Talk:Thelonious Monk Trio

Original version?

the article is currently describing the 12" version of the album ... there should be content about the original 1952 10" Thelonious, scroll down to PRLP142 at Jazzdisco.com, or here at Discogs,

PRLP 142 Thelonious Monk Trio

Thelonious Monk (piano) Gerry Mapp (bass) Art Blakey (drums)

NYC, October 15, 1952

• 367 Little Rootie Tootie
• 368 Sweet And Lovely
• 369 Bye-Ya
• 370 Monk's Dream

Thelonious Monk (piano) Gerry Mapp (bass) Max Roach (drums)

NYC, December 18, 1952

• 399 Trinkle, Tinkle
• 400 These Foolish Things
• 401 Bemsha Swing
• 402 Reflections

tracks 7 & 8 on the 12", from 1954, were added from a PRLP 189 Thelonious Monk Plays

J Edward Malone (talk) 12:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

According to what reliable source is that 10" record an original version of this article's record? Dan56 (talk) 18:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

hello Dan, thanks for responding ... I see you've put a fair bit of work into this article, including previously deleting the exact info I was planning to add (I was even going to upload artwork and add an infobox for the 10")

I'm presuming your issue is that Discogs and Jazzdisco are not reliable sources, rather than denying the 10"lps came first then were repackaged, correct? I have no better reliable sources, but info on the 10"LPs can be found all over the web...

release dates are always a problem with these early jazz LPs, and I've found the 12" repackagings themselves do not acknowledge they are reissues of old material, so they're no help, and latterday reviews may be done by people like us who don't remember such a shortlived format ever existed, so the reviews don't usually help either

Birkajazz is a store, thus I never use it for a citation, but it does have a very nice gallery of Prestige album covers and shows us more of the history than more database driven sites ... they have PRLP142 dated as 1952 (other sites show it as 1953), and PRLP7027 as 1956, after the 10"LP format was discontinued (coinciding with all the similar repackagings of Miles Davis' earliest albums)

here is another page I would not use as a citation (someone's blog?), but the last paragraph is a good summary of the release history of Monk's Prestige material, and it itself cites someone called Robin D.G. Kelley, who turns out to be Monk's biographer ... this book might be worth seeking out, then, and I believe I will look for it myself ... the author does have his own site, scroll down to the 2nd & 3rd session on that page

EDIT: here's a couple of published sources, viewable online:

Goldmine Standard Discography, zoom in, it even lists the release dates

Brilliant Corners: A Bio-discography of Thelonious Monk, by Chris Sheridan 2001, see pgs 38-40

J Edward Malone (talk) 18:44, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

"1954" and "Monk's Moods" are unsourced

One of the great ironies, here, Dan56, is that the inaccurate date of 1954 and the mention of Monk's Moods were added by you, in 2013, and they have always been unsourced and lacking citations. Shall we remove them now, or will you work with me to beef up your own claim? Would you accept the Goldmine record guide as a source? Sojambi Pinola (talk) 03:55, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

"1954" and "Monk's Moods" are not unsourced. Gzus, *eye roll* Dan56 (talk) 16:32, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I am just going by what reliable sources cited in the article verify about the album, which you pretend as if they don't exist: Sputnikmusic verifies the entire "Background" section, which lends the information also in the lead (as you should know by now as a 14-year-plus Wikipedian); All About Jazz says "1954" ([1]), too. Your arrogant tone and verbosity personalizing the issue throughout all these talks have been exhausting my patience and bludgeoning the process, which you are, by Wikipedia's definition, doing so: "Bludgeoning the process is where someone attempts to force their point of view by the sheer volume of comments, such as contradicting every viewpoint that is different from their own. This can happen on a talk page, deletion discussion or in any discussion at Wikipedia. It is undesirable. If pushed too far, it may be considered a form of disruptive editing. Like, where do you find the time and energy?? Shm. Your verbal behavior feels very manipulative, too. Dan56 (talk) 16:14, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Why wouldn't I accept Goldmine as a source? It's reliable for the simple fact of being a professional publication with experienced journalists and editors. Why wouldn't I accept such a source?? Dan56 (talk) 16:32, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

i just wanted to make sure you'd accept it as a source before wasting a chunk of time using it and having you again revert the edits.

