bainer:

Miles Davis - ‘Round Midnight (1961)

From Miles Davis’ autobiography:

“I also got to know Thelonious Monk better when I was working with Bean [Coleman Hawkins’ nickname]; Monk was in the band, too. Denzil Best was playing drums. I really liked Monk’s tune, “‘Round Midnight,” and I wanted to learn how to play it. So I used to ask him every night after I got through playing it, “Monk, how did I play it tonight?” And he’d say, looking all serious, “You didn’t play it right.” The next night, the same thing and the next and the next and the next. This went on for a while.

“That ain’t the way to play it,” he would say, sometimes with an evil, exasperated look on his face. Then, one night, I asked him and he said, “Yeah, that’s the way you play it.”

Man, that made me happier than a motherfucker, happier than a pig in shit. I’d gotten the sound down. It was one of the hardest. “‘Round Midnight” was very difficult because it had a complex melody and you had to hang it together. You had to play it so you could hear the chords and changes and also hear the tops; it was just one of those tunes that you had to hear. It wasn’t like a regular eight-bar melody or motif and it stopped, like in a minor key. It’s a hard tune to learn and remember. I can still play it, but I don’t like to do it too much now, except maybe when I’m practicing, alone. And what made it so hard for me to play was that I had to get all those harmonies. I had to hear the song, play it, and improvise so that Monk could hear the melody.”

I’m in heaven here… this is exquisite!