Composers From The United States

"If you're out on the road, Feeling lonely, and so cold, All you have to do is call my name And I'll be there on the next train.Where you lead, I will follow Anywhere that you tell me to. If you need, you need me to be with you, I will follow where you lead."

"Now ain't it good to know That you've got a friend When People can be so cold. They'll hurt you, kiss and desert you. And take your soul if you let them. Oh, but don't you let them."

"You just call out my name And you know wherever I am I'll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall All you have to do is call And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got a friend."

"When you're down and troubled And you need some loving care And nothing, nothing is going right. Close your eyes and think of me And soon I will be there To brighten up even your darkest nights."

"Way over yonder, that's where I'm bound."

"Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream."

"If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness Maybe not, oh, but we can only try."

"You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face And show the world all the love in your heart The people gonna treat you better, You're gonna find, yes you will, That you're beautiful as you feel."

"So far away Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. Doesn't help to know you're so far away."

"I feel the earth move under my feet I feel the sky tumbling down — tumbling down I feel my heart start to trembling Whenever you're around."

"Gotta make you love me the way you used to do Gotta get back the feeling and put wind in my sails And chart a course that gets me back to you, back to you. Oh, the lonely days, the lonely nights lookin' back in time. Time, don't run out on me."

"The local rock group down the street Is trying hard to learn their song. They serenade the weekend squire Who just came out to mow his lawn. Another pleasant valley Sunday. Charcoal burning everywhere. Rows of houses that are all the same. And no one seems to care."

"When my soul was in the lost and found, You came along to claim it. I didn't know just what was wrong with me Till your kiss helped me name it. Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for, Cause if I make you happy I don't need to do more."

"Looking out on the morning rain, I used to feel so uninspired. And when I knew I had to face another day, Lord, it made me feel so tired. Before the day I met you, life was so unkind. Your love was the key to my peace of mind.'Cause you make me feel. You make me feel, You make me feel like A natural woman (woman)."

"In the midst of all my darkness, baby You came along to guide me. You took pity on a lonely man When you said you'd stand beside me. I'll never forget you Or what you've done. I'll never turn my back on you for anyone.I've got so much love to give you. Baby, I've got so much love to give you. Girl, there's more than enough to last a whole life through, And it's all for you."

"I think I'm going back To the things I learned so well In my youth. I think I'm returning to The days when I was young enough To know the truth."

"There's alot of things I want, a lot of things that I'd like to be. But girl, I don't foresee a rags-to-riches story for me. There's just one little dream I've got to come true; There's just one round I've gotta win, I can't be a loser with you. Baby, baby, once in my life, let me get what I want, Girl, don't let me down! Just once in my life, let me hold on to one good thing I found!"

"When my friends told me you had someone new I didn't believe a single word was true. I showed them all I had a faith in you I just kept on sayingOh, no, not my baby Oh, no, not my sweet baby You're not like those other guys Who lead you on and tell you lies."

"He gets up each morning and he goes downtown Where everyone's his boss, And he's lost in an angry land. He's a little man. But then he comes uptown Each evening to my tenement. Uptown where folks don't have to pay much rent. And when he's there with me. He can see that he's everything. The man is tall, he don't crawl. He's a king."

"Hey girl I want you to know I'm gonna miss you so much if you go. And hey girl I tell you no lie, Something deep inside of me's going to die If you say so long, if this is goodbye."

"One fine day, you'll look at me And you will know our love was, meant to be. One fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl."

"When this old world starts getting me down And people are just too much for me to face, I climb way up to the top of the stairs And all my cares just drift right into space. On the roof, it's peaceful as can be And there the world below can't bother me. Let me tell you now."

"What should I write? What can I say? How can I tell you how much I miss you? The weather here has been as nice as it can be, Although it doesn't really matter much to me. For all the fun I'll have while you're so far away, It might as well rain until September."

"I'll never let you see The way my broken heart is hurting me. I've got my pride and I know how to hide All my sorrow and pain. I'll do my crying in the rain."

"Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains And they ain't the kind that you can see Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah."

"Everybody's doin' a brand new dance now. Come on baby, do the locomotion. I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now. Come on baby, do the locomotion.My little baby sister can do it with ease; It's easier than learning your ABC's. So come on, come on do the locomotion with me."

"My tears are fallin' 'Cause you've taken her away. And though it really hurts me so, There's something that I've gotta say.Take good care of my baby. Please don't ever make her blue. Just tell her that you love her. Make sure you're thinking of her In everything you say and do."

"I want to be your lover But your friend is all I've stayed. I'm only halfway to paradise, So near, yet so far away."

"I'd like to know that your love Is love I can be sure of, So tell me now and I won't ask again, Will you still love me tomorrow?"

"Tonight you're mine completely, You give your love so sweetly Tonight the light of love is in your eyes, But will you love me tomorrow?"

"The song is the center; the song is the key. If you don't have a good song you don't have anything by my value."

"I'm a songwriter first, have always been, and probably always will be. Making the demo is a natural product of writing a song; after that, I'm happy to hear other people do it in other ways."

"I don't know where it's going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens."