Please forgive my not creating a new section on this but I'm on a train-- making personnel a separate section is fine. the only functional problem is that it is now unclear which version of the album it refers to, when specific tracks are referred to. with your blessing, i will move the alternate track listing _under_ the personnel listing, to clear up that confusion.

Whether or not several websites place the album's release in 1954 or not:. they are incorrect, for reasons that were explained in the paragraph that you deemed too esoteric for the layperson. No Jazz labels were creating 12", 40 minute albums until later -- 1955- 1956. if I'm blungeoning (a term i don't think is appropriate given your wholesale and compulsive edit-reverts), it's only because you are insisting on a disprovable and irritating untruth, for reasons i can't comprehend. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 04:47, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

thank you for finally adding citations to those claims. they are still wrong. i have several copies of this album from the 1950's. it always opens with "blue Monk."

i challenge you to find a 1950a record label with "Little RootieTootie" on side A. now, wikipedia favors sites that happen to let these these goofs slip through, because very few people at All Music actually listen to records pressed prior to the digital era. i recognize that this makes the task of overcoming this ignorance am uphill battle. thank you for dramatizing this in such sharp relief. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 05:03, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Nothing worth doing comes easy, for whatever reason. Dan56 (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there are better sources for LP and record releases than AllMusic. LP catalogues and published jazz writers are better, for instance. Dan56 (talk) 15:32, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Please stop messing up the chronology navigation

(Dan56), you are unilaterally moving albums around in an inconsistent manner, and messing up the navigation. It's pointless, and it's not common sense. The 12" Blue Note albums are from later in the decade, too. I don't think your narrow agenda is widely shared. It verges on trolling by interpreting the "rules" in the narrowest manner possible. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 20:59, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for suggesting I may be a troll. Unfortunately, the fields you have revised are inconsistent with what you intend for them to mean. As Template:Infobox album explains, "released" is intended to hold "Original album release date", and "chronology" intends to "establish a timeline of an artist's releases", not a timeline of an artist's recording sessions. And, as is explained in the article on Discography: "[A discography] is distinct from a sessionography, which is a catalogue of recording sessions, rather than a catalogue of the records, in whatever medium, that are made from those recordings." So, it seems you are the one with a particular agenda (Wikipedia:Don't shoot yourself in the foot). However, I will agree old jazz discographies are not as clear-cut as their antecedents. But we must still keep in mind the purpose of this infobox and not manipulate it in a way that is inconsistent with the intentions of its design (WP:INFOBOX), or confound the average reader with a specialist style of grouping distinct from virtually every other music-release article (WP:AUDIENCE). In order to fulfill what appears to be your vision, I suggest you create an additional "chronology" template labeled "Thelonious Monk sessionography". Although, you do have to wonder what recording date you'd pick to order by -- seeing as how albums like this one have multiple from different years -- and you'd have to wonder about the neutrality and objectivity and logic of picking one date over another... Dan56 (talk) 21:47, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

First of all--If you and I can agree that a sessionography might be a valid way out of this stalemate (I'd call it "albums by session" or some sort), and if you will let me proceed with that for these Monk albums, I will do that when I have a little more time. If you are going to reverse this suggestion and put all my efforts into an arbitrary tangle, I am not going to waste my time. I used the word "revamped" (or some form of it) to appease you on one of these pages, because _you_ suggested it, and then you had a problem with that word.

Now, to address your specific current edits:

Look at these serial numbers:

• Prestige 7027-- Thelonious Monk Trio (compilation released 1956)
• Prestige 7053-- Monk (compilation released 1956)
• Prestige 7075--Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins (compilation released 1956)

Prestige's serial numbers were issued in sequential order. This little list is a sequential order. There were other Prestige releases (by other artist on that label) inbetween these albums, but this is the order they released these Monk compilations--all in 1956, probably within an extremely short span of time, given the number of releases that label put out in that year. So having "...Trio" go straight to the third in this series makes no sense.

In response to your sessionography query -- Usually, when there is this sort of session confusion and compilations are released in short order, I group them together either by the final session date of a given album, or, when we have the hints of album serial numbers, by serial number date; whichever will cause the least confusion to someone trying to access the information.

