Jazz Articles about Charlie Rouse

like 21

Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto

by Mike Jurkovic
September 18, 2020

Earth-shattering? The best live Thelonious Monk recording ever? Who knows? Probably not. But it is Monk, so Palo Alto, comes to us with all the scholarly fandom brouhaha we accord these wonderful little things that gratefully drop in our laps from troubled time to troubled time. For anyone not paying attention to the jazz chatter of late, the backstory to Palo Alto thumbnails broadly like this: It is 1968 which, as it just so happens, is another troubled ...

like 16

Charlie Rouse: Bossa Nova Bacchanal – 1962

by Marc Davis
July 10, 2015

What a happy record! And what a delightful change from the usual 1960s Blue Note formula. You know the drill. In the 1960s, Blue Note was the go-to label for two kinds of jazz: hard bop and soul-jazz. But Blue Note was never the reigning bossa nova label. When the Brazilian phenomenon swept the jazz world in the early 1960s, Verve was the capital of bossa nova, and Stan Getz was its main disciple. So it ...

like 385

Thelonious Monk: The Classic Quartet

by Chris May
February 8, 2006

Intermittently available over the years on various labels and in various guises (most recently as Thelonious Monk Quartet in Japan and 1963: In Japan), this album catches Monk on the cusp between his unflaggingly inventive, mould-breaking Riverside years and his less consistently exploratory, later period with CBS.

Clocking in at just over 38 minutes, The Classic Quartet is a set the group recorded for Japanese TV during a short tour of the country in May, 1963. The sound, enhanced from ...

like 456

Charlie Rouse: Hail The Individual

by Nic Jones
October 1, 2004

Every significant development in jazz has been the work of trailblazers. In the case of bebop of course the two most readily associated with the development have always been Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and whilst there is no little substance in this, the determinism of such a view obscures the contributions of other musicians who were active in the midst of this musical revolution. Whilst this situation has arguably never caused irreparable damage to any musician's career, it might ...

like 271

Charlie Rouse: Bossa Nova Bacchanal

by Joshua Weiner
June 7, 2004

About eight or nine years ago, the major record labels finally realized that they could sell more copies of classic jazz CDs if they reissued them with the respect they deserved, including high-quality remastering and packaging. This has proved an unprecedented boon for the jazz fan; never have so many records by so many artists been readily available, even if the inventories are in cyberspace rather than in the attic of the corner shop.

However, there is a cloud to ...

like 237

Thelonious Monk: It's Monk's Time

by Jerry D'Souza
October 6, 2003

The restoration campaign of the Monk catalog is as welcome as any such endeavor could be. Here is the opening of the doors to the music, the way it was and the way it transpired before it took the shape that first came out on record. Amendments have been made by restoring the edited portions, the prime factor that gives one the impetus to revisit the music. Add unreleased takes and remastered sound, and the lure is complete. ...

like 446

Thelonious Monk: It's Monk's Time

by David Rickert
August 25, 2003

It's Monk's Time is in many ways the least compromising of Monk's Columbia records and the polar opposite of a record like Criss Cross (1962) due to the variety ' lengthy renditions of tunes, a couple of solo performances, and a few obscure originals dusted off for the occasion. The session kicks off with what appears to be a solo recording of 'Lulu's Back in Town,' only to evolve from clunky stride into a full-blown quartet version after three minutes, ...