You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Makes This Album Great: Thelonious Alone In San Francisco

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

In this episode, Adam and Peter start a new series! What exactly makes the Jazz catalog so great. Let's delve into Thelonious Alone in San Fransico and really break down what elements make it so iconic.↓ Links from the pod ↓Unlock your FREE Open Studio trial to become a better player today.Alone In San Francisco Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yo. What you know about Fugazi? Like this? No, no, like this. Oh, yeah. I like this quite a bit. Well, let's talk about what makes it so great.

Let's get into it. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you. Coming at you today. Sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com.

And check out our free trial. Yes. Free 99. Free 99. Peter, what do we have today? What's going on? Well, we're starting something new here. Well, that's not really new. I mean, we're always like listening to albums and cherishing them, but we're going to break down.

I have brought an album with me. Okay. Yes. A physical copy of an album with you. I do have this as a physical album. I didn't bring that today. I brought my Spotify login details. Excellent.

We're going to do it via that instead. Brought your Spotify credentials. My credentials. To an album listening party. That's right. Right. We're going to listen to Thelonius alone in San Francisco. And we've come up with a bespoke.

Now this truly is bespoke. I'm so sorry. 10 part. He promised. 10 point. He promised he would never say bespoke again. Sorry. Wait till the end because one of our listeners actually used the word bespoke.

We're going to talk about that. Okay. At the end, don't let me forget. No, but this is, we've come up with a 10-part criteria for rating an album. Just talking about what makes it great. Yes. And maybe we can keep track of these scores and see how we stack up after we've done a few of these. Loosely based upon the wine spectator, 100 point.

So it's 10. 10 different criteria, 10 points east. 100 is a perfect album. I like it a lot. I like it a lot. Okay. Well, let's get into it. Full disclosure, I love this album.

It's a great album. So what's your relationship to this album? Peter, when did you first discover this? When Marcellus recommended this record to me when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I got a chance to meet him here in St. Louis. He was playing with the St. Louis Symphony. My dad was playing then. And he invited myself and a couple of my friends down to the rehearsal.

And I played some stuff. And he asked, Winton asked me, have you heard Thelonious Monk? And I was like, no, I think I'd vaguely heard the name. And I remember he said, Winton said, check out solo monk. He said those words. Almost like, what is that? Like an Oracle tells you something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Check out solo monk. So like that rang in my head because at the time there was no internet to go to. So later on, I realized he was saying, check out the album solo monk, which I did. But I found this album first, Thelonius alone in San Francisco. I was like, oh, this is the loniest monk playing solo. piano, so this must be what he's talking about. Lucky for me, this is an amazing record as well, predates solo Monk on Columbia a little bit,

but it's been one of my favorite albums ever since. I've transcribed some of this stuff. I've lived with the album. But I think it's just, I think it's one of Thelonious Monk's finest albums just for the GP, the general population, for the listeners. I think it is such an amazing album,

as will likely be reflected in my score. Interested to see what you think of it. Yeah, you know, this is more of a recent discovery for me, really since meeting you and this is so important to you. I, of course, I've heard of it. I probably have listened to it before, but it's not one of my albums that I was listening to a lot. Yeah. I was listening way more to like things like Monk's music and Mysterio and Brilliant Corners was one of my favorites. That's like, you know, when you just find a CD when you're a kid and you're like, this is the one I love. That Brilliant Corners for me was the Monk album that I

love the most. But I do love this album since I've discovered it since, like I said, being friends with you. So yeah, I already have kind of my ratings assessed, but we can listen a little bit and maybe adjust. Okay. Well, let's just start going through. We got 10 different criteria. What do we decide on for the first one? Peter, so I think the first criteria that we have down here is the playing. So the improvisation, just the general playing, the actual playing. Well, you are in luck, buddy, because this is incredible playing from beginning to end, but I'm going to pull up track number eight, remember. Let's just listen a little bit here. It's tapping his toes over there.

How can you not? How can you not? I think we went right into the time nicely. I have for playing. I have 10. I have 10 out of 10 on this. You're ready to go with it. I like that.

Well, this is, I think, and I'll tell you why, because I think, you know, as I've listened to, this is from 1959. I think this is peak monk. I think this is monk at the height of his artistic powers as a musician. Yeah. And I think his playing on here is some of his best ever recorded, my opinion. So, Adam's going with a 10. I'm going with the 10 as well.

