More Ben Riley! From the same record as yesterday— Thelonious Monk Live At The It Club— and in fact this is the very next tune they played at the gig, Bemsha Swing. So, two drum […]
Category: Thelonious Monk
Solo transcription: Ben Riley – Blues Five Spot
Solo by Ben Riley on Blues Five Spot, from the Thelonious Monk record Live At The It Club. Great record, and core literature. I think of Ben Riley’s playing as maybe the cleanest shot we […]
Listening to Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane
Some notes on the record Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane. I’ve been listening to Monk’s Carnegie Hall record a lot this week, let’s get into this one. I never owned it, and haven’t listened to […]
Transcription: Shadow Wilson comping
A little bit of Shadow Wilson’s playing on Nutty, from Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, at Carnegie Hall. This is Monk’s second solo chorus, starting at 2:33. The tune is 32 bars long, form is […]
Thelonious
Thinking about the tune Thelonious, by Thelonious Monk. It’s fun and unusual, based on a single note riff. I don’t believe the form comes from another tune, it’s just a little self-contained bebop invention. It’s […]
Thelonious’s ballad test
From Ben Riley’s 1986 interview in Modern Drummer with Jeff Potter: “In my first experience with [Thelonious Monk], in Amsterdam, we played ‘Embraceable You’ as a very slow ballad. Then he went into ‘Don’t Blame […]
Transcription: Philly Joe Jones – Let’s Cool One
Here’s Philly Joe Jones’s drum solo on Let’s Cool One, from the Clark Terry album In Orbit. Just the rhythm section plays the tune here: Thelonious Monk, Sam Jones, and Philly Joe. It’s a rather […]
Ben Riley comping
We lost a very great drummer this week, and one of a dwindling number of his generation: Ben Riley. He was best known for his playing with Thelonious Monk in the mid-60s, and with the […]
FRANKIE DUNLOP SPEAKS
This is incredible: AUDIO from Scott K. Fish’s interview with Frankie Dunlop. A long, hilarious story— and ultimately hair-raising, when you get to the part with Tony Williams et al in the audience— about Monk […]
Tootie Heath with Monk
On the Jazz At Lincoln Center blog, drummer Tootie Heath tells how a weeklong engagement he played with Thelonious Monk went down: I played a week with Monk and, every night, Nica [Monk’s friend and […]
Ed Blackwell on playing with Monk
Another choice bit from Ted Panken’s interview with Blackwell— Blackwell played with Monk in 1972: I’ll tell you what happened with Monk. During the course of the gig, after about a week… He used to […]
Transcription: Frankie Dunlop — Green Chimneys / Rouse’s solo
2024 UPDATE: Oops, apparently Ben Riley plays on this record. I need to look at the sleeve before posting these things. It sure sounded like Frankie Dunlop to me. Thanks to Andrew Wicks for the […]