On September 22, 1954, Thelonious Monk turned up in Hackensack, New Jersey, at a studio that was really Rudy Van Gelder’s parents’ living room, and cut four sides for Prestige with Percy Heath and Art Blakey. His New York cabaret card had been revoked in 1951 over a narcotics charge and would not be restored until 1957; through those six years he could barely take a paying job in the city. Two of the tunes were his own — “Work” and “Nutty.” The third he wrote on the spot in the studio, a B-flat blues quoting a phrase from Charlie Shavers’ “Pastel Blue.” He called it “Blue Monk,” and went on to record it more than anything else he composed. Then Heath and Blakey laid out and he played the fourth alone: “Just a Gigolo,” a 1928 Viennese tango about a broke ex-hussar reduced to dancing for hire. He returned to it, alone again, eight years later on his first Columbia album.
Monk at the piano at Minton’s Playhouse, New York, around September 1947 — seven years before the Hackensack trio date, and four years before the arrest that cost him his cabaret card. (Photo: William P. Gottlieb; Public Domain — the photographer dedicated his collection to the public domain, Library of Congress digital ID gottlieb.06221 — via Wikimedia Commons)
Sources: Prestige Records Discography: 1954 — Jazz Discography Project (September 22, 1954, Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack: Monk with Percy Heath and Art Blakey on “Work,” “Nutty” and “Blue Monk”; “Just a Gigolo” without them; Prestige PRLP 189 / 7027) , Thelonious Monk Trio — Wikipedia (the September 22, 1954 session; earliest recorded version of “Blue Monk”; “Just a Gigolo” as solo piano) , List of compositions by Thelonious Monk — Wikipedia (“Blue Monk” composed in the studio; part of the melody a direct quotation of Charlie Shavers’ “Pastel Blue”; the tune Monk recorded most) , Just a Gigolo (song) — Wikipedia (adapted by Irving Caesar in 1929 from “Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo,” written in Vienna in 1928 by Leonello Casucci and Julius Brammer; the ruined ex-hussar of the original lyric) , Monk, Thelonious Sphere — NCpedia / Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (cabaret card revoked for six years over an “allegedly unjustified” drug charge; “from 1951 to 1957 Monk was only rarely able to obtain paying jobs in New York”) , Monk’s Dream — Wikipedia (his first Columbia album; “Just a Gigolo” recorded November 2, 1962) , Monk Alone: The Complete Columbia Solo Studio Recordings 1962–1968 — Discogs (the 1962 “Just a Gigolo” from Monk’s Dream listed among the solo studio performances)
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