I think we need some other editors to break our stalemate. But I ask you: Who are you trying to educate with the edits you are making? If I wanted to learn about Monk, I would want to have some idea of the progression of his music, and I would do what I always do in Wikipedia as a "learner": I'd use the convenient linking feature of the infoboxes to surf what I would hope would be an unbroken, uncircular navigation; whether or not YOU use that feature is besides the point. That's what it's there for, hence the links. We had it pretty close there. I'm not the first Wikipedia user who has butted heads with you on this....Some guy was trying three years ago. (I don't know him; not me.) Looks like he gave up and even deleted his account, but every comment I've seen from him looks reasonable and scholarly, which is more than I can say for your rationalizations, frequently accompanied by policeman-like "don't do it again" threats. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 03:20, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Like I said before, I am open to the idea of an extra chronology grouping the albums by sessionography, or by (some) date of recording, if you can make it work. As far as using the infobox as a means of navigation (and intimation of a recording artist's "progression", which Thelonious Monk discography already appears to do...), several editors -- @Fezmar9:, @Ojorojo:, or @Walter Görlitz: -- at this discussion related to chronology in the infobox put across a point that might be relevant here: the infobox's purpose is to hold information, not serve as a navigation template (which goes at the bottom of the article). More importantly, the infobox should not supplant key facts in an article; if there is a documentable progression of Monk from one recording session to another or one album to another, the article should relay that information to the reader in prose. But maybe the aforementioned editors can offer the kind of third opinion you'd like... Dan56 (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

No one "gave up and even deleted their account." (There just happens to be a red link to their username, which happens when a user doesn't create a user page.) Dan56 (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming the latter point. I stand corrected. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 03:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

[responding to ping] As outlined in the infobox album documentation, chronologies are for releases, such as albums and EPs. They are based on discographies and are not intended for other chronological events, such as recording sessions or other subsets of information. If extra chronologies were added for whatever chain of events an editor may choose, infoboxes could become bloated with a lot of miscellaneous details (chronology of albums produced by so-and-so, live albums, recorded as a trio, quartet, etc., etc.). Monk (1956 album) is a compilation and should appear where it belongs in the chronological album sequence. The fact that it includes material recorded earlier (as do most compilations), does not warrant a separate "recording" chronology. If that were the WP standard practice, every time a new compilation is released, the chronology would need to be adjusted to fit it in with the recording date. Also, to place Monk Trio as a 1954 album in the recording chronology ignores the fact that all but two tracks on were recorded in 1952, so how is it useful?

Additionally, infoboxes should be limited to key facts about the album as discussed and referenced in the main body. The various previous and following recording dates for albums are not even mentioned in the article; it's hard to see that this is important information about the subject album. Sessionographies are arranged chronologically by recording session date, usually song by song, because albums (not just compilations) often use tracks from different dates. To see the chronological progress of his body of recorded work, a separate TM sessionogrphy article should be created if it is notable. An album infobox is not suitable for presenting this type of information.

—Ojorojo (talk) 15:30, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Also responding to the ping. Agree that infoboxes are not for navigation. Also agree that they're not for recording sessions as the field is next album. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:08, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Ok then. 1) There is a lack of consistency in how these three Prestige albums are being handled. They were all released at the same time, in 1956. Why are two in 1954, out of sequence with the other one?

Perhaps Wikipedia should reconsider how it is handling the organization of releases in this early LP era. These are and aren't "compilations." I used the term "recompilation" to describe a very specific phenomenon, endemic to albums in the late 50's that were recorded in the early 50's. There was a shorter-duration 10-inch LP format that had not caught on, with albums typically running 15 to 25 minutes. Material that was on 5 shorter albums that did not sell was reformatted into something that was considered more consumable, on, say, 3 longer albums. You can see this happening with everything from pop singers like Eartha Kitt to every major and minor jazz performer. Existing information on these earlier albums is very hard to source and confirm, and Wikipedia's editors seem to be in the habit of rejecting the few sources that do exist. What we end up with is a misleading and confusing counter-history, and I don't think that's what Wikipedia is supposed to be about.

