in part, to the latter's use of harmony, which Gilmore considered both unique and a logical extension of bebop. Gilmore had stated that Sun Ra was "more stretched out than Monk" and that "I'm not gonna run across anybody who's moving as fast as Sun Ra ... So I just stay where I am."

Gilmore himself made a huge contribution to Sun Ra's recordings and was the Arkestra's leading sideman, being given solos on almost every track on which he appeared. In the Rough Guide to Jazz critic Brian Priestley says:

    Gilmore is known for two rather different styles of tenor playing. On performances of a straight ahead post-bop character (which include many of those with Sun Ra), he runs the changes with a fluency and tone halfway between Johnny Griffin and Wardell Gray, and with a rhythmic and motivic approach which he claims influenced Coltrane. On more abstract material, he is capable of long passages based exclusively on high-register squeals. Especially when heard live, Gilmore was one of the few musicians who carried sufficient conviction to encompass both approaches."

Many fans of jazz saxophone consider him to be among the greatest ever, his fame shrouded in the relative anonymity of being a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra. His "straight ahead post-bop" talents are exemplified in his solo on the Arkestra's rendition of "Blue Lou," as seen on Mystery, Mr. Ra.

After Sun Ra's 1993 death, Gilmore led Ra's "Arkestra" for a few years before his own death from emphysema. Marshall Allen then took over Arkestra leadership.

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From the ridiculous. . .

. . . to the sublime.

John Coltrane, who passed away 44 years ago this month, was a bebop trailerblazer, hard-bop co-founder, pioneer in the use of modes in jazz, revolutionary in the free jazz movement and ALSO a cannonized saint in the African Orthodox Church.

My initial exposure to Coltrane, not counting dialing the FM radio past a station playing 'A Lover Supreme' on one of the early anniversaries of his death, was a combination of the influence of my good friend Bob and my exposure to the music we call, for lack of a better word, jazz while working at my college radio station over 35 years ago. I always liked Coltrane's sound. I must confess though, I didn't always understand it.

And like other, truly creative, brilliant, musical pioneers (read: their music was always changing), John Coltrane's music was very different depending upon which stage of his career (and development) you consider. True, his tone was clearly and consistently distinctive and his 'sheets of sound' approach is evident in many of these stages, but nevertheless, his development is evident.

Over these years I have begun to understand more of his phases of musical exploration and as a result, appreciate and enjoy John Coltrane's music more with each year that I continue to listen.

I encourage you to do the same. (Don't let the shot of Eric Dolphy throw you. Dolphy's presence here is a nice bonus.)




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