Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk      an essay by Carl-Bernhard Kjelstrup jr. When Bud Powell and Francis Paudras, upon Bud's return to the States in the fall of 1964, rang Monk's doorbell, Monk opened and asked, without moving a facial muscle and without any sort of greeting, "Do you want to hear an airplane?" He then went on to show how the dinner plates on the grand piano, when it was standing halfway in the living room and halfway in the kitchen, made a sound he said reminded him of an airplane. Bud and Monk in Paris This lack of greeting probably says more about the way these two communicated than about any lack of emotions. You need only look at the photo from their meeting at the airport in Paris in the sixties to see the obvious devotion they felt for each other. Bud and Monk went back a long time. When Bud was a budding young pianist, it was Monk who took him under his wing and promoted him when club owners were dubious. It was Bud who played in the 1944 Cootie Williams band that made the first recording of 'Round Midnight. Unfortunately Bud is not featured on this track, but Williams apparently used the recording session as a lure to get Monk to sign over half the royalties on the tune. This Monk later rectified. Bud also bore the brunt of an altercation Monk had with the police. When he objected to the cops' treatment of Monk, he was beaten about the head and dosed with ammoniated water in the cell afterwards. This apparently was the beginning of severe headaches and mental problems that haunted him for the rest of his life. When Bud in 1947 made his first recordings under his own name for Roost, he chose Monk's Off Minor as part of the repertory. According to Monk Bud was one of the few pianists capable of doing his music justice. And in a way they complemented each other. Monk with his "weird" harmonic structures coupled with Bud's harmonically advanced, but at the same time, melodic lines. The rendition is easy and swinging, a far cry from his later more challenging recordings. Bud continued to play and record Monk's music until the very last. His album Portrait of Thelonious, recorded in Paris in 1961 or '62, consists partly of Monk's tunes, but Bud plays all the tunes in a more angular manner than in the forties, giving the songs a new, more Monk-like dimension. Listening to Bud's rendition of 'Round Midnight from the May 1950 Birdland session with Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro, one can well understand how the young pianist captivated his audience and had everybody hanging by their fingernails. The contained ecstasy in this slow number is, to say the least, harrowing. Listening to Bud's version of the same song from the 1965 Charlie Parker memorial concert, is a psycho dramatic experience. Nothing is left of the fleet melodic lines that were his hallmark twenty years earlier, but the experience is nevertheless very moving. The European Thelonious Monk Website http://www.sojazz.org/monk/ The Thelonious Monk Website www.howardm.net/tsmonk/tsmonk.php Top of Page Back to Life