The full interview between Fritz and Robin Kelley is now streaming at the bottom of this posting. Click 'Listen' below. 

SET 1

Thelonious Monk, Live at the It Club, “Gallop’s Gallop,” “Bright Mississippi”

SET 2

Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, “Ba-Lue Boliver Ba-Lues-Are,” “Bemsha Swing”

SET 3

Thelonious Monk, Live at Town Hall, “Friday the 13th”

Thelonious Monk, Underground, “Ugly Beauty”

SET 4

Thelonious Monk, The Essential Thelonious Monk, “Rhythm-a-Ning”

Jon Hendricks, Freddie Freeloader, “Listen to Monk”

Bobby Broom, Bobby Broom Plays for Monk, “Rhythm-a-Ning”

Jean Michel Pilc and Hein Van De Geyn, The Long Journey, “Rhythm-a-Ning”

SET 5

Carmen McRae, Carmen Sings Monk, “Listen to Monk (Rhythm-a-Ning)”

Art Blakey & Thelonious Monk, “Rhythm-a-Ning”

Sheila Jordan & Cameron Brown, I’ve Grown Accustomed to the Bass, “I Got Rhythm/Rhythm-a-Ning”

Oliver Lake with Donal Leonellis Fox, Boston Duets, “Rhythm-a-NIng” 

SET 6

Thelonious Monk, Thelonious in Action, “Blues Five Spot”

Thelonious Monk, The Columbia Years, “Think of One”

SET 7

Thelonious Monk, Complete Blue Note Recordings, “Well You Needn’t,” “Well You Needn’t (Alternate Take),” “Misterioso,” “Carolina Moon”

SET 8

Thelonious Monk, The Complete Riverside Recordings, “Round Midnight in Progress”

SET 9

Thelonious Monk, Complete Prestige, “Bag’s Groove,” “Swing Spring”

Listen  

By Kim Kleinman, Contributing Writer

The drummer for Fast Eddie and the Juicers, the early 1970s high school rock band made up of mutual friends of Fritz and mine, had previously played in a kid’s jazz combo with Pat Metheny. When we started to learn about this music, we trekked to Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium for a day-long jazz festival headlined by Buddy Rich and Clark Terry. Metheny played his own set and sat in a couple of times throughout the afternoon and evening, showing not just flash but taste and versatility.  

He came to town with Gary Burton at least once, filling the guitar chair that once belonged to Larry Coryell and another Midwestern favorite, Jerry Hahn. Then, he started coming home for the holidays and played concerts with his group and his trumpeter brother, Mike, at my university, rousing yet intimate shows

Pat Metheny has been a presence throughout my listening career. “Bright Size Life” was a first exposure to Jaco Pastorius. Together they were bright and brilliant, fresh and exciting. For me, Pastorius became mannered, a collection of tricks, however jaw dropping. With Metheny here they played serious jazz, including the Ornette Coleman set “Round Trip/Broadway Blues” featured on this show.

The first Group album, with “Phase Dance” and “San Lorenzo,” was in heavy rotation for the captivating melodies and building solos by both Metheny and Lyle Mays. And I still remember an interview with him from the period for this emerging icon of jazz rock telling guitar players to listen to horns, that the music has a history, a craft, a discipline. That bracing intelligence and, yes, wisdom from someone a year older than I was striking and serious.

He was always there, but he became easy to overlook.  I found subsequent Group albums pleasant enough but they didn’t stick, and adventurous projects “80/81” and, especially, “Song X” with Ornette Coleman somehow didn’t grab me. Likely, I just couldn’t give them enough of my too-limited jazz listening time.

I could more easily squeeze some room for him in the family sonic space with Joni Mitchell’s “Shadows and Light” (also with Pastorius) and the beautiful “One Quiet Night,” which was enough like other fingerstyle guitar work I put on the sound system

John Zorn’s Masada Project is captivating, so Metheny’s “Tap: Book of Angels Volume 20” has been a chance to get both a deeper sense of  Zorn’s vision and the orchestrational side of Metheny’s work. It’s not quite the Orchestrion Project--Metheny’s intriguing solo work deploying an automatic music-playing contraption--but equally rich and fascinating.

There’s so much to like about Pat Metheny-- the melodies, his big and intelligent ears, his respect for the tradition and craft, his articulate enthusiasm--that I regret that I’m not a bigger fan.  

This show, in honor of his 63rd birthday, is yet another welcome prod from Jazz Spectrum to listen smarter.

Pat Metheny’s career is an ongoing invitation to do just that, listen smarter. 

It’s what we Kansas City boys do.