The Boy Who Cried Freebird

by Mitch Myers

  Meanwhile, somewhere down Interstate 294, a frightfully bandaged Billy Potter (now called “Danny the Dog-Faced Boy”) was tearfully taking his first singing lesson from Wild Man Fisher and Shooby Taylor the Human Horn.

  “Let’s take it from the top,” said Fisher. “And this time try it in the key of Z.”

  —For Irwin Chusid

  THE MONK AND THE MESSENGER

  Among the classic albums of the 1950s, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk is a distinctive collaboration between two giants. There are other recordings by both Monk and Blakey that have been more highly rated, but this particular union remains an essential document, frozen in time and place.

  A little history lesson might be useful when approaching Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk, for the lives of Blakey and Monk intertwined long before this collaboration and continued long afterward.

  Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh in 1919 and played piano before switching to drums. He married at the age of sixteen and worked in steel mills but soon became a full-time musician, joining Fletcher Henderson’s band in 1939.

  Art’s early influences were two famous swing drummers: Big Sid Catlett and the diminutive Chick Webb. He was also impressed with able-bodied percussionists like Papa Jo Jones, Sonny Greer, and Kenny Clarke (the father of modern jazz drumming and original member of the Modern Jazz Quartet).

  In 1944 Blakey became part of singer Billy Eckstine’s group, where he first played alongside young lions Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Later, Art became absorbed with his African heritage, and after traveling to Africa and jamming with tribal drummers, he took up with Islam, adopting the Muslim name of Abdullah Ibn Buhaina.

  Thelonious Sphere Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on October 10, 1917. He grew up in New York City’s San Juan Hill neighborhood, close to where Lincoln Center is now located. Monk expressed interest in the piano at age six and was mostly self-taught. He played organ in church and toured briefly with a female evangelist who doubled as a miracle healer.

  Returning to his family in New York in 1936, Monk continued working professionally, showing the influence of pianists Earl “Fatha” Hines and Art Tatum. Monk’s ability and reputation grew, and he began playing gigs with Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams.

  In 1940, Thelonious found himself among a group of musicians congregating at Minton’s Playhouse, a Harlem nightclub where manager Teddy Hill and drummer Kenny Clarke were organizing nightly jam sessions.

  Jazz would never be the same.

  Thriving at Minton’s, Clarke and Monk played alongside a number of talented players. Exchanging new musical concepts were pianist-turned-drummer Denzil Best, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Joe Guy, bassist Nick Fenton, and guitarist Charlie Christian. A little later, altoist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker came on board.

  Together, they formed a brash inner circle of bebop revolutionaries. Jazz elders like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Roy Eldridge started dropping in at Minton’s, as did eager players like saxophonist Don Byas, bassist Jimmy Blanton, Monk’s protégé Bud Powell, and a forceful young drummer named Art Blakey.

  Although Monk and Blakey shared a love for bebop, neither fit precisely into the conventions of the new music that they helped to create. Monk contributed to the fashions of bop with his goatee, beret, and glasses (as well as his hipster vernacular), but his angular piano style was more restrained than the frenetic approach of his peers. As a result, Monk was rarely used at recording sessions, with the bop illuminati opting for the less idiosyncratic piano efforts of Bud Powell or Al Haig.

  Although Art was clearly inspired by Kenny Clarke’s modern drum innovations, he wasn’t as experimental as the elder Clarke—or even as much as another young drummer named Max Roach.

  There were also marked differences between the personalities of Monk and Blakey. Thelonious was emotionally erratic and needed a lot of support. Well insulated, Monk developed much of his musical approach within the confines of his mother’s home. During his “house seminars,” Monk discussed his abstruse theories with eager students like Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, and later, John Coltrane. But Monk was unreliable, arriving late to gigs, falling asleep at the piano, and sometimes not showing up at all.

  Monk’s recording career began with a 1944 session, called Bean and the Boys, accompanying tenor saxophone titan Coleman Hawkins. Thelonious was at his most boppish with Hawkins, playing fast and furious. As the years progressed, his deliberate style grew slower, jagged and sparse. He began implying more on the piano, wandering further behind the beat and using fewer notes.

