But the pioneering soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy more than makes up for Larkin's critique, when says of Monk in an interview in his book Conversations:
Monk's tunes are the ones that I most enjoy playing. I like his use of melody, harmony, and especially his rhythm. Monk's music has profound humanity, disciplined economy, balanced virility, dramatic nobility, and innocently exuberant wit. Monk, by the way, like Louis Arm- strong, is a master of rhyme. For me, other masters of rhyme are Bird, Duke, Miles, Art Blakey, and Cecil Taylor.
Amen.
In "The Silence of Thelonious Monk," There's a nifty little tale that the great writer John Wideman tells of Monk in his favorite deli in Manhattan ordering up:
Good morning, Mr. Monk. How you do ink this fine morning? Sammy the butcher calls over his shoulder, busy with a takeout order or whatever it is, keeping his back turned.
If the dead lunch meat replied, it would be no surprise at all to Sammy compared with how high he'd jump, how many fingers he'd lose in the slicer, if the bearish, bearded schwartze in the knitted Kufi said good morning back. Monk stares at the white man in the white apron and T-shirt behind the white deli counter. At himself in the mirror where the man saw him. At the thin, perfect sheets that buckle off the cold slab of corned beef.
Red has his little neat white package in his hand and wants to get home and fix him a chopped-liver-and-onion sandwich and have it washed down good with a cold Heineken before his first pupil of the afternoon buzzes so he's on his way out when he hears Sammy say: Be with you in a moment, Mr. Monk.
Leave that mess you're messing wit alone, n-word, and get me some potato knishes, the story goes and Panama Red cracking up behind Monk's habit of niggering white black brown red Jew Muslim Christian, the only distinction of color mattering the ivory or ebony keys of his instrument and Thelonious subject to f*ck with that difference, too, chasing rainbows.
[Callaloo, Vol. 22, No. 3, John Edgar Wideman. The European Response: A Special Issue (Summer, 1999), pp. 550-557]
This seems like a good place to recall the colorful character of Monk not exactly apparent in the film.
Monk is most famous for "Round Midnight" (the inspiration for the jazz film by that title), and several other hits: "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.
Rewind & Playwill probably appeal to Monk fans the way some Dylan fans eat up every scrap of his outtakes and obscure sessions. So, it's recommended on that account alone.
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Here's "I Mean You (Live From Salle Pleyel, Paris, France/1969)" [You Tube]:
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Rewind & Play can be previewed at the Internet Archive:
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