"Even people who don’t know much about jazz are aware that jazz musicians are meant to be 'characters' – free-spirited types whose absorption in music generates bizarre behaviour. Though this hipster mythology is exaggerated, it seemed made for Thelonious Monk. His mystique was compounded by his unforgettable name (albeit the same as his father's), his taste for exotic headgear, a penchant for breaking into impromptu dances on the bandstand and a jabbing, idiosyncratic piano style punctuated by the silences which also marked his everyday demeanour. But Monk's media status as the 'high priest of bebop' obscured the real nature of his achievement. At a time when modern jazz was dominated by harmonic legerdemain and omnivorous technique, he showed that a deep-rooted personal vision was still possible. Monk's compositions were unlike anyone else's, full of curiously stretched and sharply angled chords, wrong-footing rhythms, melodies that could be gnomic, rich or grainily lyrical. He defied facility. When you played Monk, you played him on his terms, and his best interpreter was probably himself. His approach to the piano could seem splayed and halting – one fleet-fingered rival dismissed him as 'hamstrung' – but he could produce marvellous, probing colours, somehow getting in between the keys to make the piano seem the ultimate blues instrument. And he swung enormously, with spikey accents and clangorous, tumbling runs. As a soloist or accompanist, his timing was perfect, and he could galvanise a rhythm section by knowing exactly when and when not to play. Listening to Monk can easily become a lifelong habit, since what he has to offer is unavailable anywhere else."

"Unlike many piano players, I love Monk's playing very much. He was brought to my attention by Richard Abrams, a pianist in Chicago, and we used to analyse Monk's playing. We found that Monk's penchant for playing the piano is not in velocity, and not in dynamics, but in sound and s. He has a lot of other devices for producing the "sound"—I've noticed a lot of times, playing in clubs, where the audience is inattentive, you play something of a Monk nature and use that sonority, automatically their ears respond to it. No other piano player has done more to find out the notes that really produce sound than Monk. To completely toss him aside as a pianistic influence is an asinine view."

"That I like. That's Monk ... I think Monk has developed a certain thing. It's not the ordinary left hand like and a lot of piano players used to use; he's done something different"

"A few weeks ago I made a call at his 63rd St apartment and found him practising very thoughtfully on his Klein piano. I felt pretty good when I realised how satisfied he was with his instrument. He invited me to try it out. First I played one of his compositions which I learned a few weeks ago at the Spotlite which he had played with "Hawk". Later I played some of my own tunes which he seemed to like. We promptly agreed to swap three piano arrangements of our tunes. I would arrange "Stratosphere," "Striving," and "Sailing" for him and he agreed to arrange "Ruby, My Dear," "Round Midnight" and another very expressive tune which he hadn't named or whose name he had forgotten. On the day of the proposed swap my tunes were the only ones completed. However, I haven't given up all hope of eventually learning his tunes which I will play morning, noon, and night."

"His is the sort of music that spans time ... it's something that's happening, and it always feels good to me. I can always readily identify with it, and it always has a freshness about it because of the way he constructs his phrases and the kinds of twists it has. I sometimes would like to hear him in a context with some more adventuresome musicians."

"[Reported exchange on telephone in 1980] "Thelonious, are you touching the piano at all these days?" "No, I'm not." "Do you want to get back to playing?" "No, I don't." "I'm only in town for a few days; would you like me to come and visit, to talk about the old days?" "No, I wouldn't." When I repeated this to Barry Harris, the pianist who was much closer to him than almost anyone else in the last years, he said, "You're lucky. You got complete sentences. With most people he just says, 'No.'""

"That piano player sounded as honest as a little child. I think the left hand during the first part was a little hard. It could be Monk. Also it could be Mingus playing piano—sometimes he plays piano like that. I liked the record, the honesty of it and the good feeling it had. However, I think it could have been a little better; so I'll give it a three. I'd rather hear wrong notes being played by a person with good feeling than another person playing perfect, like a typewriter, and sound cold."

"All I can say is, Monk writes some beautiful tunes. When it comes to being a piano player, I'll see you later."

"Count Basie at Town Hall ... No, I'm only kidding; of course it was Thelonious Monk. There's been a lot of pro and con talk about Thelonious through the years, but from the beginning I was pro. I was fascinated, and I wondered how he arrived at these things. Eventually I found out, by studying and analyzing them. Now, he is not a virtuoso pianist, but there is real thought behind what he is composing. It's all very well laid out."

"Pianistically, I don't think has anything to worry about, but if he (Monk) gets that stride thing going a little faster, I don't know... Maybe will have to come back. Pianistically, he's beautiful. (A promoter I know uses that phrase; I guess he likes the way it rolls off his tongue.) But Thelonious is pianistically beautiful. He approaches the piano somehow from an angle, and it is the right angle. He does the thing completely and thoroughly... He hasn't been influenced through the traditional techniques because he hasn't worked through the keyboard composers and, therefore, has his own complete approach of musical thinking. He is such a thinking musician, and I think this is something a lot of people forget about Monk. They somehow feel he's eccentric, but Monk knows exactly what he's doing. Structurally, and musically, he's very aware of every note he plays."

"I don't see how a record company can record something like that. You know the way Monk plays—he never gives any support to a rhythm section. When I had him on my date, I had him lay out until the ensemble. I like to hear him play, but I can't stand him in a rhythm section unless it's one of his own songs ... I can't understand a record like this."

"Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft."

"Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way — through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all."

"I know this from somewhere—it seems as though every time I turn on the radio this seems to slip in; and I've always liked it. It's cute, real cute; and although it's sort of not in my department and I don't know too much about that type of music, I like it an awful lot. Wonderful piano ..."

"The piano ain't got no wrong notes."

"Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band.] Monk: Why did we stop? Technician: I thought you were rehearsing. Monk: Aren't we always?"

"All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians."