21. Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Artist: Thelonious Monk
Title: Straight, No Chaser
Album: Monk's Blues
Year Released: 1968
Record Label: Legacy
Catalog #: 724314








Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" is also a twelve bar blues in the bebop genre and incorporates some bebop changes, although it is a much more straight forward blues than Charlie Parker's blues compositions. A copy of the chord changes can be found here.

The first seven measures of the song are a standard twelve bar blues progression with a quick change in the key of F. The eighth measure is a ii-V in the key of G major which, like "Au Privave", resolves deceptively to a Gmin7 chord in measure nine. The tenth measure is the V chord (a Cdom7), and the eighth and ninth measure make up a ii-V progression of F which is played for the remaining two bars of the twelve bar progression.