But I would do it just from the angle. of like this is an amazingly recorded album. And as you say, he's at peak, which I don't know that there was like peak and then he went down. I think there might have been some different peaks. But like anytime you're capturing Monk when he's inspired and you can hear the piano great and it's a great instrument, it's going to be 10 out of 10. Yeah.

I think this is for me that, yeah, exactly right. Like even great artists though who are consistent, they still have like banger nights more than others. And I think this is a banger night for. Yeah. And as we listen to just different tracks and go through them, you'll hear on here that The level of playing is 10. I don't think it's going to be like, oh, well, you cherry pick the one track.

No, the playing is killing. A bunch of great stride playing on here. That whole thing at the beginning with the melody in the left hand and incredible stuff. Next up, we've got vibe. Vibe. Okay, well, glad you said that because I've got some good stuff for that, too. Okay, I could really pick out any track, but I want to pick out the last track. We'll talk about this later, a little foreshadowing with sequencing.

But this is a beautiful composition of Philonis Monks. It's not as well known, but I think one of his most beautiful ballets. Tell me if this fancies your vibe, Omeeter. I mean, for me, almost, I can't think of a Monk album or recording that isn't a 10 out of 10 for vibe. When I think of vibe, I think of authenticity more than anything. Is everything that the artists representing authentic to their artistic self? Nobody in the history of music represents authenticity, I think, more than Thelonious Monk.

If you were going to say someone, an artist who is the most themselves, monk would be the first out of my mouth every time. Yeah, absolutely. And I love like just to me what really demonstrates the vibe of this album, and this being the last track is kind of a cool thing. But, you know, alone in San Francisco, solo piano, when he goes to that, you know, it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he lets go and just sits on that set with that, that unique ability to bend the tone, you know, and then with that beautiful, you know, flowing notes and chords after that. I love it. vibe. So what are you going with?

I'm going 10. Oh, you said 10. Okay. I know. So we've got 10 for playing for me. I got to go with 10. This is going to sound like we're going to do everything 10. Just so everybody knows. Not all the minds are 10s. In fact, we dip a little bit. We dip a little intrigue. Well, I'm 10 out of 10 on that too. Okay. Next up is compositions. Compositions. All right. I'm going to tell you right now, but do you 10 out of, but this is 10 out of 10. We don't even have to hear anything. Well, there's mutton tunes. It's so this is the greatest composer in jazz. Well, let's just look at this though. Six originals on this album. There's 10 tracks.

But even the covers. everything happens to me. Matt Dennis. Yeah. That's a great song. Yeah, he did a great job of curating. I mean, the only thing I would say is remember. That's a,

that's really good, man. I mean, I could see a nine because of some of these. Maybe there's danger in your eyes, Charlie. But even that is very nice. And the way Monk brings that to life, I mean, I would almost go a nine out of ten because of that one.

Actually, because of that, there's danger in your eyes, Charlie. I'm going to go nine. I'm going nine out of ten as well. That's a, that's a... I mean, it's great. But it's not quite ten. it. If everything's a 10?

Nothing's a 10. Okay. I agree. Of course, we're not going to go 10 out of time, but we're going to go the same on everything. But Monk compositions are tens out of tens, but yeah, some of the covers, I mean, a lot of the covers are great, which is why it's a nine. Right. But out of the three, yeah. So I'm just going to play a little bit of this for the... Oops, I keep there.

That's the beginning of Ruby, My Deer. I just want to explain. You know, how, why we're going high on the compositions. All right. Next up is sound. Sound. Okay. I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay, so let's keep listening to Ruby, my dear, here because I think on the whole album is consistent is the sound. You know, but so we talked about Fugazi. It was actually recorded in a small concert hall in the north end of San Francisco, the Italian neighborhood, called Fugazi Hall.

And I think that they captured that, like it doesn't sound like a club, it doesn't sound like a concert at all, but it doesn't sound like a studio. I was always interested in why it was like that. But to me, it's just such a cool sound, like it's a little bit ambiguous in terms of like the venue. but the depth, the width of the instrument? What do you think? I'm giving this a six on sound. This is not my favorite. Yeah.

So I think the piano sounds a little thin. I would have preferred... I mean, it's hard to say, because can you get the same vibe out of a concert hall that you could in a studio? Right. But I like a fuller piano sound.

