Pianists From The United States

"Inka dinka doo, a dinka dee, A dinka doo. Oh, what a tune for crooning. Inka dinka doo, a dinka dee A dinka doo. It's got the whole world spooning."

"I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying to not think about."

"My shit's fucked up. It had to happen to the best of us. The rich folk suffer like the rest of us, It will happen to you."

"You know I hate it when you put your hand inside my head And switch all my priorities around. Why don't you go pick on someone your own size instead?"

"I can saw a woman in two. But you won't want to look in the box when I do"

"Life'll kill ya, That's what I said. Life'll kill ya, Then you'll be dead. Life'll find ya Wherever you go. Requiescat in pace That's all she wrote."

"We contemplate eternity Beneath the vast indifference of heaven."

"And I'm searching for a heart, Searching everyone. They say love conquers all. You can't start it like a car, You can't stop it with a gun."

"Down in the basement I have a Craftsman lathe. Show it to the children When they misbehave."

"I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross."

"When I was young, times were hard. When I got older it was worse."

"I woke up this morning and fell out of bed; Trouble waiting to happen. Should've quit while I was ahead; Trouble waiting to happen. I turned on the news to the Third World War, Opened up the paper to World War IV. Just when I thought it was safe to be bored, Trouble waiting to happen."

"They made hypocrite judgments after the fact, But the name of the game is be hit and hit back."

"Every day I get up in the morning and go to work And do my job — whatever. I need some Sentimental Hygiene. Everybody's at war these days. Let's have a mini-surrender. I need some Sentimental hygiene"

"So I'm gonna hurl myself against the wall, 'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all."

"Now I'm hiding in Honduras I'm a desperate man Send lawyers, guns and money The shit has hit the fan"

"I'm the innocent bystander Somehow I got stuck Between the rock and the hard place And I'm down on my luck"

"Send lawyers, guns and money. Dad, get me out of this!"

"Well, I went home with the waitress The way I always do How was I to know She was with the Russians, too"

"We made mad love: Shadow love, Random love, And abandoned love. Accidentally like a martyr. The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder"

"I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen Doing the werewolves of London. I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's... His hair was perfect."

"He's the hairy-handed gent, who ran amok in Kent. Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair. You better stay away from him. He'll rip your lungs out, Jim. Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor."

"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain. He was looking for a place called Le Ho Fooks. Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein."

"He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom. Excitable boy, they all said. And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home. Excitable boy, they all said."

"Roland the headless Thompson gunner, Norway's bravest son. Time, time, time For another peaceful war. But time stands still for Roland 'Til he evens up the score. They can still see his headless body stalking through the night In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun; In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun."

"Except in dreams, you're never really free."

"And if California slides into the ocean Like the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill.Don't the sun look angry through the trees? Don't the trees look like crucified thieves? Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves? Heaven help the one who leaves."

"Carmelita hold me tighter, I think I'm sinking down. And I'm all strung out on heroin On the outskirts of town."

"So much to do, there's plenty on the farm; I'll sleep when I'm dead. Saturday night I like to raise a little harm; I'll sleep when I'm dead."

"Loneliness and frustration, We both came down with an acute case. And when the lights came up at two, I caught a glimpse of you. And your face looked like something Death brought with him in his suitcase"

"Poor, poor pitiful me. Poor, poor pitiful me. These young girls won't let me be. Lord have mercy on me. Woe is me."

"She's so many women, He can't find the one who was his friend. So he's hanging on to half her heart. He can't have the restless part, So he tells her to hasten down the wind."

"I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it."

"Sickness, doctors, that scares me, not violence — helplessness. That's why I turn to violent stories."

"From what I know about alcoholism, I'd say there's nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave — nothing like that about drinking. It's a real coward's death."

"You know, you put more value on every minute … I mean, I always thought I kind of did that. I really always enjoyed myself. But it's more valuable now. You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich, and every minute of playing with the guys, and being with the kids and everything."

"I'm insane. I'm fucked up. I have problems. But I don't get depressed and I don't get bored."

"Well, first of all, let me say that I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that really didn’t pay off."

"It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies … I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this."

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

"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."