Fido the Yak

Listen to the tune, "Blue Train," recorded in September of 1957. (Lucas Pickford has offered a good transcription of Trane's solo. Once again, the Real Book, and some other printed transcriptions of the head are misleading. The tune is not a minor blues, but a straight up blues, as Pickford correctly notes. To dig this music, you must be able to hear the difference between a #9 and a minor third. In the tonic, too.) Okay, so how does one get from "Blue Train" to "Giant Steps," released in 1960? "Giant Steps" introduced to the Jazz World the idea of a triparite division of the twelve-tone scale integrated with traditional ii-V-I chord changes. ("Giant Steps" also features a wholetone scale in the bass line which is often overlooked.) This pattern of modulating changes became known as Coltrane changes. They have become ingrained in the jazz lexicon. One sees music books with titles like "John Coltrane plays Coltrane Changes" and scarcely bats an eye.

So what does this have to do with Monk? Well, one thing Monk had already accomplished was the breakdown of the twelve-tone system, and the superposition of intervalic patterns that can be modulated or sequenced over familiar progressions. An understanding of the tune as a relationship between sets of intervals or intervalic figures rather than chord progressions was already nascent in bebop, and can be heard as far back as the Minton's Play House recordings featuring Monk and Charlie Christian, among others. By 1957 a lot of this thinking had already been absorbed, and had even become cliched in some forumulations. Everybody knew for example that you could substitute descending half-steps over a circle of fourths, or vice versa. But cats who were hip to this as simply tritone chord subsitutions were taking a lot for granted. Additionally, since the swing era a lot of cats had been hip to the wholetone phenomenon, and full diminished chords in the dominant position. There were some interesting explorations of these realms by some of the era's leading musicians (off the top of my head Ellington, Strayhorn, Reinhardt, Hawkins and Young), but typically in the context of a traditional understanding of the tune, a practical recieved wisdom about the relationship between melodic tones and functional harmony. Monk tunes are remarkable for a number of reasons, but two features in particular mark a departure point for the music that followed: (1) Monk tunes often thematicize particular intervals, with the bridge (in ballad forms) or the turnaround (in blues forms) being used to present contrasting material; and (2) Monk tunes frequently explore unstable or ambiguous tonalities. As good example as any would be "Epistrophy," which became Monk's signature tune in the 1950's.

Hearing Trane solo on "Epistrophy" is just amazing. A lot of horn players won't even touch it. They'll just play the head and let it go at that. Even horn players that fronted for Monk would often demur. It is the essence of Monk's deceptive simplicity. Coltrane attacks it with energy, and it's obvious that he understands the harmonic ideas laid out in the head. It's about the tritone subsitution at the same time it explores the full diminished chord in the tonic, with an unusual (though charterisic of Monk) accent on sixths. The tune begins on c# and ends on e, or. more to the point, it explores the movement from b^b to e first as it relates to a movement from C#⁹ to D⁹, then finally, after some modulations, a bridge and so on, it comes back to that interval, umphently, to sound it in itself. So where's the tonic? How can you be sure? It stands as a pretty good example of a fourpart division of the twelvetone scale being superimposed upon a familiar bop chord movement. I think it's evident that Coltrane understands it that way, and then some--but I definitely need to hear it some more before pressing the point.

And it may be beside the point. One has to concede the possibility. Of all things happening in Coltrane's life that might have contributed to his spiritual awakening, these little musical epiphanies may not have been the most vital. There is an understanding of the music that would place the epiphany at the center of the music, especially in the wake of the bebop revolution and the accomplishments of its leading exponent, Charlie Parker. But there are dissenters, Pat Metheny for instance, who view this whole business of finding epiphanies in extemporaneous performance as a myth. Even if you don't find any epiphanies in this recording of the Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane, you might be able to hear specific licks or vague musical ideas that crop up later on the album Giant Steps. So it's an interesting bit of jazz history. And you will hear a very beautiful rendition of "Monk's Mood," which may yet supplant the studio version on Thelonious Himself (on which Coltrane plays uncredited) as the quintessential version.