Cashbox : 05/31/1958

Monk’s driving piano and the Messengers’ hard bop delivery make for a collection of swinging sessions. Blowing out front are Bill Hardman on trumpet and Johnny Griffin on tenor. Spanky DeBrest’s impressive bass work is also a driving factor. Art Blakey turns in tremendous efforts with the sticks. The set’s standout item is an opus penned by Monk, Rhythm-A-Ning where everybody stretches out. Must stock.

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American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : August 1958

This is one of Thelonious Monk’s rare appearances as a sideman, and his solos and accompaniments here are among his best, well worth anyone’s time and attention. Inadvertently, he throws a glaring spotlight on the deficiencies of the members of Blakey’s group, much as if Sir Laurence Olivier were to have a supporting role in the senior class play. Blakey is an old hand, of course, and that statement does not apply to his drumming. But John Griffin (tenor) and Bill Hardman (trumpet) are another matter. Only the first of them shows originality, and their obvious “killing time” in the middle of solos is painful to hear in juxtaposition to the obvious necessity in Monk’s playing. In Blue Monk, for example, after Griffin has interpolated both Sentimental Rhapsody and Rhapsody in Blue, Monk starts a line with the very first note of his solo (notice that he is aware of where to begin even though Griffin is not too conscious of where to end), and continues on a direct path until his very last note. And Monk, if a glib phrase can serve for a long explanation, plays without adjectives. Equally remarkable is his entrance on In Walked Bud. There is much to be learned from Monk’s lesson on this record. Only my objection to criticism of criticism, which is too rarified an atmosphere to suit my taste, prevents extended praise of Martin Williams’ liner notes on Blakey and Monk.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : July 1958

Monk and Blakey are two of the saltiest, most undeviatingly individualistic performers in current jazz. It is too bad that their reunion has taken place within the framework of Blakey’s blatant Jazz Messengers, where their invigorating flights and crafty sparring are constantly interrupted by the earthbound trumpet of Bill Hardman and Johnny Griffin’s merely adequate tenor saxophone. But those moments when Monk and Blakey are rubbing caustically against each other give off a glowing jazz heat. Five of the six selections are Monk compositions.

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Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO)
R.K.S. : 06/15/1958

When the rowdy bop of the ’40s began to cool down to become the cool school, there were a few individualistic musicians who refused to resolve their flatted fifths and join the cool movement. One of these was Thelonious Monk, the pianist who shared honors with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as a founder of bop.

Bop at the beginning was brittle, harsh music. The cool movement softened it, but that direction seemed to rob it of some of its spirit, and a reawakening of “hard” bop began. With hard bop reborn, musicians like Monk have come into the recording spotlight once again.

Monk’s latest is on the Atlantic label (No. 1278), Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk. With energetic accompaniment by the Blakey group (a combo that until now never seemed very inspiring to me), Thelonious stumbles discordantly through six original tunes. Monk’s piano is something like expressionism in art. It is rarely pretty. He seems to be hitting the wrong notes most of the time, this with all the technique of a 9-year-old piano pupil. But there are surprising things in the sounds he makes. In all his dissonance he achieves some new musical ideas.

Depending on the extent to which you have been affected by jazz, you will find Monk’s music either highly provocative and stimulating, or just plain irritating and sour. Besides Blakey on drums, the other Messengers are Johnny Griffin on tenor, Bill Hardman on trumpet and Spanky DeBrest on bass.

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Miami Herald (Miami, FL)
Fred Sherman : 07/06/1958

Just a year ago, a young trumpet player showed up on a Prestige album called Jackie’s Pal. That session with alto saxist Jackie McLean’s quintet was my introduction to Bill Hardman. In a year, Hardman has grown tall in the jazz world as one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

This is a group that moves on several planes. Nurtured in a hard bop climate, the Jazz Messengers can also generate warmth. Drummer Blakey’s two most recent albums demonstrate full coverage of all moods. On Night in Tunisia (Vik LX-1115) the title piece is a 13-minute jazz milestone. The drum is an introduction to a moving Hardman solo that makes it clear temperature readings are to be in the upper register. On his own composition, Theory of Art, the trumpeter skips and soars. A five-tracker, this album is music to listen to jazz by.