  Monk’s music embraced irregular rhythms and had an internal harmony all its own. His compositions were as peculiar as his piano technique, and some of Monk’s tunes were just too tricky for his fellow musicians to play. Due to an unfortunate and controversial drug bust in 1951, Thelonious lost his cabaret card, which severely restricted his opportunities to perform in Manhattan.

  Art Blakey, on the other hand, was a hardworking drummer who made his name as a bandleader and a worldwide ambassador of jazz. Not innovative like Monk, Dizzy, or Bird, Art’s style was more direct, compensating with incredible strength, excellent listening skills, and a superb sense of dynamics. His group, the Jazz Messengers, became a virtual finishing school for many young musicians.

  However different, Monk and Blakey had much in common. Both men recorded their bandleader debuts on Blue Note Records in 1947. The LP edition of Monk’s Genius of Modern Music (Volume I) collected his 78 rpm singles and introduced epic compositions like “’Round Midnight” and “Ruby, My Dear.”

  Monk’s debut also featured Art Blakey, as Art was the pianist’s most favored drummer. Thelonious took Art under his wing soon after the drummer moved to New York. And just as Monk had done with Bud Powell, Thelonious made sure that Art was welcome to play at various jam sessions in the city.

  Art Blakey appeared on more Monk recordings than any other drummer until the end of the 1950s—including Monk’s groundbreaking work on the Prestige and Riverside labels. Their relationship would come full circle in 1971, when Blakey played on Monk’s final recordings, The London Collection (Volumes 1, 2, and 3).

  Art’s debut as a bandleader on the New Sounds LP was less auspicious than Monk’s 1947 record. His group, “Art Blakey’s Messengers,” had been scaled down from a big band (“The 17 Messengers”) to an octet. The “Messengers” name endured—signifying the group’s preponderance of Islamic believers as well as their swinging musical message.

  Art soon became busy as house drummer for Blue Note Records, and the Messengers remained dormant until Blakey joined forces with pianist Horace Silver in 1954. Their group, the Jazz Messengers, signaled the advent of what came to be described as hard bop. The original band included tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, and bassist Doug Watkins, and they remained a cooperative unit until Silver’s departure in 1956.

  From then on, the Jazz Messengers were fully under Art’s command.

  The Jazz Messengers showcased Blakey’s roaring percussion style. Playing hard and loud but never out of control, he’d establish several rhythms simultaneously, keeping time on the ride cymbal and accenting offbeats with the hi-hat. Inevitably, Art would unleash a thunderous press roll on the snare—and dropping these percussive punctuations became his most explosive trademark.

  Featuring a traditional bebop lineup—piano, bass, and drums with saxophone and trumpet—the Messengers dutifully followed the formula made popular by Bird and Dizzy. The sax and trumpet would present an introductory theme, harmonizing in unison with just the slightest dissonance. A string of individual solos would follow. After an instrumental round-robin, the front line would restate the opening theme, signaling the tune’s conclusion.

  There were other groups who played “soulful” jazz around this time, like Cannonball Adderley and the combo he led with his brother Nat. Still, the evolution from bebop to “hard bop” can be traced di
rectly to Blakey’s invigorating work with Horace Silver.

  On their 1954 recording, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers, the band presents an upbeat yet simplified manifestation of bebop using Silver’s bluesy, gospel-tinged compositions, like “Doodlin’” and “The Preacher.”

  The funkier aspects of hard bop emphasized the beat, making it less cerebral and more physically expressive than the earliest bop experiments. This swinging, soulful style was well established on the first Jazz Messengers record, and subsequent editions of Blakey’s band simply refined their waggish, hard-bop strut.

  Besides the first Silver-led session, the original Jazz Messengers recorded a pair of live albums in 1955 called At the Café Bohemia. Then the band went through a striking series of personnel changes, making several albums for a variety of record labels in the space of two years. This almost brings us to the musicians who took part in the making of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.

