The Thelonious Monk Quartet - Misterioso (1962 Japanese Riverside Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: VG+ (sleeve has a hole punch)
Obi: None.

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The Thelonious Monk Quartet - Misterioso | Vinyl LP - 1962 Japanese Riverside Records Stereo (SR-7031, JVC)

The Five Spot was a cramped bar in the Bowery with no proper stage, sawdust on the floor, and an old upright piano pushed against the wall. Monk had played his first residency there in 1957 with John Coltrane on tenor, the engagement that pulled his career back from years of enforced silence after losing his New York cabaret card. By the summer of 1958 he was back with a new quartet, and Johnny Griffin was the man on the horn. On "In Walked Bud" he runs through Monk's melody at speed, then keeps accelerating through an 11-minute solo that quotes from everywhere and lands on its feet every time. "Blues Five Spot," named for the room, gives Monk space to comp in that percussive, angled way that left other pianists wondering which beats he was hearing. "Let's Cool One" stretches past nine minutes with Griffin and Monk trading the kind of exchanges where neither player sounds like they're following the other, and yet it all locks together. Between the quartet tracks, Monk plays "Just A Gigolo" alone at the piano for two minutes, the only ballad and the only non-original on the album, spare enough to hear the room around him.

This was the second of Monk's two 1958 Five Spot albums (alongside Thelonious in Action), both recorded on the same August night and both produced by Orrin Keepnews for Riverside. Ray Fowler engineered what was, by club recording standards of the period, a clean and present capture. Ahmed Abdul-Malik (a Brooklyn-born bassist of Sudanese descent who also played oud and would soon record his own albums blending jazz with North African music) holds the bottom with a steady, unshowy pulse, and Roy Haynes drives the tempos with the crisp, reactive drumming that had already made him a first-call player for Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Stan Getz. This is a 1962 Japanese stereo pressing on Riverside SR-7031, with a flipback cover, manufactured by Victor Company of Japan.