The cool side of the group is offered in an album called The Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk (Atlantic 1278). Pianist Monk wrote five of the half dozen numbers. The sixth is by John Griffin, the driving tenor man.

Monk’s opening piece called Evidence makes it clear you are in for some innovations. The whole mood is brittle, especially the conversation between piano and tenor sax. Even with Spanky DeBrest’s bass, the pace is fast and the statements short.

Drum solos leave me cold, but Blakey manages throughout to explode with reason. His rhythmic lines are complicated and deserve attention.

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Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, PA)
Harold L. Keith : 05/24/1958

Atlantic’s tubthumpers are more or less transfixed from the solid gas arising around the release of their Blakey-Monk cooker on LP 1278.

The Ertegun clan has a right to feel ossified for the disc is indeed a fluent offering which is made so by the smooth lubrication of Art Blakey and the automatic Monk transmission on piano. Then too, some super-powered fuel is pumped in high-octane fashion by Johnny Griffin and Bill Hardman on tenor and trumpet, respectively.

Blakey has never been in better form, nor his skins more acutely in tune. Dig his work on I Mean You and Evidence. Thelonious is still the master at the art of vonce and in a class by himself. In addition to the tracks mentioned in connection with Art’s stickwork, In Walked Bud, Purple Shades and Blue Monk are also heard.

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San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)
Ralph J. Gleason : 06/15/1958

The current Jazz Messengers group with Monk on piano in half a dozen selections, all but one of which are written by Monk. This is a very intriguing album which, even if it doesn’t make it all the way, certainly has some fine moments in it such as Blue Monk and In Walked Bud. The Messengers, who generally have inclined towards frenzy on their LPs, are more subdued here, perhaps through the presence of Monk. The latter is his usual piquant self.

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San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA)
C.H. Garrigues : 10/26/1958

One of the most interesting developments in jazz during the last year has been the emergence of Thelonious Monk as dominant pianist of the year — a development which, I suspect, was due less to an improvement in Monk than to the development of a generation of jazzmen capable of playing with him.

Until recently, musicians have praised him, have admired him — and have gone to whatever lengths necessary (with some few exceptions) to keep off the platform with him. (There was, for example, the occasion in 1954 when, on a record date, Miles Davis asked him to “lay out” on Miles’ choruses of Bags Groove; Monk complied and then, in his own chorus, proceeded to cut Miles as thoroughly as one could wish. This is on Prestige LP7109, a reissue.)

Early this year a change in the trend could have been noted in Mulligan Meets Monk (Riverside RLP 12-247) where Mulligan went over and did it Monk’s way and produced one of the best records of the year.

Now, just to prove the point, comes a whole new handful of LP’s by Monk dominated groups; in which the peculiar genius which is Monk’s shines through the work of the hornmen for perhaps the first time.

The best of these, for the initiate, is probably Thelonious in Action (Riverside RLP 12-262) in which Monk appears with the group he recently led at New York’s Five Spot Cafe. Here Johnny Griffin shows himself as a tenor who possibly tops Rollins and Coltrane, probably the only tenor who can keep up with Monk in terms both of harmonic concept and in terms of simply getting around on his horn. The cognizant cats will want to compare Rhythm-a-ning with his version on the Mulligan album. The uninitiate will need to be warned that this is not for them — unless they, too, want to become cognizant cats.

Of scarcely less importance is In Orbit (RLP 12-271) in which Monk appears with the Clark Terry Quartet — with Clark playing a fluegelhorn which succeeds in matching the strange, often dissonant colors of Monk’s piano progressions. (Compare the Monk-Terry effect here with the Monk-Davis piece on Prestige LP7109).

