Somehow after living here for over four years, I only managed to come across Portland jazz radio station KMHD this week. It’s good stuff, jazz and blues 24/7, non-commercial. I’ll be tuning in regularly.
Also on the jazz front, saw a good review for a new biography of Thelonious Monk, and I decided to pick up the book. Here’s an excerpt from the review:
Robin D. G. Kelley, in his extraordinary and heroically detailed new biography, “Thelonious Monk,” makes a large point time and time again that Monk was no primitive, as so many have characterized him. At the age of 11, he was taught by Simon Wolf, an Austrian émigré who had studied under the concertmaster for the New York Philharmonic. Wolf told the parent of another student, after not too many sessions with young Thelonious: “I don’t think there will be anything I can teach him. He will go beyond me very soon.” But the direction the boy would go in, after two years of classical lessons, was jazz.
Mediated 
Comments
I’ve been a Monk fan for years – but his music is sometimes difficult to follow – his humming/grunting and sometime “dancing” while his group plays is never hard to appreciate!
I found this “Thelonius Monk plays Duke Ellington” a few weeks ago at emusic and like it as well as any of his albums. Especially “Caravan” which starts with the drummer playing rim and then brushes while Monk brings the song in – one of my favorites. Great bass also!
http://www.emusic.com/album/Thelonious-Monk-Plays-Duke-Ellington-MP3-Download/10603909.html
Enjoy if you can get from emusic or another source!
Yes, I have that Monk plays Ellington CD – it’s a good one!