{"id":1107,"date":"2018-03-20T11:17:40","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2018-07-17T12:52:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T16:52:14","slug":"the-neighborhood-hang-and-the-history-hang-including-monk-bud-and-elmo-a-tune-on-the-changes-of-in-walked-bud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2018\/03\/20\/the-neighborhood-hang-and-the-history-hang-including-monk-bud-and-elmo-a-tune-on-the-changes-of-in-walked-bud\/","title":{"rendered":"The neighborhood hang and the history hang (including ‘Monk, Bud and Elmo’, a tune on the changes of ‘In Walked Bud’)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Above: Jack Teagarden, Dixie Bailey, Mary Lou Williams, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Orent around the piano at Mary Lou Williams’ apartment \/ Below: the same group in a different order around the phonograph (i.e. turntable)\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The title of my tune \u2018Monk, Bud and Elmo\u2019 refers to a group of now-legendary jazz pianists, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Elmo Hope, who hung out together in the early 1940s, before any of them had reached their greatest prominence. Much like an earlier generation of New York pianists (including James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Willie \u2018The Lion\u2019 Smith), the interests that Monk, Powell and Hope shared led them to become a kind of informal club.\u00a0 In his biography of Monk, Robin D.G. Kelley quotes Monk\u2019s sister Marion as saying that once the three musicians \u201cstarted hanging out together, they were at Monk\u2019s mother\u2019s house \u2018all the time\u2019 \u201d.\u00a0 In his biography of Powell, Peter Pullman quotes saxophonist Johnny Griffin, who recalls \u201cnights when the three pianists, \u2018like brothers\u2019, roamed the streets, going from house to house in search of pianos that they could play.\u201d\u00a0 Griffin also comments on how the relationship of the three, who sometimes played four and even six hands at one piano, was competitive in a musical sense, but not a personal one.<\/p>\n

The recorded output of all three musicians makes it clear how much they influenced each other. Comparing the versions that Monk<\/a>, Powell<\/a>, and Hope<\/a> recorded of the standard \u2018Sweet and Lovely\u2019 reveals how Monk, as the eldest of the group, generated many foundational ideas (such his trademark chromatically descending reharmonization of the tune\u2019s first four measures and his Art Tatum-style right hand runs) which were then adapted by his younger proteges Powell (who uses the runs but stays closer to the tune\u2019s original progression) and Hope (who works his own variation on Monk\u2019s reharmonization.)\u00a0 A comparison of these three players soloing on the blues progression in B flat \u2013 Monk\u2019s solo on Straight No Chaser<\/a>, Bud Powell\u2019s solo on Bud\u2019s Blues<\/a> (or ‘B flat blues’<\/a> from the album Bud Powell in Paris<\/em>) and Elmo Hope\u2019s solo on St. Elmo\u2019s Fire<\/a> \u2013 also shows a similarity in their approach to left hand comping.\u00a0 All three solos prominently feature what are sometimes called \u2018shell\u2019 (i.e. root and 7th<\/sup> voicings), in contrast to the preference of later players such as Wynton Kelly for two, three and four note rootless voicings located closer to middle C.<\/p>\n

Just as comparing different versions of a standard can reveal similarities between players of the same period, it can be useful to compare different versions of a single tune by great jazz players from different eras of jazz to gain insights about the differences between periods and the evolution of the music. In his recent memoir Good Things Happen Slowly, pianist Fred Hersch describes\u00a0 one of his early methods of educating himself about jazz. After a less than successful experience in college sitting in with a local jazz group on the tune \u2018Autumn Leaves\u2019, Hersch was introduced by a fellow musician to the concept of learning about time through listening to great jazz recordings. Hersch writes that he visited a record store that same week and \u2018rifled through the jazz bins, working my way from A to Z, and bought every album that had a version of \u2018Autumn Leaves\u2019 on it: records by Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Chet Baker – thirteen in all. I brought the pile home and played each version of the tune, skipping all the other tracks…it was a revelation. Some were subtle, some were virtuosic, some brisk, some meditative. They all had a mastery of time. I realized each version was unique, and all of them were great.\u2019<\/p>\n

