October 10, 2006

Happy Birthday Thelonious Monk Happy Birthday to a jazz legend, a musical genius, and all around hep cat. Listen to some tunes, watch Straight, No Chaser and appreciate the momentary dancing note that was Thelonious Monk. As usual, via the Blue(s)

"You know, anybody can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that’s not easy." Thelonious Monk, 1961 Apparently for those who know better than I, his solos were masterworks of logic and swing. Some of us, though, just groove on the solid bopitudnous sounds.

posted by petebest 18 years ago
  • Nice post.
  • Happy Birthday, Thelonious! Hope you saw "Block Party" -- Dave Chappelle broke out of his funnyman bit to do a lovely tribute to "'Round Midnight". Quite unexpected and touching. He had some good words about you. And like he feels about that one, I'm the same way on "Japanese Folk Song". Somebody has to play that one at my funeral.
  • /beesbopitudinous
  • "Blue Monk" was always my fave. Nice post, petey.
  • Good stuff, man. Also WKCR is a cool find.
  • A deservedly bopular cat was Thelonious.
  • Rest in peace, King.
  • Who is the lonliest monk?
  • Sphere the monk, spoil the thelonious.
  • I found it fascinating in "Straight No Chaser" that for the last 10 or so years of his life he basically gave up playing. Enigmatic at the very least, rumored to be slightly "tetched" as they say by some, difficult to work with for his quietness and occasional outbursts of anger, and also capable of theory-of-relativity level insight in 24 measures of music. Unique in the truest sense and painfully, quixotically, inevitably human. That hammering *bang!* chord cluster, the big silences where anything might almost be played next and then sometimes was. Wham! Sharpest suit around, too.
  • And the hat. Don't forget the hat.
  • Perhaps we shouldn't forget the heroin (of which there was quite a lot) either.