Monk/Coltrane tapes discovered

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A big stinking deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/arts/music/25jazz.html

"On the tapes, Monk is Monk, his pianistic style basically formed at least 10 years before, with its sudden drawls and rhythmic hesitations. He lets Coltrane solo at length with very little accompaniment; the saxophonist plays rows and rows of original licks and runs, built with blizzards of 16th notes. The notable exception is Coltrane's solo on 'Blue Monk.' Through 10 blues choruses, he builds an even crescendo of logic, letting down his guard and relying less on his stock phrases. (The other songs on the tape, from the evening's two sets, are 'Monk's Mood,' 'Evidence,' 'Crepuscule With Nellie,' 'Nutty,' 'Epistrophy,' 'Bye-Ya,' 'Sweet and Lovely' and a truncated second version of 'Epistrophy.')

"The music was discovered by accident, during the routine practice of transferring tape from the Library of Congress's Voice of America collection to digital sound files for preservation. . . ."

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:22 (eighteen years ago) link

WHOA WHOA WHOA

Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:25 (eighteen years ago) link

nice!

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:30 (eighteen years ago) link

I like this part:

""There's always more," Mr. Appelbaum said sagely, in a recent interview in his recording laboratory at the Library of Congress's recorded sound division. He repeated the phrase so often during the afternoon that it became a mantra."

walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:31 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, it's kinda stunning. I'm so happy that "Bye-Ya" is part of this, just 'cause it's always been one of my biggest favorites by Monk. But the whole thing is incredible.

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:32 (eighteen years ago) link

um, GASP.

Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 25 April 2005 05:47 (eighteen years ago) link

Well damn. Now all they need to do is find the rest of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Stupornaut (natepatrin), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:11 (eighteen years ago) link

"There's always more," Mr. Appelbaum said sagely

eep! then get off your applebaum and find them out! you'd think they'd have a whole slew of interns sifting through old jazz and classical vinyls looking for treasure.

Hmmm... Kinda makes me wonder: does anyone have any contacts at the Library of Congress' Voice of America Collection?

poortheatre (poortheatre), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:15 (eighteen years ago) link

...And that rumored side long outtake from ASTRAL WEEKS!

Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:15 (eighteen years ago) link

(xpost) -- And of course, to un-erase Shields' followups to LOVELESS... Those could be in the Library of Congress somewhere, right?

(Insert image of the Ark of the Covenant or whatever that was again in "Raiders" sitting in a dusty huge warehouse of the Smithosonian here.)

Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:20 (eighteen years ago) link

don fl3ming works for the alan l0max archive, maybe he knows these dudes.

tho i doubt the loc has enough resources to "find" shit as immediately as poortheatre would like, considering us gov't budget deficits/iraq and "war on terra" spending/declining dollah, etc. like i would like to see more stuff discovered but be realistic. not even private record companies have enough resource-wise to go thru their entire stocks (gonna take the current owners of restless' back catalog 3 years to find all their masters, etc.)

"we have top men working on it."
"who?"
"top... men..."

CUE TO DUDE PUSHING CRATE WITH ARK IN GIGANTIC GOVT WAREHOUSE WITH OTHER SIMILAR CRATES

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:24 (eighteen years ago) link

"Top...Men..."

best. line. ever.

poortheatre (poortheatre), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:26 (eighteen years ago) link

i'm partial to:

"indy, the ark is loaded into the truck"
"truck?!? what truck?!!?"

and

"asps, velly dangerous."
"snakes, why'd it have to be snakes?"

and some others i'm blanking on now.

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:28 (eighteen years ago) link

TS:

"Our boys runnin' round the desert with goddamn coffee cans for armor" vs. Undiscovered Zappa Bootleg

poortheatre (poortheatre), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:30 (eighteen years ago) link

"my federal government spent $81 billion and all i got was this lousy t-shirt (sans bulletproof vest)"

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:33 (eighteen years ago) link

now available on a t-shirt!

http://www.cafepress.com/content/products/img-bleed/clear.gif

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:44 (eighteen years ago) link

wait that didn't work, check it here: http://www.cafepress.com/politixbuttox

hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:44 (eighteen years ago) link

Ha ha, Coltrane and Harrison Ford, together again! On ILM!

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:51 (eighteen years ago) link

If you listen really closely to "Live at the Vilage Vanguard" you can hear Harrison asking the waitress for some "bennies."

Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Monday, 25 April 2005 06:54 (eighteen years ago) link

"Our boys runnin' round the desert with goddamn coffee cans for armor" vs. Undiscovered Zappa Bootleg

Damn poortheatre, you just gave me the only tiny glimmer of pro-war sentiment I've ever felt in my life.

walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 25 April 2005 07:21 (eighteen years ago) link

This is very welcome news. And apparently this is no bootleg-quality recording, either.

Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Monday, 25 April 2005 10:18 (eighteen years ago) link

Great! Who's in the band? Roy Haynes or Frankie Dunlop?

Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 25 April 2005 13:17 (eighteen years ago) link

two months pass...
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000972740

Blue Note Records has emerged the triumphant owner of a 1957 recording by the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, trumping the interest of Sony BMG's Legacy Recordings and Verve Records. The tentatively titled "Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane: 1957 Concert" is due Sept. 27.

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 6 July 2005 01:17 (eighteen years ago) link

eight years pass...

Got that (the CD) a couple months ago. Essential, and utterly fascinating to hear it as a work-in-progress (including studio chatter!).

Weirdly/sadly, this is the only surviving tape of a complete Coltrane studio session.

hopping and bopping to the krokodil rot (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 30 September 2013 15:27 (ten years ago) link


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