Monk and Coltrane at Stanford in 1966 "The Roof Fell In"

On January 23rd 1966 at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, the Thelonius Monk Quartet and the John Coltrane Octet performed. Canada's Coda jazz magazine reviewed the event at length. It's acknowledged that Trane's time as a regular with Monk was crucial to his growth as a musician and composer. But in the subsequent ten years, it is clear that the two musicians' trajectories were very different. 

This was the couple of weeks Coltrane spent in California when he supplemented his group further with Juno Lewis on percussion and Donald Garrett on bass. McCoy Tyner had already left and the strain felt by Elvin Jones was apparent.

monk and coltrane at stamford (sic) reviewed by Philip Jacka

It was beautiful. Simply, this year Stanford University would investigate jazz. The scheme was not dissimilar to that Festival of the Arts which Brandeis University focused on jazz back in 1957 (hear "MODERN JAZZ CONCERT", Columbia WL127, or its twin-pack reissue, "OUTSTANDING JAZZ COMPOSITIONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY", C2L31), except that the California campus undertook a "Jazz Year". In addition to planting Thelonious Monk's quartet alongside this blistering venture-further-out by Trane's octet, a second double-bill was posted since the turn of the year: The MJQ was paired with Dizzy Gillespie's new quintet. (This more recent stagepiece was one in which the MJQ matted and framed compositions from only their blues surfeit. Certainly John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Connie Kay comprise one of the very few units that could carry such a monochromatic concert without monotony. The alternate set was not so stable; for drummer Candy Finch and bassist Frank Schifano did not yet a Dizzy quintet make. Apprehending them five weeks later at BSW,however, I felt the group clowned and congealed as if they had been together for years ... James Moody and Kenny Barron notwithstanding, and despite Fender electric.)

Prior to 1966, the campus had been presented Louis Armstrong's All-Stars; later Ella Fitzgerald sang with the Duke Ellington orchestra. Remaining movements of Stanford's sonata involved lectures (by Marshall Stearns, John Hammond, John Lewis, Ralph Cleason, Leonard Feather and Philip Elwood), plus a succession of "Jazz Casuals" which enabled loose lines of communication between audiences and performers in Jon Hendricks' quintet, Archie Shepp's foursome, finally Denny Zeitlin's trio. (Columnist Gleason, who was consultant to the college try, hosted the latter -- a nominal compliment to his own TV series, "Jazz Casual".) Next scheduled segment of the Jazz Year is to feature Ray Charles. While my own day-gig prohibited attendance to the more academic phases, nearly all reportage and my spies' confidences were glowing to the extent of being suspect. But in outline alone, one can only reflect that, in throwing out that calibre of collective talents, Stanford dealt itself (and jazz) a winning hand.

Thelonius Monk was first. It seems to me unlikely that any listener would detect in Monk's music a strain of unfamiliarity. Deep from within his earliest originals the delivery chimes a uniqueness, so stylized in the pianist's playing. The same applies to a reform of an otherwise corny standard. Monk's musical mirth of the forties differs from today's outpouring mostly in number. Greater breadth accrues to those years, of course, and the particular context of fellow performers has always been a factor of suspense. But in outward complexity, Monk has changed hardly at all. Like the equally venerable VW, only the slightest ornament is altered there and again, to protect the gullible. As recently as now, Monk is victimized by detractors who remain smug in their smog about propriety in addressing the keyboard. He hasn't swerved from his manner as composer-performer. Yet he's been ahead of one helluva lot of cats who only today -- twenty-five years after the firm advent -- concede to discovering delight in Monk's music. And much of that concession smacks of deceit. For in the same breath of belated discovery I've heard what might be construed to be a pathetic sigh of relief. Monk's conventions, his order, eked out of (finally) repeated hearing, were there to be heard all along. And I suspect some are clinging to Monk for insular comfort from what is happening in jazz now just as they were recluse elsewhere when Thelonious was the wierdo of the forties.

Stanford's Memorial Auditorium

At Stanford, Monk's quartet did sound rusty . Part of that could be attributed to several weeks' layoff prior to the concert. (A two-week engagement at Jazz Workshop followed by some idle time to woodshed then, would serve as starting point for this year's annular ring around the globe.) Monk's first declaration was the one which opened every performance I heard last year -- a spunky and sporadically funny "Lulu's Back In Town". The swagger lost none of its vigor in Charlie Rouse's tenor solo. Then the quartet went on to canvas another favorite haunt, "Hackensack", in which bassist Larry Gales and drummer Ben Riley . each tendered worthy solos. It wasn't so much "old hat" familiarity, but Monk was lugging upgrade. Neither soloists nor the ensemble enlarged memorably on either number. So it seemed that, when the four of them pounced on "Epistrophy", they were unanimously bent on closure of the set, the quickest way out. But Rouse's instrument began to sing; ideas flowed with a unity not often (enough) detected by this reviewer. Monk was turned on too, for he threw into his comping so much body english that I feared it, together with the sloping stage,would convey the leader off the bench. The crowd was aroused, and coaxed Monk back for one of those regretably rare fillips by himself. Alone at the piano, he carved with hilarious cupidity an old, justly forgotten pop ditty, "I Love You". (A week or so later, Riley confided that, more than once, he had suggested to Monk that an audience might like to hear an occasional soliloquy. Each time, the drummer said, the leader roundly dismissed the notion. I, for one, share Riley's sentiments. And so did the audience at Stanford, apparently. The group's obdurate order -- "head" to tenor to piano to bass to drums to recap -- gets a little trying, for even the most devout fan.)

