Gil Coggins and Louis Hayes,
Photo by Barney Kulok
What is that thing he’s holding?
An old fashioned communication device. I courted my first wife with one when I was in Austin and she in Boston in 1990. . . cost a lot of money.
Thelonious and Nellie Monk at their home, with John Coltrane
“Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way — through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn’t know about at all.”
It’s funny, there was a time when I didn’t enjoy anything from Monk. I used to complain about his timing or his insertion of two or three note chords. Now every odd time signature or chord is a masterpiece.
Well I never complained about Monk, I always found his work intriguing without really understanding it. What got me initially was how simple it seemed but my gut told me it was really really complex.
I came to view Monk as a musical architect who was in a way deconstructing as he constructed. His melodies may have had an exterior inspiration/foundation (I for example think that “Round Midnight” was inspired by the melody of “Louise” [every little breeze seems to whisper Louise], or that “Reflections” was inspired by “How Much is that Doggie in the Window”) of just come from his imagination, but through almost obsessive analysis and hands on work they have been reduced like a sauce to the strongest and richest flavor with no excess.
It fascinates me that in the Minton recordings and other earliest Monk recordings he sounded much like Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum, and that when he began to really come into his own I hear Duke Ellington’s pianism as a component. And then sometime between the Blue Note and Riverside Recordings his sound and approach had been concentrated into his very own and almost every note was placed with a unique rhythmic sense and melodic purpose. His was a fascinating musical mind.
This has me remembering in the mid-nineties a guitarist friend told me he was trying to learn “Blue Monk” and was fascinated at how it was a blues but was not like the blues he played. I made him a 90 minute tape with about a dozen performances, live and studio, of the tune, for him to play around with and assimilate. He responded that it was very helpful but also sort of inhibiting. “I both think they are all pretty much the same, but also different! Confusing!”
You summed up my early experience with Thelonious Monk as well. My early exposure to jazz included Monk. As I was still getting into jazz I really didn’t question his odd rhythms, cord structures, or “random” notes. I just accepted it as his vision. Listening to Monk taught me to be open minded regarding new sounds. A lesson I carry with me to this day.
And overpriced it would seem. 
I can’t make out the make of the TT. 
I posted this on facebook today.
This week marks 18 years since my first wife Helen passed from lymphoma and MDS. She was so brilliant and kind and beautiful–a great loss to lose her at age 52. I’ll never forget her.
Here is a photo of her smiling so happily from her stay in Chile the summer before I first met her on our first day at the University of Chicago.
What an amazing person she was.