I think it sounds okay. It doesn't sound bad, but I think it's just average. It's interesting because as I'm listening to it today, I'm just jumping to Blue Hawk, another one of the cool tunes on here. By the way, At least two of these tunes, he only played these blues on this album.

I was going to say thin. I don't know if I called thin, but maybe a little bit. But it's just not very full for me. But there's a clarity there. It's solo piano. Yes. Yeah. No, but I mean, so it's always the thing of like when the playing gets to a certain level

and the pacing the album hits a certain level. There's something adrift. A blanket? It's windy out there. It is windy out there. Maybe that's Tumblewees going across this. If our listeners, like something just flew by our window. It just got ran over too.

It's not a life form or anything. So I just think it's average. I think it's good, not great. I've always loved the sound. Today I'm feeling a little bit, but I'm going to go eight because I've got to go with my heart in terms of like how I've felt about this album. You know, but we'll talk about this as we look at other albums.

Like, where does a love of the music that's being played cross over with the presentation of the sound? Like how do we pull those apart, which is obviously what we're doing? rhetorical question. Next up we've got sequence, which is the track sequence. So what is the song sequence? Yep. And I think, so this starts off with Blue Monk and then Ruby My Deer and then round lights and then

a couple of the cover tunes, everything happens to me and you took the words right out of my heart. Yep. I gave this an eight. I think it's really, really strong sequencing. And obviously you got a bunch of Monk's original compositions here. That's going to be strong. but I do like I would have started side two just thinking about it as like a vinyl yeah side two starts

with that blue hawk I would have flipped blue hawk and pan honica but that's just me that's interesting yeah so you're gonna go eight I'm gonna go nine uh and I'd almost go 10 on this but I'm gonna go nine only because like I've listened to this album from beginning to end on vinyl turning it over and I then more recently listening to it just on spot like this is one of those albums that I love listening to from beginning and and sometimes I'm not even planning on doing that but I can't stop. And it flows so well. I couldn't imagine. It's interesting you say flipping those. I think that could work, but that's never been anything that bothered me about it. So I don't even know why I'm not going 10. Maybe I should be going 10, right? Maybe you should. Is 10 perfection? Utter perfection.

I can't say that I'm going to go 9 because I don't know why. I think it's great. If you're not feeling, that's the thing, but this is a feel thing. It is. If you don't feel like it's the perfect sequence, I'm going 10. You're going 10. Okay. It feels like there's nothing I would change about it. I love like these blues. Like there's three, is there three blues on here? Yeah. But they're spread apart in a way that almost is like, you know, well, they're not totally spread apart.

Okay. Oh, they are spread apart. Like, it's almost like a recurring theme, but it's very subtle because they're different. You've got the standards. I love the way the album starts and the way that it ends, which is so important. No, that's good.

That's a good point. Yeah, again, I have eight. Peter, you're going 10. Actually, I'm going to go 9. You're going to go 9. This is 10. How to save some perfection? I mean, I feel like the playing, the vibe, and the composition.

Like we have, so for me, I had tens on the playing in the vibe, which I stand by. I think it's perfection, the playing in the vibe. Yeah. And then, yeah, we can go through the, we'll wrap it up with our total score. Next up is the cover art, Peter. Let's take a, can we take a look at that? Put it up here for our YouTube vibe. Yeah, I have a nine out of ten on this.

Oh, my God. I love this cover. Me too. I'm going nine. No, I'm going. Oh. Yeah, I'm going. I'm going nine on this. Because I don't know that it's the greatest cover ever, but nine is a solid

eight. I mean, it's such a, I love San Francisco. I love the street cars. I love Monk. I love the font. I love the gradiation of it, the rule of thirds. I mean, there's nothing design-wise that I could fault with it. So again, it's very, very strong. So if, for our listeners on the audio podcast, it is, you can just Google it, but it's Monk standing on the side of the street car and a really cool, like sort of where the title is sort of angled in a way, you know what I mean? I don't know what that's called, but it looks really cool. Shout out Riverside record. So we both went nine for the cover. Our next up is the title itself. So the title of it is Thelonius in San Francisco. No, it's Thelonius alone in San Francisco. Sorry, Thelonius alone in San Francisco. So this is why