  But first: Ace trumpeter Kenny Dorham abandoned the group and was replaced by Donald Byrd, who in turn was replaced by Bill Hardman. Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley also left the fold, but rejoined temporarily (and not for the last time), with altoist Jackie McLean replacing him on both occasions. Before McLean departed, tenor man Johnny Griffin was enlisted to succeed him, and for a brief time the two saxophonists shared the bandstand. Jimmy “Spanky” De Brest supplanted bassist Doug Watkins, who was later killed in a car crash (1962).

  When pianist Horace Silver split in 1956, his substitute was Junior Mance, who was followed by Sam Dockery. Although Monk sat in for Dockery on this one recording session, Sam continued playing with the Messengers, only to be replaced by the returning Junior Mance and also by Walter Bishop Jr. Later, in the summer of 1958, Bobby Timmons would take a more lasting residence at the keys.

  So, Art Blakey took an archetypal bop aggregate of saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums into the recording studio on May 14 and 15, 1957.

  Trumpeter Bill Hardman came to Blakey after a stint with Charles Mingus’s Jazz Workshop, but he didn’t have the talent of Kenny Dorham or Donald Byrd. Still, the Cleveland-bred Hardman was a solid craftsman with a tempestuous sound. Ironically, his tenure with the Messengers was further overshadowed by his successors, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. Hardman did, however, rejoin Blakey, and he recorded with the Messengers again in the 1970s.

  Chicagoan Johnny Griffin was a sizzling tenor saxophonist, and his urgent playing suited both Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk. Indeed, Griffin joined Monk’s own quartet after leaving the Messengers. Griffin’s furious tenor wail provided Thelonious with a transitional link between John Coltrane and his later, most dependable saxophone foil, tenor man Charlie Rouse.

  Spanky De Brest was the weakest link, and the bassist from Philadelphia sank into obscurity after leaving Blakey.

  Monk was going through his own changes when this record was made. Most importantly, he had finally regained his cabaret card, thanks to manager Harry Colomby and devoted jazz patron Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter. Monk’s residence at the Five Spot with Coltrane brought him a great deal of attention, and in the year before the Messengers album, he released Brilliant Corners, recorded the solo album Thelonious Himself, and appeared as a sideman on Sonny Rollins Volume 2.

  This session highlights the kinetic interplay between Monk and Blakey. Their rapport was more than a decade in the making, and Monk’s uncommon sense of time is juxtaposed against Art’s forceful yet restrained punctuations. Mostly unhurried by Blakey’s vigorous timekeeping, Monk’s whimsical dissonance and illustrative solos were tempered by the Messengers’ visceral bop methodology.

  The Messengers were actually less boisterous than usual—but they still bopped hard enough to keep Monk from drifting too far into his own fractured eccentricities.

  Fortunately, Monk’s offbeat nature didn’t prevent him from responding in kind. Minding his role as guest pianist, he followed the group’s structure—comping shrewdly when the spirit moved him, and embellishing the melodies with strange, dramatic flair. Blakey returned the favor by selecting some of Monk’s most memorable compositions, as all the album’s tunes (save one) were taken from his celebrated songbook.

  A near-perfect example of what must be considered a manifesto in modern jazz, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk is an exercise in swinging eclecticism. The performances unveil sharp solo improvisations fixed within timeless small-group arrangements.

  Blakey sounds exuberant from the opening strains of “Evidence” right up to the closing moments of Johnny Griffin’s composition, “Purple Shades.” Contrapuntal conversations between Monk and Blakey abound as Hardman and Griffin breathe fire into Monk’s über-logical sound sketches. They flesh out Monk’s dangling chord structures and oblique harmonies, while the wide open spaces and contemplative silences of his piano work remain intact.

  The rendition of “Rhythm-A-Ning” is particularly unrestrained, and it allows Griffin and Blakey to showcase their fleet inventiveness. Tunes like “I Mean You” and “In Walked Bud” were already more than a decade old, but the band celebrates Monk’s timeless melodies with sparkling energy.