And who came up with the idea that the infobox isn't for navigation? If that's the case, why put links in there at all? And why are we content with links that aren't internally consistent? Every attempt I'm making at consistency here is being thwarted, for reasons unknown.Sojambi Pinola (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The only consistent, objective, and appropriate way of handling the release chronology is order of release date, or year if the specific date is not available. If you see releases out of sequence with each other, they should be fixed accordingly. If you want to dismiss that as "misleading and confusing counter-history", or if you want to dismiss our rejection of your unreliable sources as a "habit" with no merit or substance, then it will just make it harder for you to accept the truth. Perhaps you should reconsider your argument about internal consistency when you are also advocating for these releases to be treated as an exception from chronological order elsewhere in WP:ALBUMS articles. isento (talk) 15:32, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Insistence on inaccurate release dates; categorizing accurate information as "original research"

This is a shortened version of a response to my last edit, which you left on my talk page, along with a completely inappropriate threat to have me blocked.

Isento, formerly [Dan 56], What I wrote was factually correct and an appropriate reference to that date-oriented citation. The information in that discography I cited is _in_contradiction_ with the other source that you insist on: 1956, vs 1954. And, the sequence of the three albums is as he states, and matches the sequence of serial numbers, not as YOU continue to state, inaccurately. What you keep insisting on --the date of 1954-- is NOT factually correct. I do not believe that restating this rather mundane and obvious information falls in the category of "original research." It is a re-working and re-organizing of obvious and easily available data to conform with the format of Wikipedia.

If need be, I can continue supplying other sources of this information-- Wikipedia does not claim that every single source of this information in existence be used. It's just a time-consuming hassle.Sojambi Pinola (talk) 22:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Firstly, there is a difference between threatening someone and warning someone. isento (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Second, the source you cited makes no mention of "repackaged catalog of Monk's work" or "10-song release" or the context you are trying to imply, so my edit was justified. isento (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Third, 1954 is not "Robertson's claim"; it is also the claim of several other reliable third-party sources, just a few of which I have since added. isento (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Fourth, I am not "reversing your work wholesale". In fact, any other editor -- or admin -- can see from the edit history and discussion above that I have been patient in trying to correct your edits and attempting compromise ([2], [3]), including the proposed changes that were opposed by editors other than me above. isento (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Last, but not least, I sincerely encourage you to notify an admin. Maybe they can help you comprehend your misapprehensions better than me. isento (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Confusing, imprecise, arguably inaccurate sentence

On some of its re-releases, Robertson notes Thelonious Monk Trio had a track listing order different from the original, which opens with "Little Rootie Tootie".

Is the author of this sentence claiming that the original version of the 10-song album opened with 'Little Rootie Tootie?'" Or that this is the case on some of the re-releases? The language here would tend to imply the former, though in fact this is not the case--presuming that we are talking about the "original" 10-song expansion of the earlier 8-song album.

The original 1956 version of the 10-song Prestige album began with the 4-song side starting with "Blue Monk," and Prestige retained this song order throughout the 1960s (on its two retitled versions of the album). However, the 1952-3 8-song album "Thelonious" began with "Little Rootie Tootie." It appears that a 1972 Japanese re-release might have been the first 10-song version of "Trio" (under that or any other title) that tipped its hat to the sequencing of the more obscure 8-song version.

I don't have the energy right now to find secondary sources for this that the dominant authors of this article find to be acceptable. Every copy of the album in my collection from the 1950's and 60's starts with "Blue Monk," and every collector's site on the internet that refers to this album displays labels with "Blue Monk" starting the "A" side. There is absolutely no visual evidence of 1950's or 1960's labels with that sequence (starting with "Little Rootie Tootie"), and plenty of evidence to the contrary (starting with "Blue Monk"). I just figure that the dominant authors of this article might have an interest in being as accurate and precise as possible, for the sake of good editing.

I'm leaving this comment here and I'll let the editors do with the actual article as they please. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 18:23, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Apologies

Apparently, while trying to make some rather minor revisions last night, I reverted this article to an earlier form that I had fought hard to improve FROM. I will get in there and start over later today.

Thelonious Monk Trio as formation/music group, rather than as album

I'm not much of a wiki editor. But I gathered some information from various sources about the music group, rather than the compilation/album named "Thelonious Monk Trio" on discogs: https://www.discogs.com/artist/381505-Thelonious-Monk-Trio It might be good if this info could be used to create a wiki page for this, as Thelonious Monk also formed a trio for a Blue Note session in 1947, and there is a bootleg recording of the trio in 1958 at the Newport Jazz Festival. Questions on the info there can be posted there.