Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

This Music On Vinyl edition is a 180g pressing with a printed insert. It finds Monk's longtime quartet at full stretch, with a ten-minute "Straight, No Chaser" and an eleven-minute "Japanese Folk Song."

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed insert

About the album

By the mid-1960s Thelonious Monk was settled at Columbia, and his music, once thought rather peculiar, had become something close to comfortable company. Straight, No Chaser was his sixth studio album for the label, cut with the quartet that had been with him through countless club nights: Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums.

The title tune, one of his best-known blues, gets a long, loose workout here, with Rouse prowling around the theme and Monk hitting those famous off-kilter chords like he's knocking on a door to see who answers. "Locomotive" chugs along at an easy pace, "We See" is pure Monk angles, and he takes Duke Ellington's "I Didn't Know About You" and Harold Arlen's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" with sly affection. The surprise is "Japanese Folk Song," Rentarō Taki's melody stretched into a long, spacious quartet piece.

Later CD editions restored the full length of several performances and added extra tracks, which tells you how much music the band had in hand. This LP keeps the original six-track running order, the way it first hit the shelves. Monk would have approved; he was never one for rushing.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Music On Vinyl, a reissue of the 1967 album.