[Dixielandjazz] Pee Wee and Monk

[Robert Ringwald]

> ----- Original Message ----- > On Oct 22, 2011, at 7:43 PM, Bill Haesler wrote:
> 
>> Marek Boym wrote in part:
>>> I don't thnk I've ever heard Pee Wee with Monk, but I can see how  
>>> it could work - two great eccentrics playing together!
>>
>> Dear Marek,
>> Here is "Nutty" from the Newport Jazz Festival Concert on 4th July  
>> 1963.
>>   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTuG-SANPE
>> with Charlie Rouse (ts) Butch Warren (sb) and Frankie Dunlop (d).
>> About a 3 1/2 minutes solo starting at approx. 4:30.
>> The other tune together in the concert was "Blue Monk".
>> Robert Hilbert, in his biography "Pee Wee Russell, The Life Of A  
>> Jazzman", quotes Pee Wee as not being happy with the Newport  
>> performance.
>> "No rehearsal, just pushed onto the stage. and I didn't fit into  
>> that group."
>> I couldn't find any earlier reference in the Hilbert book to Monk  
>> and the Loft.
>> No Index!
>> I wonder if Steve B has an approximate date.
> 


Steve Barbone answers:

> Dear Bill & Marek:
> 
> It is purely my guess when they played together in the Loft but I know  
> they were together and talking to each other in the Loft at least once  
> in 1959, and often thereafter. I would guess they would have first  
> played together there in 1959 or 1960.
> 
> Regarding Pee Wee, he was very insecure and always downing himself and  
> I suspect with his "not liking" his Newport performance, he was just  
> being Pee Wee. If you asked Pee Wee about any performance of his, he  
> would almost always down it. It is true that they did not rehearse  
> either Nutty or Blue Monk but I read somewhere that Pee Wee chose the  
> tunes beforehand. Besides, both of those tunes are very simple blues  
> that any hack can follow easily. Pee Wee being a consummate blues  
> player had no trouble with either of them.


Wrong.  

IMHO, Pee Wee was correct.  He didn't fit in that group.  His solo was awful.  But he knew it.  

Just because someone plays a bunch of strange notes, does not mean that it is necessarily good.  

It is a shame that, that recording is preserved.  

--Bob Ringwald