Wes Montgomery and Thelonius Monk: early recordings fill in gaps
CD compilations of recordings made early in the careers of these two jazz greats, accompanied by extensive essays, are worth investing in
Like most music lovers, I now spend more on downloads than physical CDs. The prices are generally lower and sometimes the MP3 versions include PDFs of the CD booklets, but even if you disregard sound quality issues, the experience is somehow less satisfying than buying music in physical form.
For that reason, recently in London I spent the equivalent of HK$700 in Ray's Jazz at Foyles on music I could have bought from iTunes for half as much or less. It simply feels better to have the newly unearthed Wes Montgomery archive recordings, In the Beginning, sitting on the shelf next to Echoes of Indiana Avenue than to have them filed together on a hard drive or in an iPod.
Echoes, which came out in 2012, shed new light on Montgomery's early career in Indianapolis before he made his national breakthrough after signing with Riverside Records in 1959. With In the Beginning - a two-CD package which includes a 55-page booklet of essays and interviews - a previously under-documented period (from 1949 to 1958) in the career of one of the greatest guitarists in jazz can now be properly appreciated.
This should be treated as a companion volume to Echoes. For those who don't insist on physical CDs, that and In the Beginning are available from iTunes with the digital booklets at a bargain price of HK$151 for the pair.
Whichever version you buy, the sound quality, of course, falls short of the standards achievable for live recordings today. But on the first disc you do get a sense of the atmosphere of Indianapolis' Turf Club in 1956 when Montgomery was playing there with his brothers - with Buddy on piano and Monk on bass - alongside drummer Sonny Johnson and tenor saxophonist Alonzo Johnson (no relation).
The notes in the booklet fill out the picture further. All members of the band were black, but the club was for whites only. Buddy Montgomery, who died in 2009 leaving behind an unpublished memoir from which an excerpt is included, recalled a night when bandleader-composer Count Basie and singer Sarah Vaughan came to see the band, and were barred at the door. The musicians, who were the club's major draw and had packed the place, stopped playing and refused to restart unless those special guests were admitted.