  A grooving synthesis of bluesy blowing and stylish structure, the album finds Blakey and Monk communing blissfully, and the end result is far greater than its composite parts.

  What would this group have sounded like if they’d played together for more than those two days in May? All we can say is that Blakey’s drum solos were richly indulgent pleasures, and invigorated by Art’s faith and leadership, Monk was at the top of his game.

  Not exactly hard-bop or bebop, neither stereotypically cool nor hot, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk stands as a testament to creative individualism, friendship, and the collaborative spirit of jazz.

  Need more “Evidence?” Just listen.

  CAPTAIN’S ORDERS

  The rock critic sat in the dining room of his apartment, surrounded by stacks of press releases, DVDs, CDs, and other artifacts of popular music culture. While there were unopened packages strewn all over the place, the critic’s attention was focused on just a few parcels.

  It had taken some real effort to obtain the obscure Captain Beefheart material. After pleading with his editor for an actual assignment, he had to locate and then contact several small record companies before acquiring the many different Beefheart collections. Now he had them all.

  Of course, the critic had been listening to Captain Beefheart for years, but he was still thrilled to have gotten so much fresh product. He had just settled down with the first disc of the five-CD retrospective, Grow Fins, when his lovely wife returned home after a long hard day at the office.

  “Hi, honey!” he yelled while Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, wailed through the speakers. The critic’s wife walked straight into the dining room and glared at him. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Your boss giving you a hard time again?”

  “You know damn well what’s wrong,” she answered sharply. “We’ve talked about this a million times. You know I support what you do for a living. You know that I understand how music is your life and your record collection is a vital resource that helps you with your job no matter how cluttered it makes the apartment. I even learned to appreciate jazz when you were doing that big essay on John Coltrane, but this is too much. I can’t stand Captain Beefheart and will not be forced to listen to him in my own home.”

  “But honey!” the rock critic pleaded.

  “Don’t ‘But honey!’ me, you bastard!” the critic’s wife screamed. “I’ve heard your whole spiel about how Beefheart is one of the true original musicians to emerge in the post-Elvis age. I know that you passionately believe the man was a psychedelic rock bard whose unique grasp of blues, boogie, Dadaist poetry, avant-garde jazz, and arcane field hollers informed an incredibly distinctive sonic identity both onstage and in the studio. I’ve heard all about the harmonica hoedowns, the distended guitar soli, and Beefheart’s relationship with Fra
nk Zappa, as well as his obtuse blues mutterings and the Magic Band’s polyrhythmic group encounters. I know that you think the Beefheart universe is a consistently strange and beautiful place that captures the spirit and alchemy of an essential American artist. I don’t care anymore and I won’t have it! It’s Beefheart or me! Now make your decision once and for all!”

  The critic stared at his wife for a very long time.

  Finally, he whispered, “Can we at least wait until this song is over? It’s one of my favorites.”

  IT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME

  The year was 1998. Stephen D’Angelo and Mark Spinetti were in Mark’s basement apartment sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching the Yankees on TV. It was another hot afternoon in Queens, New York, on the seventh of August, and the two had nothing better to do but get drunk and reminisce about the good old days when punks were punks.

  “Hey,” said Stephen. “Remember when Johnny Thunders went out with your sister and you wanted to kick his ass?”

  Mark stared blankly at the ball game—the Yanks were already clobbering the Royals and it was only the second inning. “Yeah, I remember,” he said finally. “And when I caught up with the little scumbag he promised to get us into one of those New York Dolls gigs at the Mercer Arts Center. Good show, too. That was when Billy Murcia was still alive and playing the drums for them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stephen agreed. “I really thought those guys were going to hit it big for a while there. After Jerry Nolan replaced Billy they sounded even better, but dope broke up that band pretty quick.”

  Mark walked to the fridge and fished out two more beers. He could hear a soap opera blaring from his parents’ home upstairs. “That’s for sure,” he sighed. “How about the time we saw Thunders at that used record store in the East Village? He was selling off a whole stack of Dolls LPs for a dollar apiece. Nowadays those things go for big bucks!”