I'm giving this title a seven, which is like a kind of average, high average, because I can never remember the exact wording, right? And so a good title should be like unambiguous, but I always like, I'm like, is it Thelonious Monk alone in San Francisco? Is it Thelonius in San Francisco? No, it's Thelonius alone in San Francisco. Right. You could blame me and my, my P-sized brain for that, but I'm going to fault, the title itself could be better. It's a seven. So I'm going to go eight on that just because I agree it's a little bit, a little bit quirky, but I think that's what kind of makes it cool too. Like, we think about, like, is the name of the album could have been alone in San Francisco. So the artist is Thelonius Monk, and then the album is alone in San Francisco.

we saw from, you know, the cover art there, I think, let me just refer. Can you throw that back up on there one more time, Caleb? So I think the spacing of Thelonius alone inside, I wonder if that kind of impacted the titling, because it works so well on that cover-up. So I'm going A, because I think it's great, and it's not perfect, but it's damn good, and it certainly tells you a lot about what's going to happen. And then it delivers, which is always important for its title. Our next criteria is the album lore, so the legend, the story behind the album. For this one, for this There's really not much of a big story behind it. A couple of the interesting things.

You already mentioned that Blue Hawk and Round Lights were improvised blues, which appeared only in these recorded versions, which I think is part of the lore of it. Yeah. And then I like your lore of Winton Marsalis telling you to listen to Monk and this is where you landed. I'm going to give it an eight for lore. Actually, I'm going to do what, now that I say that, I'm going to give a seven for lore. Interesting. I just put down six.

I'm going to give it a six because there's not a lot. There's some interesting things in terms of like, you know, river. and Orange Keep News and the the the he did several well I guess he did two Thelonius himself which is fantastic which was before this which was also on Riverside and then solo monk which was on Columbia later on he did that one in Paris real early on that was on some sort of jackleg label or something so it's definitely like in there in the lineage of great Thelonious monk's solo album so that's an interesting thing but it's not something people talk about and know about a lot the Fugazi hall thing is cool but I don't really know a lot about that other than it's in the

north end of San Francisco that's always interesting things. So that's why I'm going six. Okay. Our next criteria, this is a fun one, is our jazz snobometer. So it's one to ten. How much is this album reflective of a jazz snobs taste? So would a, and I'm almost thinking of this is like, would my aunt Linda listen to this? Like if she would, that's low on the jazz stop score. Oh, that's a confusing way to explain it. I know. I'm kind of reverse engineering it. But Like, is this like a jazz snob, strong jazz snob album? I'm going to put it as a nine on the jazz snobometer.

Yeah, I mean. Because this is like, you know, Monk in general, I think is eight or above always. Pretty much. Because you really have to be, like the first time you hear it, you're like, what in the hell is happening here? You know what I mean? But it grows on you so fast, but you do have to be steeped in the music, you know? Interesting. Okay, so I don't know what, I'm going to go eight, actually.

I was going to say that I don't know what would make this a 10. Why this wouldn't be a 10? Because it's a great album. It's not, but this is the thing. It is kind of like, it's such an insider pick. It's like, oh, like I could see a jazz snob being, oh, wait, now that would make it higher, though, wouldn't it? You're confusing me, Adam. A jazz snob.

If this is an album that only jazz snobs would like, it's a 10. Okay. If it's an album that your Aunt Linda would love, it's a one. I think Aunt Linda would like this, though. Would she? If she just heard it. Aunt Linda loves Kenny G. You know what I'm saying?

Shout out Aunt Linda. Shout out. And Linda loves Celine Dion. Okay. Not my actual Aunt Linda, but in general, the avatar of Aunt Linda. Right, but there's like jazz snots, like, Thelonious Monk is not just the domain of jazz snobs. People love round midnight. I believe he is.

No, he's not, I mean, he's, he's not Miles Davis in terms of like being out there in the, in the popular culture lore. But I mean, if somebody, if you say Thelonious Monk, like, you don't have to only be a jazz snops. Because his name is very memorable, but I think as far as like, well, and especially a solo piano, the lonious monk album, I'm going nine. Okay. I stand by that. I mean, we're not far off. No, we're not far. I stand by the eight.

Okay. All right. Our final criteria is, is it better or worse than kind of blue? This is number 10, right? Yeah. And it's like, it's a binary question. Yes or no. Yes is 10 points.

