Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane: Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Original Jazz Classics series) [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

This Original Jazz Classics series pressing was cut by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI and housed in a tip-on jacket with obi. The album entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007.

This edition

• Original Jazz Classics series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered from the original analog tapes by Kevin Gray
• Pressed at RTI
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip

About the album

In 1957 John Coltrane spent six months on the bandstand at the Five Spot Café in Greenwich Village learning from Thelonious Monk, and came out the other side a different player. This album collects the studio work from that year, when Monk was finally getting his due as a composer and Coltrane was his most devoted student.

Producer Orrin Keepnews built it from three sessions. The quartet tracks, with Wilbur Ware on bass and Shadow Wilson on drums, were cut in July at the start of the Five Spot residency: a tender "Ruby, My Dear," a fiendishly knotty "Trinkle, Tinkle" that Coltrane devours, and the loping "Nutty." Two outtakes from the Monk's Music sessions add Art Blakey, Ray Copeland, Gigi Gryce and Coleman Hawkins on "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy," the theme Monk co-wrote with Kenny Clarke, and "Functional" is Monk alone at the piano, taking the blues apart and reassembling it his way.

Jazzland put it out in 1961, by which time Coltrane was a star bandleader in his own right. Not a bad apprenticeship, really; some of us spent ours learning the till.

Also at Kops: more Thelonious Monk on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Jazzland / Riverside / Craft, a reissue of the 1961 album.