Steve Lacy: Reflections (clear vinyl) [SOWING]

Why you'll love it

This Sowing reissue puts Reflections on clear vinyl. According to Monk biographer Robin Kelley, it was the first album devoted entirely to Monk's music by another artist.

This edition

• Clear vinyl

About the album

In 1958 most jazz musicians treated Thelonious Monk's tunes like a dare, and Steve Lacy treated them like home. The young soprano saxophonist had played alongside Cecil Taylor and fallen hard for Monk's angular melodies, so on October 17 he went to Hackensack, New Jersey, and recorded a whole album of them. Every tune on it is a Monk composition.

He went for the knotty ones. The quartet tackle the knotty "Four in One," "Bye-Ya" and "Skippy," with Mal Waldron's dark piano, Buell Neidlinger's bass and Elvin Jones, a year or two before he joined John Coltrane, on drums. "Ask Me Now" is the gentle ballad at the heart of it, and the title track glows.

AllMusic's Scott Yanow called the set a delight, and Lacy kept returning to Monk for the rest of his career. Plenty of saxophonists claim Monk as an influence; Lacy is the one who actually did the homework.

Also at Kops: more Steve Lacy on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Sowing (cat# SOW049), a reissue of the 1959 album.