Notes from Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser

Film mostly made of recovered footage, called “the Dead Sea Scrolls of jazz”. ([Netflix](http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Thelonious_Monk_Straight_No_Chaser/60003961))

> In the bebop period…the musicians weren’t obviously trying to please an audience, but they were playing their music their way. It was a real independent expression. – Harry Colomby, 11:40

In NYC you had to have a police-stamped card in order to be a musician. If you committed a crime, the police took your card away. Monk had his taken away helping a friend evade arrest for drugs. – 14:00. Interesting that this was even a system!

Start with a little bit:

> If you get four bars done, you might have something. – 19:30

The beauty of simplicity:

> I want it to be as easy as possible so people can dig it. Then it’ll be good. – 20:30

Don’t overpractice:

> Usually we’d take the first take, sometimes the second, but never the third. He’d say ‘Once you play it the first time, that’s the way the feeling and everything is. And after that, you start going downhill.’ And it’s more like a challenge when you do that. You know that you got to play it correctly the first or second take, or that’s it. He would take it any how. If you mess up, well that’s it–it’s your problem, and you have to heard that all the rest of your life.- Charlie Rouse, 22:30

After all:

> You rehearse every time you play on an instrument. – 24:45

He works so hard, sweating constantly even on slow pieces, wiping his brow during the middle of a solo.

Interesting quote from [the Guardian on his first visit to London](http://century.guardian.co.uk/1960-1969/Story/0,,105533,00.html):

> He does not take his jazz the easy way. Each note is apparently considered, weighed, analysed and then reluctantly committed to the audience. It does not make for easy listening, but why should it? Although he has a superb sense of melody he seems less than happy with it and prefers to explore the intricacies of harmonic improvisation, finding a nerve-tingling discord and playing moodily with it while he considers how to get himself out of it.

> Interviewer: Do you think the piano has enough keys? Those 88?

> Monk: Well, it’s hard work to play those 88 – 1:00:45

His styles today don’t seem so shocking, but given the musical landscape at the time they were hugely innovative. Monk paved the way for so much more.

At one point he just got overwhelmed and stopped playing, confessing that he was “very sick”. Never spoke of it again, but was clearly wrestling inside of himself with something. – 1:21:00