Sonny Rollins: “Misterioso” (1957)
Jeremy was ten or so when he said one day, “Dad, why don’t we do a Blindfold Test together?” The Blindfold Test was a feature of Downbeat magazine, to which I subscribed on and off since I was in college. The reviewer asked a jazz musician to listen to a sequence of records and try to identify and comment on the players. Jeremy had heard me read comments musicians made about their peers and we both, not just I, liked to comment on the music we listened to at home. So I stacked up a few records and took out notebook and pen to write down what Jeremy had to say .
My recollection of the specifics of the session is worse than hazy but I remember the first three pieces I played for him. First was a cut from Sonny Rollins, Blue Note vol. 2, probably the Monk tune, “Misterioso,” with Rollins on tenor, JJ Johnson on trombone, Thelonious Monk playing melody and comping behind Rollins, then soloing himself, and then Horace Silver doing the same with JJ, with Miles Davis’s bass player Paul Chambers and Art Blakey on drums. Jeremy dug the cut, which didn’t surprise me, but he had things to say about Blakey’s drum work, which was among the best the drummer had ever done. He wasn’t put off by the Rollins’s harsh tone and he commented on how differently Monk and Silver played piano.
Next I played something by the Band, I think “Down on Cripple Creek.” It wasn’t that Jeremy liked it but he had reasons for liking it. He commented on how tight they were as a band, a judgment I certainly agreed with.
Then I played another Thelonious Monk tune, I think from Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall, probably one of the rousers, either “Friday the Thirteenth,” “Little Rootie Tootie” or “Thelonious.” I don’t remember what he said but on all of the cuts I played, six or seven by there time we were done, he made meaningful judgments.
The mind boggles.
Thelonious Monk, “Little Rootie Tootie,” TM Orch at Town Hall (1959)
MUSIC & ME 