AAJ: He is also one of those rare artists where you cannot separate Monk the pianist from Monk the composer.

TSM: No, you can't. You absolutely can not. But there are some internals...if you don't mind me just talking...(laughs)...there are some internals to this recording that I would really like to tell you about, that I see.

L-R: John Coltrane, Shadow Wilson, Thelonious Monk, Ahmed Abdul-Malik At The Five Spot Cafe, New York City, 1957

AAJ: Well, then...would you like to discuss the internals that you see on this new album?

TSM: I would start with: After John Coltrane, history tells us that Thelonious chose the quartet as his ensemble of preference. He had done it a little bit but he had been doing trios and octets and all kinds of things. But after John Coltrane, it was quartet from then on. So there was something about that relationship with John Coltrane that made him realize that this particular ensemble configuration was the perfect vehicle for Thelonious. And John Coltrane, after Thelonious Monk, chose the quartet as his preferred ensemble configuration, to send his message. So that was a powerful message right there, particularly when you consider that Coltrane came out of a heavy duty quintet, sextet kind of thing.

After John Coltrane, the next cat Thelonious really settled on was Charlie Rouse. Charlie Rouse was not out of that traditional tenor saxophone mold. What they played, the sound that Charlie Rouse got, the tone of Charlie Rouse's tenor saxophone, is like the tone of John Coltrane. So Thelonious obviously fell in love with that tone and felt that that particular tone conveyed his melodies better than any other, because he laid with that for the rest of his career.

Now, John Coltrane gets a quartet. This is the guy that was steeped in the likes of Wynton Kelly and Red Garland, but he doesn't go out and get one of the new young proponents—a Walter Davis Jr., somebody like that, a proponent of that sound—he goes out and gets McCoy Tyner and Tommy Flanagan, who don't play the standard rhythms, that standard sort of bebop piano that we got from Red Garland and those guys. So obviously what John Coltrane heard in the Monk quartet affected him profoundly.

AAJ: Has the new record impacted you as a drummer, too?

TSM: You can go even a step further: I was sitting with Cecil Brooks III and Michael Carvin; we were listening to the recording, and it was, for all of us, our first chance to really hear Shadow Wilson playing out. Now dig this: Until I heard this recording, I, Ben Riley, and every other drummer after Frankie Dunlop, sort of played Monk with a Frankie Dunlop flavor. Because we all agreed that Frankie Dunlop was the perfect match with Monk. But I listened to this recording and I realized that Frankie Dunlop was on the scene, he was listening—Frankie Dunlop was playing Shadow Wilson, who Thelonious always said was his favorite drummer. So I find that the influence that I thought was coming from Frankie Dunlop was coming from Shadow Wilson.

Because all of a sudden, the way that Thelonious Monk's band swings with Shadow Wilson is different from Roy Haynes, it's different from Max Roach, it's different from Art Blakey. It's the patented swing that we're all familiar with, from Thelonious Monk.

If you look over at John Coltrane: He came out of a heavy, heavy dose of the Jimmy Cobbs of the world, the Philly Joe Joneses, but what does Shadow Wilson have that was different from Max Roach and Art Blakey and all the rest of those cats that had preceded him? It was that little kind of upbeat swing, that little sort of high-stepping, dancing kind of thing. It was a sound on the ride cymbal: Instead of doing "ding-da-ding, ding-da-ding", it went "ding-da-ding, ding-da-ding". John Coltrane doesn't go get a Philly Joe Jones kind of a cat, he doesn't go get a Jimmy Cobb-sounding cat, he goes gets this young cat named Elvin Jones. Who plays with what? An upbeat swing!

So the influences back and forth were unbelievable. AND you're talking about two guys, one mentoring the other, that actually moved the music itself. This recording is telling us that, as the musicians had always said, Monk's influence was absolutely profound. It was the most powerful influence in modern jazz on so many different levels. And on John Coltrane...man, it opened him wide up. When I listen to John Coltrane here and know that he had come from Miles' band, and now I listen to "So What?" or "Milestones," I say, "Damn, he was in a straitjacket." That's John Coltrane—you NEVER think of John Coltrane in a straitjacket, he's playing all over the place. But compared to what he was doing with Monk, he sounds like he was in a straitjacket. So I am saying, "Whoa. This is why Coltrane was coming to the house every day." Because this music was opening him wide up.

Continue: Part 2

Photo Credit
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane by Don Schlitten

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