So then it was John Coltrane's show. A meandering warm-up rumble floated out, almost as extrinsically as the players appeared onstage.The entourage was wild in its implication. First there was the short, wiry Juno, totting one of two Dhakas (his own device, derived from Dakar drums) he would play. Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali seated themselves behind their own percussion parameters. Dapper Jimmy Garrison and Donald Garrett positioned their respective basses with the leader. Alice Mcleod (Mrs. John C) approached the piano. Another tenor saxophonist, Pharoah Saunders, stepped out timidly, cowing just beyond the leader. Suddenly, in a hysterically balladic sort of way 'Trane gave loco motion to all eight. Nothing even so obvious as that bandstand shibboleth you never see and they're off; rather, it was the sudden awareness that they were no longer "warming up", if indeed they ever were. And there was Elvin's skipping synchromesh; Rashied's busy, arhythmic crocheting; Garrison's arco and Garrett's plucking; Miss McLeod visually swept into a tremolo of some intensity, but already inaudible; John on tenor. There was no denouement, no relenting. Too much, too soon. The roof fell in. It was called "Peace on Earth", and I know we dwelled on the same planet even if we viewed it differently. Then, impatient with the crowds clamor, Coltrane dispensed a few phrases from "My Favorite Things" on soprano sax, turning quickly -- with both basses pizzicato underneath -- to "Afro-Blue" before his multi-syllabic lines decayed into the din of percussion. Then Saunders was more easily heard, for he addressed the microphone, not the audience. With flutter-tongue squeals and whupped-dog whimpering, he heaved his high frequency hodge-podge until it made sense, ferociously, as if he had not yet learned the way to get a choke-collar slackened. Finally, all but the drummers withdrew from the meterless maelstrom. It seemed to me that Elvin would try to slamsay something, then Rashied would swarm over it until swallowed in a swell of sound; Elvin would deliberate and deliver more strongly than before, and Rashied would destroy with multitudinous little blows. It also seemed to me that the two drummers achieved nothing near the constructivist elan that Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins accomplished with Ornette Coleman (FREE JAZZ, Atlantic 1364). At this point John C interceded, imposing his own build toward a climax. As he did so, Elvin could be seen, often heard, reinforcing the tenor's conclusive scales. But as the leader's last held note disappeared under Jones' final crash, deep into the auditorium, there was Rashied Ali, still grinning, still swaying on his small circumference, still tending the nervous needlework over a snare, as if nothing had ceased to happen. Elvin Jones carefully placed sticks atop the bass drum and departed the stage while Coltrane merely stood and watched with what I would call a cool guy's incredulity. The faux pas (Oh, come on now, fans ... it was obvious) then became a bridge. Once alone, once free of Coltrane's matrix, Rashied entwined some interesting drum thoughts. And I thought about Ali's own self-observation, to the effect that he pursued a drone which would flow with the horns; this tenet was most plausible when there were no horns to interfere. Garrison sprang from skip-bowed implication of palmada and zapateado to several more lyric aspects of flamenco. 'Trane modulated briefly, whimsically, and the focus fell upon the slight African drummer with his handmade hollow. Poise and presence were very much a part of the delight he pummelchanted, with translucent assists by Ali (the first time, it seemed to me, that Rashied listened to anybody else). Then, swiftly, the audience was swept into that large arch of heavily compacted sound ... individually entrained by Jones, Saunders, Miss McLeod, eventually the ensemble. Beyond a certain stage implosions turned outward, scattering aural debris over the wincing beholder. If I was deaf to an intended nuance, then I must refer to the violated acousticapacity of the hall. Further, I would have to take refuge in the observation that competition within the musical cell itself curtailed any concerted achievement. Far from supposing that windswept cacophony was the objective, I think John C planned the greater risk of this instrumentation. But if the "chance" aspect was enhanced, the chance to hear the group wage equilibrium was lost. (I noticed several in the audience listening with their mouths open, as if watching a Howitzer display ... ) Again, Coltrane stepped in to arrest the great momentum. Again, Trane's rasping retard sounded the tag-line to "Afro-Blue", once more with Elvin powerfully attentive and fistlike and the rest seeming so. Again, the piece was punctuated on no uncertain terms. But there, unbelievably, in the wake of the last word, persisted the frenzied turbulence of Rashied Ali. I mean, baby, 'Trane's fires were banked, the piece was ended; full stop, "point final". John Coltrane wheeled and, with everybody but Ali in tow, walked off the stage leaving the drummer to his own diminishing devices.

Recorded Feb 2nd, just over one week later. Elvin Jones wasn't present. He'd left the group.

For all my disappointment, this concert was to me a valuable experience. It left me wanting to hear (and I did the following weeks, to only slightly better advantage, at Jazz Workshop) more of Ali, that he might be praised, more of the phonetic Pharoah, more of John C in that milieu. But the wealth of that experience lay in the failure of John the Leader to amass a disciplined dispatch. Summarily, my reflection has little to do with John the Avanti, although his innovation, too, was lost largely to the indeterminant undermining of the whole. No matter what maxims might appear mutilated by the parry and thrust of the new thing, I am not in the least hesitant to note that here was a whole octet which added up to considerably less than the sum of its parts. And I wouldn't've missed it on a bet.