Jazz, like life, is full of what-ifs. And it’s tempting to wonder whether the prestigious solo career of musical giant and bebop pioneer Thelonious Monk would ever have materialised without Blue Note Records.

As he approached his 30th birthday in early 1947, despite over a decade of inspired playing and composing, he wondered if his time had come and gone. Miles, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were getting all the plaudits on 42nd Street (though they often mentioned Monk during interviews), a state of play particularly embarrassing for such a proud New Yorker.

But then the tide started to turn for Monk. Following a tip-off from friend and fellow pianist Mary Lou Williams, journalist/photographer Bill Gottlieb tracked him down for a Down Beat magazine cover story: “Thelonius [sic] Monk – Genius Of Bop” duly appeared in the 24 September 1947 issue. As a direct result, Blue Note A&R man/solo artist Ike Quebec arranged for label co-founder Alfred Lion (and wife Lorraine, later to marry Village Vanguard owner Max Gordon) to visit Monk’s West 63rd Street house.

In Monk’s cramped bedroom, the couple were treated to a full-length solo piano performance, including “Round Midnight”, “What Now”, “Ruby My Dear” and several untitled pieces. Monk passed the audition with flying colours, but then came the kicker: the Lions were so enthralled with his music that they wanted him to record in less than two weeks.

But who would accompany Monk? His regular bassist Gene Ramey and drumming friend Art Blakey were natural choices. But the chosen horn section were young players who had never set foot in a recording studio: Billy Smith on tenor, Danny Quebec on alto and Idrees Sulieman on trumpet.

They gathered in Monk’s bedroom for intense rehearsals, mostly playing compositions cooked up at Minton’s Playhouse on West 118th Street in the early 1940s, where he played in the house band with drummer Kenny Clarke. Some of these masterpieces were characterised by his famous “half-diminished” chord, utilising the tritone or “flattened fifth”. It was another way of keeping out the uninitiated, the “squares”.

[The tritone, the key ingredient of any diminished chord, is the distinctive sound of two notes separated by three whole tones. This interval is only one semitone away from being the bright, neutral sounding ‘perfect fifth’. It’s this sense of it being close but not quite perfect that gives it such a distinctive, almost clanging sound. It’s such an unconventional interval that classical musicians often refer to it as the devil’s interval! – ed.]

Nine days later, Monk, Ramey and Blakey recorded “April In Paris”, “Ruby My Dear”, “Well You Needn’t” and “Off Minor” in trio format. For a third session on 21 November, Monk brought in George Taitt on trumpet and Sahib Shihab on alto and baritone. Then vibraphonist and featured soloist Milt Jackson came in for a further 2 July 1948 session, this time recorded at Apex Studios.

“Genius Of Modern Music Volume 1” brings together many classic 10-inch sides recorded during these first four Blue Note sessions. It remains a revelatory listen, as fresh as a daisy, emphasising Monk’s remarkable sense of space, sense of humour, love of dissonance, virtuosity and passion for entertaining. It’s an album that changed the course of American musical history. Philip Larkin summed it up well in his “All That Jazz”: “Unexpected, at times outlandish, supremely confident”.

Blue Note’s marketing at the time – masterminded by Lorraine Lion – emphasised the more exotic, unpredictable aspects of Monk’s character and music (“The High Priest of Bebop”), a choice which divides opinion. And, despite the label’s deep passion for the music, they initially couldn’t shift too many Monk records. But 1948 would prove to be his busiest year to date, and we are left with this remarkable landmark of modern music.

---

Matt Phillips is a London-based writer and musician whose work has appeared in Jazzwise, Classic Pop and Record Collector. He’s the author of “John McLaughlin: From Miles & Mahavishnu To The 4th Dimension” and “Level 42: Every Album, Every Song”.

---

_{Header image: Thelonious Monk. Photo: William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.}