The other day I finally bought Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, and it’s absolutely amazing. If you’re unfamiliar with it, this album was discovered in 2005 by a recording lab supervisor sifting through old tapes at the Library of Congress. It’s a live recording of a benefit concert that Monk did when Coltrane was still playing with him. The two only worked together for a few months in 1957 and the recordings we had prior to this were pretty minimal. This is like discovering that a mythical band led by Bob Dylan and John Lennon had actually left a fully recorded album in a filing cabinet.
I haven’t given it enough listens to say a whole lot yet, but I’ve just been blown away by this. Most of my Coltrane listening has been on the post-Blue Train stuff, which is mostly hard bop, cool jazz and out jazz. It’s really something to hear his style applied to the Monk brand of bebop, especially with such clean production. I’ve been particularly floored so far by his solos on “Evidence” and “Epistrophy”. It’s also nice to hear Monk really taking off on his own solos with a force that surpasses even his own usual high standards. The first track, an impressionistic take on “Monk’s Mood”, is great walking around New York music.
Anyway, I recommend listening to this.
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6 comments:
John Coltrane could have eaten Thelonious Monk's face like a chili dog, devoured it whole, and spewed better music out of his ass than Monk could ever have hoped to create.
You are a terrible person.
How is she a terrible person? Is that sharp Arkansian wit proving too much for you to handle?
Although put rather bluntly, she is correct that John Coltrane was at least 100 times the musician that Thelonious Monk was.
As to the Dylan/Lennon comparison: the main difference being, people would actually have heard of a Dylan/Lennon album, as opposed to Coltrane/Monk, which is from the world of Music Nobody Cares About.
Hey, don't forget about me, because I also know a lot about music that I've never researched or respected. And I think John Coltrane was so much better, depending on who those two people are.
Curtis, dear lassie, if you don't know/haven't heard the music, you shouldn't comment on it.
lassie?
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