Thelonious Monk

BlackDroog

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Great thread. That has got to be one of the best album covers ever. I love Monk but I only have a couple albums. need to expand my collection more.
 

erker

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Great thread. That has got to be one of the best album covers ever. I love Monk but I only have a couple albums. need to expand my collection more.

The liner notes make it even better than it already is:

Although the illustration on the album cover may seem a trifle bizarre to the uninitiated, knowing intimates of Monk will recognize the setting as that of his studio, an important part of his Manhattan apartment. In this atelier are the memorabilia of an adventurous and richly rewarding life. Most noticeable, perhaps, is the Nazi storm trooper. As real as he looks, he is stuffed, a trophy of Monk's forays as a member of the French Resistance movement in World War II, the famed FFI.With a cry of "Take that, you honkie Kraut!" Capitaine Monk shot him cleanly and truly through the heart. He weighed 187 pounds, dressed.

Thelonious' only pet is the cow who answers to the name Jellyroll and has the run of the apartment. It is interesting to know that Capitaine Monk had access to a piano throughout the combat and would never go on a mission without warming up with some forty or fifty choruses of "Darkness on the Delta." The field telephone on the wall, a memento of Normandy, now serves as a direct line to Le Pavillon in the event he wishes to order a delivery of French soul food.

The rest of the objects are really almost self explanatory - the Nazi battle flag he captured at Nuremburg, the dynamite he used so often on key objectives in Germany, the grenades, machine pistol, the .45 automatic - all of them bring tears of nostalgia to Monk's eyes as he thinks of action-packed years gone by. He was part of the underground then - for years in post-war America his piano was part of the underground of jazz. Now, and indeed for the past few years, this jazz giant is emerging as the great artist he has always been, one of the most inventive jazzmen in history.

Actually, the title of this album, UNDERGROUND is something of a misnomer - Monk surfaced long ago! He has been committing thelonious assaults on certain hidebound enclaves of jazz since the mid-Forties, and the attacks are beginning to tell. Oh yes, about the girl with the firearm in the background. No explanation was asked, nor was one forthcoming.


:lawd:

Man, Monk is the damn man. Can't nobody fu*k with him... We need a damn Thelonious Monk smiley my coli brehs. Can somebody cut one straight from the albumcover?
 

erker

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We need that Thelonious Monk smiley my coli brehs...

Monk-smiley.png


Can it be done? I think it would be mad useful on this Forum.
 

tirademode

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I love in Straight No Chaser it shows how off kilter he was with the world .

Continually spinning and twirling in circles when he walked .

Really translates in his style of playing. The man is a legend .
 

erker

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Respect to all the jazz legends. Drop more cats for dudes to get
up on jazz heads

Alot of Jazz legends in this pic `Jazzcats crossing the Hudson`. Miles, Herbie, Coltrane, Sun Ra, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc. I bought this Madlib compilation off the strength of this cover. Too bad Thelonious Monk is not in it though...

jazzcats.jpg
 

Lucky_Lefty

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Please, expand. What stories have you heard about Bird?

well one story in particular that I know is when I'd hang around some old heads in the 18th & Vine district in KC...one tale is some local hot shot who thought he was on his level was sitting in the crowd and I guess he was taking bumps of coke and Bird was "supposedly" already loaded off heroin...so he sees this and stops the band, jumps off stage at the Blue Room, snatches the powder, snorts it up, tells the youngin that not only can he not play like him, he can't do drugs like him either or something to that extent. That table got autographed and is still in the Blue Room & Jazz museum...still think they were fukkin with me but the more I read about him it can't be that farfetched
 
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