“In my first experience with [Thelonious Monk], in Amsterdam, we played 'Embraceable You' as a very slow ballad. Then he went into 'Don't Blame Me.' He stood up, looked over to me, and said, 'Drum solo!'
Fortunately for me, I had been working at the Upper East Side supper clubs playing a lot of brushes, and I like brushes. So when I played it, I didn't have to double the tempo, because I was used to playing slow brush tempos. I played it right at the tempo he gave me.
When we were going back to the dressing room, he just walked by me and said, 'How many people you know could have done that?' and he kept on going.”
It seems like Monk liked to spring that on drummers the first time he played with them— in the same situation, Riley apparently fared better than Frankie Dunlop, who shared this horrifying, hilarious story with Scott Fish:
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I remember an MD interview with T.S. Monk in which he told another anecdote about a drummer who was always late for the second set, because he was going to the stripper club nearby. So, after a couple of those instances occurred, the next night his father signaled the drummer to take a solo, then came off stage with all the other members and they went outside, maybe to the stripper club themselves or whatever, and came back like 30 or 40 minutes after. The drummer was a shell of himself, having went through all his soloing ideas and then some. Needless to say, he wasn't late anymore. Monk was definitely one of a kind.
Hahaha, I wonder who that drummer was!
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