A different sort of blending is found on Atlantic 1278, entitled just Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk. It goes without saying that any combo which includes Blakey is going to be dominated by Blakey. Yet here, too, Griffin and Bill Hardman on trumpet show that they are hearing things Monk’s way — in a sense in which few have heard things his way since bop began to take form more than a decade ago.

Again, for the uninitiate, it may be explained that Monk sounds the way he does, not because his fingers cannot find the right keys, but because this is what modern jazz — Monk style — sounds like. To the initiate, it makes sense. When to you too, it makes sense, you, too, will be a cognizant cat.

And meanwhile, compare Blue Monk on the Atlantic album (dominated by Blakey) with the same tune on Monk’s own Five Spot album. You will see what we mean.

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Down Beat : 09/04/1958
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

This is another set combining Monk with a group not his own but that soon becomes his own.

Griffin throughout has less of the run-away fire and more cohesion than his recent recordings have shown. Hardman, too, seems in better control than on recent outings.

Blakey’s work is not so blatantly out front as when he is at the reins, but his presence is certainly felt rhythmically and creatively.

Some of the ensembles, as on Evidence, show signs of roughness around the edges. And neither horn soloist manages to sustain the level set in Purple Shades and in Blue Monk all the way through the other tracks. DeBrest also solos well on both tunes. On Shades, Monk comes through with some concise and witty work behind the soloists.

The LP is angular, often quite brittle, but also quite representative of Monk and where he stands today.

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Liner Notes by Martin Williams

I think that this collaboration of Art Blakey’s group and Thelonious Monk dramatizes important events in jazz in the late 1950’s for, although each man has been heard from for years, each has recently been listened to probably more attentively than ever before, and each is a man in whose work we see jazz doing what it must do as a music with an identity of its own – finding, not borrowing, its way by developing the implicit possibilities in the materials which are its substance.

Now that the “cool” conception of the early fifties has ceased to be a fad, it should be clear which of its arrangers, its instrumentalists, and its groups have been and are capable of genuine creativity within that idiom, and of exploring it further, and which are capable only of a kind of derivative hack-work. The fashion as such has passed and the real artists and craftsmen can be counted.

When the pendulum swung, it swung almost violently, and the style it swung to soon acquired a name or two: “funky” and “hard Bop”. Art Blakey has led groups of messengers for years, but the group he introduced in 1954 proclaimed the “funky” style. These men wanted to incorporate as much of the quality, as well as the devices, of blues and church music in their playing as they could. Inevitably, they were called regressive and even crude, but their conception was actually neither naif nor reactionary. It implied that if jazz got too far from the kinds of music in its background, it might not only be in danger of a contrivance and preciocity, but of losing something essential — indeed, even of losing its identity. Such an attitude is not merely conservative, and the style not for another reason: as I have indicated above, I think it is bringing about some stylistic changes in jazz. (For a precedent, we can remember how the dominance of the almost classic ragtime conception at the turn of the century was supplanted by what has been called a “blues craze”, and how a combination of elements of these two was worked out in New Orleans.)

Some of Blakey’s earliest records were made with Thelonious Monk and the two collaborate excellently. It has been said of Blakey that he took the bop style and reduced it to its elements. When such a thing happens, one had better be watching for changes.

The bop drummer both simplified his basic accompaniment and expanded it by adding to it a spontaneous series of accents and replies to the soloist’s improvisations, with bass “explosions”, snare and cymbal strokes, etc.

Listen to Blakey behind Bill Hardman’s trumpet solo on I Mean You. Clearly he not only accompanies but directly leads the trumpet into ideas and motifs. It is a dangerous role for a drummer, demanding constant discretion and sympathy with the soloist. The second change is illustrated in some of Blakey’s solos: probably more directly than any other drummer, Blakey saw the possibility of sustaining polyrhythmic lines and he can keep several rhythms going with an unusual kind of continuity. But the most important point for me is the one we can hear illustrated by what he does on the opening chorus of I Mean You. He carries the accompanying 4/4 pulse, but, at the same time, he improvises a parallel percussive line which interplays with both the melody and the fundamental time: the jazz drummer becomes an improvising percussionist on a plane almost equal to that of the horns.

