Listening: Monk/Coltrane

Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, Live at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note) Just wanted to put in a good word for this wonderful CD, one of the two big archival discoveries (the other being Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker's Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945) this year. I'm probably in the minority, but I've always thought the two studio albums Monk and Coltrane made together sounded tentative. On Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane Coltrane is up to his usual play-every-note-alteration-and-substitution-for-every-chord mode, which suits Monk's music less ideally than a melodist like Sonny Rolllins does. (Which doesn't mean Monk didn't like super-fast, super-harmonic tenor players in his band--cf. Johnny Griffin.) And on Monk's Music, much as I love the ancestor/descendent pair of Coleman Hawkins and Coltrane together, the number of instruments on the date make the ensembles sound looser than I'd like. Live is another story: this band is playing together, Coltrane adapting his sound to the angles and contours of the pieces, all of them swinging their asses off, making for some of the most exciting Monk music I've heard on record. So the word from here is, for heaven's sake, buy!! Mark's review: *****