If we call Monk, Powell and Hope\u2019s get-togethers \u2018a neighborhood hang’, one might say by contrast that Hersch, after doing the jazz hang in his neighborhood, did some \u2018hanging with history\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 In my view, the ‘neighborhood hang’ (i.e. hanging with other jazz players of the same or similar instrument, interest, age and\/or ability) and the ‘history hang’ are both essential for the aspiring jazz musician.\u00a0 One place that both kinds of hanging went on in the mid- to late forties was at the residence of pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, whose apartment (pictured above) was a gathering place for many of\u00a0 the bright lights of the bebop period.\u00a0 By many accounts,\u00a0 Williams provided important musical knowledge to her visitors, either intentionally or surreptitiously, as in the case of Monk\u2019s borrowing the A section of his tune \u2018Rhythm-A-Ning\u2019 from Williams\u2019 tune \u2018Walkin\u2019 and Swingin\u2019; Kelley also documents Williams\u2019 influence on Monk\u2019s tunes \u2018Criss Cross\u2019 and \u2018Hackensack\u2019.<\/p>\n

Like \u2018Autumn Leaves\u2019, the Irving Berlin tune \u2018Blue Skies\u2019 has been reinvented by players and arrangers in many eras of jazz. Mary Lou Williams\u2019 arrangement of the tune for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, recorded between 1946 and 47 as \u2018Trumpet No End\u2019<\/a> , was one of the pieces that built her reputation as an arranger; Ella Fitzgerald also created one of her better known scat solos on the tune<\/a> for the 1959 album Get Happy. Thelonious Monk created his tune \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019, dedicated to his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, by using the chord progression from the A section of \u2018Blue Skies\u2019 and adding a different bridge. Monk made well known two studio recordings of his tune; the 1947 origina<\/a>l features an interesting chorus split between trumpeter George Taitt and alto saxophonist Shahib Shihab which includes quotes by both players from the Dizzy Gillespie tune \u2018Bebop\u2019.\u00a0 (The recording dates of ‘Trumpet No End’ and the original ‘In Walked Bud’ being so close in time suggests that Monk\u2019s choice of the \u2018Blue Skies\u2019 progression might have been influenced by his hanging with Williams.) \u00a0Monk\u2019s version of ‘In Walked Bud’ from the 1968 album Underground <\/em><\/a>features remarkable solos by both Monk and vocalist Jon Hendricks. While Blue Skies has continued to be reininterpreted by historically conscious players such as Bill Charlap, \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019 has in turn became a jazz standard in its own right.\u00a0 In recent years it has been reinvented by players including Fred Hersch<\/a>, Helen Sung<\/a> (the version linked here is a duo with Ron Carter, but her combo version from the album ‘Going Express’ is also highly recommended) and Kenny Barron<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My tune \u2018Monk, Bud and Elmo\u2019 is based on my scale outline for In Walked Bud<\/a>.\u00a0 It also uses shell voicings, as in the blues solos by Monk, Powell and Hope.\u00a0 Piano players should also learn the scale outline and the original head of \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019 in the right hand by memory and combine them with the left hand voicings in the piano arrangement.\u00a0 My tune also can work as a countermelody to \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019; it works particularly well to combine \u2018Monk, Bud and Elmo\u2019 played by the right hand and\/or a treble clef instrument and \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019 played by the left hand and\/or a bass clef instrument.\u00a0 (The A section of \u2018In Walked Bud\u2019, like the bop standards \u2018Ornithology\u2019, \u2018Anthropology\u2019 and \u2018Donna Lee\u2019, is one of those melodic lines that either coincidentally or intentionally works as a countermelody to the tune from which its chord changes originate.)\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Above: Jack Teagarden, Dixie Bailey, Mary Lou Williams, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Orent around the piano at Mary Lou Williams’ apartment \/ Below: the same group in a different order around the phonograph (i.e. turntable)   … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}