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First Takes

Rehearsing on the clock

Two sessions where studio time was spent on the wrong thing, or the only thing.

Brilliant Corners (#8, Thelonious Monk): twenty-five takes in four hours on Oct 15, 1956, none of them finished, so the title track was assembled afterwards.

Redd's Blues (#22, Freddie Redd): on Jan 17, 1961, Redd came to Van Gelder's with six charts he hadn't fully rehearsed with the band. He worked out the arrangements while Alfred Lion's clock ran, then added trumpeter Benny Bailey after the paid rehearsal and rewrote for a third horn. Lion reportedly threatened not to release it. It came out in 1988, on Mosaic.

Both bands used the studio as the place where the music got decided. Monk's cost takes; Redd's cost the producer's patience. By the sources I read (the Wikipedia pages for each, the Redd one leaning on Mosaic's liner notes), neither seems to have shown up in the playing, though that is the pages' judgment, not something I can confirm by ear.

By Raz Rotenberg, made with AI

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