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The Thelonious Monk Centennial

Jazz Unlimited for October 15, 2017 will be “The Thelonious Monk Centennial.”  In his lifetime, Thelonious Monk composed just over 70 tunes.  Monk’s little gems are the second most recorded compositions in all of jazz history.  Monk would have been 100 years old on October 10.  We will play his music performed by him on solo piano, small groups and big bands and by Ray Anderson, Carmen McRae, Scott Amendola, the Monk’s Music Trio, Abbey Lincoln, Irene Schweizer, Coleman Hawkins, Organ Monk, Fred Hersch, John Coltrane, Andy Bey, Kenny Barron & Regina Carter, Danilo Perez, Steve Lacy and Sonny Rollins.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the artists heard on this show.

The Archive of this show sill be available until the morning of October 23, 2017.

Here is Thelonious Monk on piano, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums playing "Hackensack" on British TV in 1965.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.