Lost Jazz Pt. II: Carnegie & The Library

Nutty - Thelonius Monk
Epistrophy - Thelonius Monk
both from Thelonius Monk Quartet with John Coltrane @ Carnegie Hall on Blue Note (2005).

Following up the post about Mingus's recently re-released live performance, today we have some samples from my 2005 album of the year. In 1957 John Coltrane was on a brief hiatus (not an entirely pleasant separation) from Miles Davis. He spent most of the year playing in Thelonius Monk's quartet at the Five Spot in Manhattan. Late in that year (November 29th) the quartet played in a charity fund raising concert at Carnegie Hall (also on the bill is Sonny Rollins, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Holiday, and Chet Baker - what? Wasn't Duke Ellington available?). There are many discussions of how great the Monk quartet (Shadow Wilson on drums and either Wilbur Ware or Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass) became with Coltrane that year, but there is scant recorded evidence. A few studio tracks were produced, which are fine indeed, and the atrociously recorded date at the Five Spot most likely from the following year. This recording was unknown and discovered in 2005 deep in the Library of Congress when they were trying to catalogue and convert to digital the Voice of America recordings they had accumulated.

Two randomly chosen tracks from the center of the album convey the start to finish perfection of this live recording. Even without the remarkable backstory this album would stand as one of the most important recordings from these two giants of jazz. Coltrane was in the midst of a humongous growth as a player and beginning the seeds of his composition work, and certainly the argument can be made that Monk was a great influence in that growth. Monk and Coltrane play together beautifully in large part because of how different they are on the surface. Monk has his heavy fingered, pounding style of play right up against Coltrane's fluid scales. Additionally, as mentioned before Coltrane was one of the jazz players whose growth was very audibly evident throughout his recording career whereas Monk seems to have been born with his full catalogue of tunes, brilliance, and eccentricities.

Get this album, it is a five star essential work.