Zero is no is zero points. Okay. You want me to go first? You go first. Define better then. That's your opinion. Like, do I like it more? Yes.

Do you think it's better than kind of blue artistically? No, see, that's different. Do I like it more or do I... Is it better or worse than kind of blue, in your opinion? 10 points, yes. I'm going to say no. Okay. Okay, and then finally your favorite track.

My favorite track, I think it's remember. It's not my favorite composition on here, but it's my favorite track, the performance of. Mine is Pan Onica. Okay, so let's add up our school. scores. Okay. Let's do our score reveals. I'll go first. So my score and my favorite track. My score is a 75 out 100. My favorite track is Pan Onica. Oh, 75, a C. I think that actually, well, it's not really a C. I think this actually accurately reflects my feelings on this album. Okay. Pretty perfectly.

So mine, I got 87. Nice. Which I'm a little surprised. I would have thought that was, because this is one of my all-time favorite monk albums. But that's what it is. We went through the criteria. I would be, we'll never, I don't think we'll ever get like a hundred out of a hundred on any album that's, nothing's ever perfect. But I think 87's very, very strong. And really hard for me to pick up favorite tracks. I love this. I think it's a complete album. But remember, uh, is I love his playing on that. I love that. Like if I was going to be like, you know, gun to my head, listen to one of the tracks. That would be it. Cool. There it is. All right. This is fun. That was just fun. That was great, man. That was so much fun. This is the first time we've

applied. You know what I loved is the snobobometer? The snobometer is great. Can I pick the next album? I don't understand it either. Can I pick the next great album that we can do this too? Yeah, you want to know for an hour? Yeah, not yet. Yeah, yeah, you do the next one. I brought this one in. That'll be interesting to see how we do that. By the way, since we are reviewing

and rating and albums, did you know that our dear listeners can and have been doing that? Not only through the gala system, you want to just refresh them on the gala system? That's the gentleman and ladies agreement. So if you are listening to this podcast or you are watching on YouTube, either one.

Or if you're walking by and observing it. Or if you're just walking by the window, go to YouTube and you have to like the video and you have to leave a comment that says, Gala. Why do they have to? Because it's part of the agreement.

Because we are providing you with this podcast. And you think, oh, it's free. It's not free. It's not free. Especially if you get this far into the episode. If you're this far into it, you got to do the gentleman

and ladies agreement where you go to the comments, you leave a gala and, yeah. And please go back to it. I don't know if this has been happening to you, but I've been hearing about this. too. Go back and make sure you're subscribed

to the You'll Hear It channel. The You'll hear at YouTube channel. Even if you subscribe before because YouTube does a funny thing. I've been hearing from some of our dear viewers. They're like, I know I subscribe, but I subscribed again. Yeah, there's a weird thing with the YouTube algorithm. The Google company's having trouble. You know, with their technology.

And then if you want to go next level, this is above and beyond the Gala system. And the gentleman in the license agreement. This is leading a review on the actual podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcast. So go to Apple Podcasts and leave a rating in review. We only take 10 star ratings, seven stars. Wait, where we did? Seven stars. Seven stars. Well, no, we'll take 10 stars. Seven and above. Seven and above. That's all the, and it's

all the system will only kind of throttle us down to five. Don't worry about that. They're super against us, but you have to leave seven stars. I mean, vote your conscience, of course. But if, yeah. But we're going to start reading every one of the reviews. Oh, boy. I'm going to do it now. I mean, this will encourage us to get more. The last one I love. This is from W. S3 from the USA. The title of the review is bespoke. the show and then why would you five stars

feed that machine five stars and it's just the show is bespoke thank you WS3 don't do that and then

from Rosalea hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly from the USA love these dudes five stars fabulous genuine

and amazing thank you for sharing your process and love of jazz and the waltz is simple and elegant and a study in

fifth and drop two drop four I learned much as a new student thank you to Debbie too I guess the waltz Debbie.

It's for Debbie. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then lastly, love these dudes. This is another one from Russell L. Oh, this is a repeat,

fabulous, genuine, amazing. Thank you for sharing your process and love of jazz. It's okay. She left two reviews. We've only been doing this for six years. He's just now learning how to do this.

This is awesome. Well, until next time, you'll hear it.