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Monk's Trumpets
I like all instruments as long as they're played right.
—Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Johnny Griffin
saxophone, tenor1928 - 2008
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Charlie Rouse
saxophone, tenor1924 - 1988
Gigi Gryce
saxophone1927 - 1983
Thelonious Monk crossed paths with trumpet players at Minton's Playhouse including
Joe Guy
b.1920
Hot Lips Page
trumpet1908 - 1954
Roy Eldridge
trumpet1911 - 1989
Ike Quebec
saxophone, tenor1918 - 1963
Idrees Sulieman
trumpetb.1923
Earl Hines
piano1903 - 1983
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Fats Navarro
trumpet1923 - 1950
Coleman Hawkins
saxophone, tenor1904 - 1969
Clifford Brown
trumpetb.1930
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
Just over a month later Monk recorded more music for Blue Note, but hired twenty-two-year-old Sahib Shihab (Edmund Gregory) on alto and twenty-eight-year-old George "Flip" Taitt on trumpet, again going with the bop front line format. Taitt was a swing trumpet player who tried to jump off a cliff into Monk's music. He had a sound but struggled as did seemingly everyone on some level that worked with Monk. On "In Walked Bud," Taitt only solos on the A section, having trouble with all the bridges on that date. Monk wrote a complicated piece called "Who Knows?" for the session that took eight attempts. On Taitt's one solo chorus, he survives but has a more pressing time. The challenge of the piece is the placement of the chords. After an opening measure of G minor 7, the next chord F Sharp 7 comes in on the third beat of the second measure. At a fast tempo, this is an exceptionally tricky environment to build ideas in if you're tethered exclusively to the chord structure. While Monk's bop line melody zips by, the real melody is in the movement of the chords. "Who Knows?" might better be titled "Where's Coltrane?" who excelled with these type of challenges. As for Taitt, Robin Kelley had no more information on him. I hope in his musical life he found other environments to encourage his natural relationship with music.
Monk's last session for Blue Note was in 1952 with
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
Lucky Thompson
saxophone1924 - 2005
Lou Donaldson
saxophone1926 - 2024
Kenny Dorham
trumpet1924 - 1972
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Next up we reach trumpet player
Ray Copeland
trumpetb.1926
Charlie Shavers
trumpet1920 - 1971
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
Phil Woods
saxophone, alto1931 - 2015
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
Randy Weston
piano1926 - 2018
Jon Faddis
trumpetb.1953
Clark Terry
trumpet1920 - 2015
Jimmy Cleveland
trombone1926 - 2008
Getting back to Copeland, he was also a teacher and composer, premiering his "Classical Jazz suite in six movements" at Lincoln Center in 1970. In 1974 he published a book called the Ray Copeland Approach to the Creative Art of Jazz Improvisation. Copeland was also the musical director of the great album by Archie Shepp titled Attica Blues. Mr. Shepp told me that he had enormous respect for Copeland and at one point they both had to overcome physical diversity that challenged their embouchures. A last shocking fact is that while appearing on 101 recordings, Copeland never recorded as a leader. His son was the late drummer Keith Copeland.
Donald Byrd
trumpet1932 - 2013
None of the trumpet players that worked for Monk reached as deep an immersion level as
Thad Jones
trumpet1923 - 1986
Hank Jones
piano1918 - 2010
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
Before the Monk big band date with Thad Jones, Monk recorded a live record in 1960 and hired trumpeter
Joe Gordon
trumpet1928 - 1963
Harold Land
saxophone, tenor1928 - 2001
Horace Silver
piano1928 - 2014
The last trumpet player to be hired by Thelonious Monk was Lonnie Hillyer for a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1976, but unfortunately, there was no recording made. Hillyer (1940-1985) was another bop trumpeter who liked to take his time and also throw in some slightly restrained blues. He spent most of his recording career with Charles Mingus and had no dates as a leader. On a record Mingus titled My Favorite Quintet, Hillyer has a lengthy solo on a piece titled "So Long Eric" where he begins playing entirely solo introspective solemn blues before the rhythm section erupts into different tempos. Somehow, Hillyer refuses to engage them and continues as if he were observing rather than participating in a musical paradox of sorts, as if he were in another space and time. The level of caution in which he approached Monk is unknown, but regardless, his musical honesty deserves respect. At thirty-three he retired from active playing and was a teacher for the final decade of his life, falling to Cancer in 1985 at forty-five years old.
Throughout my study on Monk's trumpets, I'm not trying to disregard Clark Terry's album with Monk as a sideman In Orbit, that is often credited to Monk as the leader. Dizzy Gillespie, the unofficial leader of George Wein's Giants Of Jazz tour that included Monk had a long and personal history with Monk that deserves further study. Miles Davis's relationship with Monk deserves further research. Benny Harris crossed paths with Monk while recording with Coleman Hawkins. Trumpeter Vic Coulson replaced Benny with Hawkins and was a favorite of Monk's who went on record crediting Coulson with new directions in music and saying he found his phrasing more interesting than Dizzy. Descriptions of Coulson's style are low-key, understated, impeccable, and even neat. Charlie Parker was quoted as saying Coulson played things he never heard before, citing him as an inspiration to pursue his music. In 1945 it was believed that Coulson was overcome by alcoholism and he faded into legend. Finally, Nick Travis (1925-1964) was a sideman on Monk's 1963 big band recording on Columbia, but he took no solos. Travis was primarily a big band and studio musician, though he appears on a TV Show called Jazz Party in a staged battle with the great cornetist Rex Stewart playing "There Will Never Be Another You." Travis plays a down-the-middle no-risk Dizzy influenced style while Stewart was borderline playing free improvisation. Both of them are very much into their cigarettes. Travis suddenly died from a problem with ulcers at the age of only 38 years old.
What I believe it revealed in this examination is that Monk had a unique understanding of the trumpet, in some ways more than the players themselves. As revealed recently by his son T.S Monk, the trumpet was his father's as well as his own first instrument! At the core, a common challenge that all trumpet players face is how the technical difficulties of the instrument work in the context of playing chord changes. The harmonic world of Thelonious Monk deepens this challenge. The trumpet is known as the melody instrument, but in Monk's world, many musicians let the chord structure lead the way, often not realizing that Monk's harmonic movement is melodic as well. Monk's melodies are often so personal and pianistic that one wonders how they can be translated, or spoken on trumpet. Thad Jones emerges as the trumpet player who went deeper than all others. Still, no trumpet player reached Charlie Rouse's status as the lone horn on extensive recordings and live performances. The tenor just seems to naturally sound correct in Monk's music with its particular range and sound. Of course, it's more than the instrument; it was Charlie Rouse himself who made it work, partially because while he was present, the musical spotlight was still on Monk himself. John Coltrane and Johnny Griffin had a way of pulling the ear in their direction. Here in 2017, in my own Harmelodic Monk project, I'm seeking a new perspective on Monk's music based entirely on melody. I believe Monk's music to contain secrets to the inner workings of jazz that scholarship cannot teach, secrets that can only be reached by playing. I imagine Monk's music will guide musicians to their philosophical centers for many years to come. As Monk himself said, he liked all instruments as long as they were played right.
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