List of compositions by Thelonious Monk
It quickly became popular as an opening and closing tune on the clubs on 52nd Street on Manhattan where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker played.
[11] The tune is also known as "Bimsha Swing", because the word Bemsha is a re-spelling of "Bimshire" – a colloquial nickname for Barbados, where Denzil Best's parents were born.
The 4-bar A-section is essentially in C major but borrows tones from the parallel C minor scale, and is transposed up a fourth to create the B section of the form.
The tune also appears on Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants[13] and Brilliant Corners, featuring Max Roach with a timpani drum added to his set.
The title is a tribute to Monk's friend Coleman Hawkins, and the Black Hawk club in San Francisco.
[21] Probably one of the last official known compositions by Monk recorded on November 15, 1971, for The London Collection: Volume One, released by the Black Lion label.
A blues in B♭ dedicated to the Five Spot Café, and appears on Misterioso,[22] Monk's Dream,[10] and Live at the It Club.
A contrafact of "Sweet Georgia Brown" that Monk developed during the European tour in 1961,[27] where the melody consists of staccato notes that outline the harmony.
[28] A 32-bar Latin-tune in AABA-form that was originally titled "Playhouse" (as a dedication to Minton's, where Monk was the house pianist in the early 1940s with Kenny Clarke).
[32] An improvised, abstract, and conceptual composition by Monk, recorded on November 15, 1971, and released as a bonus track in Black Lion's The London Collection: Volume Three.
[33] It was first recorded on February 25, 1958, with Clark Terry, Johnny Griffin and Pepper Adams with Monk's rhythm section.
[4] The tune inspired Gunther Schuller to compose variations on Criss-Cross, which premiered on May 17, 1960, and was later released on Jazz Abstractions, featuring Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy as soloists.
The main melodic theme was composed by Clarke, after experimenting with fingerings on the ukulele, and the chords were written by Monk.
[4][46] The tune was first recorded on July 2, 1948, for the Wizard of the Vibes sessions, featuring Milt Jackson,[44] later on Piano Solo,[45] and on Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk.
[17] The melody and chord progression of the tune continued to evolve, finally gelling into a "definitive" form in later 1957, as heard on at Carnegie Hall and Thelonious in Action.
Live versions appear on the albums recorded at Carnegie Hall, Five Spot, Blackhawk, Tokyo, Lincoln Center, It Club and the Jazz Workshop.
The tune was partly inspired by trumpeter Ray Copeland having the flu on the recording date, and horn player Julius Watkins stepped in instead.
[10] It appears on the live albums recorded at Newport with Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan (1955), France, Tokyo, and at the Jazz Workshop.
"In Walked Bud" was based loosely on the chord progression of "Blue Skies", an early pop standard composed in 1927 by Irving Berlin.
In most jazz standards, the A-section is used to establish the key, while the B-section has tonal excursions, but in "Introspection", the roles of the sections are reversed.
"Misterioso" was the first 12-bar blues that Monk wrote, and it was first recorded on July 2, 1948, for the Wizard of the Vibes sessions, featuring Milt Jackson.
The recording session was in Los Angeles during a West Coast tour by the quartet,[31] suggesting that the title probably refers to Sunset Boulevard.
[28] According to Gary Giddins it is "classic, paradoxical Monk, beautiful and memorable yet a minefield of odd intervals, each essential to its bricks-and-mortar structure".
[86] The piece has since appeared on dozens of Monk's releases, as well as being covered by musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Kenny Barron, and Chick Corea.
[89][90] The song was first recorded by Monk on November 21, 1947, for the Genius of Modern Music sessions (titled as "'Round About Midnight"),[62] and appears on many of his live albums.
The tune was initially titled "Classified Information",[74] but he opted to retitle it as "Worry Later", when recording it for the first time on April 29, 1960, for the album Thelonious Monk at the Blackhawk.
[57] An improvised blues recorded for the soundtrack of French movie "Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960", directed by Roger Vadim.
The A-section is based on a riff that Monk used very often, dating back to his days as the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse.
The tune was credited to Sonny Clark, who was struggling with heroin addiction at the time, and was a frequent visitor to Monk's friend, Pannonica de Koenigswarter's house.
Exactly one month later, Monk's quartet made their only studio recording of this song (Columbia CS9632)"[99] on December 14, 1967,[100] for the album Underground.
