Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best, music · First recorded by Monk's trio for Prestige, December 1952
Bemsha Swing
Thelonious Monk and drummer Denzil Best wrote this tune, and Monk first recorded it in 1952. Its title respells Bimshire, a nickname for Barbados, where Best's parents were born. The path runs from Monk's 1952 trio to Medeski Martin & Wood's 1993 version with a Bob Marley song.
Listen in this order
The path starts with Monk's own 1952 trio, then hears him as a sideman with Miles Davis and as leader of his 1956 quintet. It goes on to Cecil Taylor's trio, Max Roach's quintet, a quartet with no piano, and a bass and guitar duo, and ends with Medeski Martin & Wood.
Monk and Denzil Best's tune was first recorded in New York on December 18, 1952, by Monk's trio with Gary Mapp on bass and Max Roach on drums. It came out in 1953 on a Prestige 10-inch record.
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Listen for
Monk's piano carries the tune with bass and drums keeping time behind him. The tune is only sixteen long, so you hear it come around many times.
Try it on your instrument
Play the first four (the ) slowly: C and share bar 1, and share bar 2, C and share bar 3, then and D♭7 share bar 4. If you only play the melody, hold a C under it and listen for where the sound pulls away from home.
Miles Davis recorded the tune on December 24, 1954, at the Van Gelder studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, with Milt Jackson, Monk, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke. Wikipedia says this was the only time Monk made a studio recording with Davis.
C major · 4/4 · swing · 152 bpm (medium up)
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Listen for
Listen for the vibes and trumpet alongside Monk's piano, with bass and drums underneath. The track runs for more than nine minutes, so the tune goes round many times.
Try it on your instrument
Play 1 to 4, then bars 5 to 8. They start the same way, and only bar 7 (C and ) and bar 8 ( and ) change. Play the pair twice and listen to how the ending differs.
Monk recorded the tune on December 7, 1956, with Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Paul Chambers and Max Roach, who added a timpani drum to his set. Riverside released it in April 1957 on the album Brilliant Corners.
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Listen for
Trumpet and tenor sax now share the front with Monk's piano, and Roach adds a timpani to his drums, so listen for a lower, tuned drum sound among the usual ones.
Try it on your instrument
Play the , 9 to 12: F and share bar 9, and bar 10, F and bar 11, and D♭7 bar 12. It is the moved up to F. Then play bar 12 into bar 13 and hear the tune land back on C.
Pianist Cecil Taylor recorded the tune in Boston on September 14, 1956, with Buell Neidlinger on bass and Denis Charles on drums, for his debut album Jazz Advance. Steve Lacy plays on other tracks of the album, not on this one.
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Listen for
Only piano, bass and drums play here, for more than seven minutes. Follow how the three players share the tune as it comes round again and again.
Try it on your instrument
Play all sixteen slowly with the melody in your right hand and only the first of each bar in your left. Improvising over these changes is a bigger step; the smaller version is to play the melody twice and change the rhythm the second time.
Drummer Max Roach led this quintet in New York on January 22, 1959, with Booker Little, Julian Priester, George Coleman and Art Davis. Mercury did not release the recording until 1964, on The Many Sides of Max.
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Listen for
Trumpet, trombone and tenor sax play together over Roach's drums, with the drummer as bandleader. The track lasts about five and a half minutes.
Try it on your instrument
Play the ( 1 to 4) four times in a row, changing the rhythm or the octave of the melody each time while the stay as written. If chords are new to you, hold each bar's first chord for the whole bar.
John Coltrane and Don Cherry recorded the tune at Atlantic Studios in New York on July 8, 1960, with Percy Heath on bass and Ed Blackwell on drums. Atlantic put it out in 1966 on The Avant-Garde, built from two sessions left unissued in 1960.
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Listen for
Only trumpet, saxophone, bass and drums play, so each part is easy to pick out.
Try it on your instrument
Play the melody alone with no at all, then add only the bass note of each chord (C, A, A♭, D♭ and so on). Hearing the tune with so little around it is closer to how this quartet plays it.
Bassist Charlie Haden and guitarist Jim Hall played the tune to open their duo set at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on July 2, 1990. Impulse! released the recording in 2014.
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Listen for
Just two instruments, a bass and a guitar, fill more than eight minutes between them. It was the opening piece of a live concert in Montreal.
Try it on your instrument
A duo is a small way to try the same setup: one player takes the melody and the other plays one bass note per , then swap parts. Both players can use the chords from the ( 1 to 4) to start.
“Bemsha Swing / Lively Up Yourself”, It's a Jungle in Here
Medeski Martin & Wood recorded the tune in New York on August 2 to 4, 1993, for the album It's a Jungle in Here. The track joins it to Bob Marley's Lively Up Yourself, and Gramavision released the album that October.
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Listen for
The trio plays Monk's tune and then moves straight into the Bob Marley song within the same track. Listen for the point where one tune gives way to the other.
Try it on your instrument
Pick a second tune you know and play it straight after the sixteen of Bemsha Swing without a pause, keeping the beat steady through the change. Even the first four bars (C and , and , C and , and D♭7) are enough to start.
Monk wrote the tune with drummer Denzil Best and first recorded it with his trio in December 1952. Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor and Max Roach each recorded it before the decade ended.
1960s
John Coltrane and Don Cherry play it in 1960 as a quartet with no piano. Monk's own quartet is recorded playing it live in Tokyo in 1963 and in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1964.
1980s
Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell fold the tune into a long medley on their 1982 trumpet and drums duo album El Corazón, recorded in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
1990s
Charlie Haden and Jim Hall open a 1990 Montreal Jazz Festival duo concert with it. Medeski Martin & Wood join it to a Bob Marley song on their 1993 album It's a Jungle in Here.
More great versions
2 more, from 1963 to 1982. Tap a cover to play it here.
1960sBill Evans1963 · Post-bop
1970s
1980sDon Cherry and Ed Blackwell1982 · Avant-garde
Bill Evans recorded the tune as a piano solo in New York in February 1963. According to jazzdisco, it first came out on The Best of Bill Evans in 1968.
“Mutron / Bemsha Swing / Solidarity / Arabian Nightingale”, El Corazón
Trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell folded the tune into a long medley for their duo album El Corazón, recorded in Ludwigsburg, Germany, in February 1982. ECM released it in October of that year.
The tune's layout, its keys and the chord chart, for anyone who wants to play along.
Show the form and chords
How the tune works
C majorusual key
16 barsA · A · B · A form
C major → F major → C majorkey centers
A4 bars
A4 bars
B4 bars · bridge
A4 bars
C
F
C
Four sections run A, A, B, A. The first A sits in : C and share bar 1, and share bar 2, C and share bar 3, and and D♭7 share bar 4. The second A repeats it with a different ending: C and in bar 7, then A♭7 and in bar 8. B is the moved up a fourth to F: F and D7, D♭7 and G♭7, F and A♭7, then and D♭7 in bar 12. The last A repeats the opening, then bars 15 and 16 close on . The follow the iReal Pro chart; players often vary them.