I certainly hope not. What was once a hobby has become a bit of an obsession. I wrote a long piece last year offering brief reviews of 30 “Salute to Thelonious” albums and now I’m back with four more.
The pick of the litter for me is Bobby Broom plays for Monk, featuring Bobby on guitar, along with Dennis Carroll on bass and Kobie Watkins on drums. Bobby sometimes plays chordal guitar, à la Wes Montgomery, which is a problem for me. It seems like it ought to be possible to play hip chordal guitar in jazz, but 99 percent of the time it comes off as “beautiful,” and beautiful jazz I don’t need. But when Bobby skips the chords and hits the single notes, the results are terrific. His take on “Work” is particularly fine. I always like the sound of a guitar/bass/drums trio. You can crank up the sound without pissing off your neighbors (not too much, anyway) and, believe me, this album is worth crankin’.
I missed one of the first “Salute to Thelonious” albums the first time around, Tommy Flannagan’s Thelonika, a play on Monk’s name and that of his main side gal, Pannonica Rothschild, the Baroness de Koenigswarter. Flannagan, often the model of a self-effacing accompanist during his career, takes the opportunity to pump it here, on eight Monk compositions and one of his own, “Thelonika.” As a bonus, the CD comes with a sketch of Monk done by “C Berit de Koenigswarter,” whoever he or she is.
Monk’s music can sound a little Swedish, so it’s not surprising that the Esbjön Svensson Trio, featuring Esbjön on piano, Dan Berglund on bass, and Magnus Öström on drums have come up with Esbjön Svensson Trio Plays Monk. This is a nice album, but the guys have a tendency to do what Monk didn’t like, simply riffing on the chords of his tunes instead of developing each piece as a composition.
Can one be too Monkish? John Tchicai in Monk’s Mood stays too much in one of Monk’s many moods, slow rumination, without always achieving the complexity that Monk could summon to make the still waters run deep. But there’s more to this album than gloom. It’s a keeper, definitely, featuring John on alto sax, George Colligan on piano and organ (Interesting? Yeah, I guess. I didn’t hate it.), Steve Laspina, bass, and Billy Drummond on drums. And I’ll go partway out on a limb and say it’s probably the best Monk album ever done by a 73-year-old sax player. You should sound so good at 73!
There are still a few more Monk albums out there that I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s nice to have something to look forward to. And, guys, keep ‘em coming!
In the meantime, to tide you over, here’s Monk playing “Epistrophy” in Japan, with Charlie Rouse (of course) on sax, Butch Warren on bass, and Frankie Dunlop on drums.