Rhythm is fundamental to jazz and if one develops its role soundly, one develops jazz along the way that its own nature implies that it should go. Such an obvious thing, and yet how brilliant. In the forties, Paul Bacon, probably the only American critic who understood Thelonious Monk, said of him in The Record Changer that he had looked at jazz, seen the gaps and, sacrificing the obvious things that everyone could do, proceeded to fill in those gaps. The same kind of thing might be said of Art Blakey.

Almost anyone knows that Monk is supposed to have been one of the founders of bop. Undoubtedly he made important contributions to the style, but it should be clear by now that what this strikingly original musician has been working on all along is something different.

Monk is a virtuoso of time, rhythm, metre, accent. He has played versions of “standards” which are little more than sets of unique rhythmic variations directly on a melodic line, with an evolving pattern of displaced accents and shifting metres — a conception at once more basic than the groups of melodic variations Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, and Fats Waller produced, and more “experimental” than the harmonic variations, which improvise new melodic lines, of the late swing and bop instrumentalists. At the same time, he may play melodic variations, and his solo here on In Walked Bud interplays the melodic line of that piece with contrasting motifs. And notice his rhythmic and harmonic experiments with the sparsely suggestive and obviously difficult tissue of notes that is Evidence, both in his own solo and behind John Griffin’s.

Monk’s harmonies, always a part of the picture, are not innovations in themselves — it is the sequence and pattern of alteration in which he plays them that is unique. In this and in simultaneous accentual shiftings, there is an almost constant element of humor (even sarcasm) that his wonderful, deliberate dissonances often point up.

Monk also plays harmonic variations, and these may seem quite simple, even casual, on the surface. His two choruses here on I Mean You show the kind of inner logic they can have. The first chorus is based on a descending motif variously altered. The second on a brief and contrasting riff figure which is turned several ways, subjected to a counter-riff or two and, in the end, complemented by a descent which alludes to the first chorus and ties the two together. And, lest anyone doubt that Monk can improvise a lyric melody, let him hear the solo on Blue Monk.

Monk’s style, like Lester Young’s in the late thirties, depends on surprise. It does not, like the work of earlier “stride” pianists (yes, Monk, like Count Basie, is really a member of that school) depend on the expected. He can also be one of the most exciting and original accompanists in jazz, as his work behind Bill Hardman on I Mean You, both horns on Rythm-a-ning, and behind Griffin on Purple Shades illustrates. The latter example seems to me one of the best things I have ever heard him do on records and, notice also that both his solo and his accompaniment on that piece are based on similar ideas and patterns, giving that performance a fine continuity.

I think that on the whole, Monk’s compositions place him with the great jazz composers, but I will confine myself to a few points which the selections here illustrate. Whereas Ellington often leans heavily on the “show tune” tradition, Monk is more directly instrumental in his conception, even when he uses the 32-bar, A A B A popular tune form. Monk, himself, has made the point about the integration of the B, bridge, melody; notice that the bridges of I Mean You and of In Walked Bud are both developments of bits of the final phrase in the A melody. It is not Monk’s habit to base his compositions on “standard” chord sequences, but he may, and three of the tunes here do use slight alterations of base lines we all know. That is almost bound to be true of any 12-bar blues, of course, but notice the structure of Blue Monk‘s melody. Most blues have an open space of about three beats at the end of each four-bar unit. There are “modern” blues which deliberately fill this hole, of course, but the deceptive simplicity with which this melody unfolds makes for neither a trick nor a contrivance, but an inevitability that flows like life.

Monk does indeed “fill in the gaps.”