Thelonious Monk - Plays Duke Ellington (1974 Japanese Milestone Mono LP)

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Thelonious Monk - Plays Duke Ellington | Vinyl LP - 1974 Japanese Milestone Riverside Original Recording Series Mono Reissue (SMJ-6039M)

• Monk's debut as a leader for Riverside Records, recorded across two sessions on 21 and 27 July 1955 at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack: eight Ellington compositions reinterpreted by one of the most individual pianists in jazz history, with Oscar Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums
• Produced by Orrin Keepnews as a deliberate strategy to bring Monk to a broader audience, the album that began his rehabilitation from cult figure to recognised major artist, paving the way for Brilliant Corners (1956) and the Monk's Music sessions
• "Solitude" performed as an unaccompanied piano solo, the one moment on the record where Monk is entirely alone with the material
  

By 1955 Thelonious Monk had been a central figure in the development of bebop for over a decade, had recorded for Blue Note and Prestige, and was widely admired by his peers. He was also commercially marginal, his records selling poorly and his music routinely described by critics as too difficult and too eccentric for general audiences. When Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer at Riverside acquired Monk's Prestige contract for around $108, Keepnews proposed a calculated intervention: Monk would record an entire album of Duke Ellington compositions, music already familiar to listeners, giving them a way into his playing without confronting his originals. Monk, who had retired briefly with a stack of Ellington sheet music before declaring himself ready for the sessions, was a willing collaborator. The result was recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack across two sessions on 21 and 27 July 1955, with Oscar Pettiford on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums, both musicians of the first order. Clarke had been part of the house band at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem in the early 1940s alongside Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker at the precise moment bebop was being invented. Pettiford, one of the most technically accomplished bassists of the era, had been a central figure in bebop since the mid-1940s.

The album opens with "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and works through eight Ellington compositions, all of them well known enough to serve Keepnews' strategy but none of them diminished by Monk's treatment. His angularity, his use of silence and unexpected accent, the rhythmic commentary built into his left hand, are present throughout, and the trio plays with the kind of self-contained confidence that comes from musicians who know each other's language. "Black and Tan Fantasy", co-written by Ellington and Bubber Miley, is treated as a funky blues. "Caravan", co-written with Juan Tizol, becomes a showcase for the rhythm section. "Solitude" is played entirely alone: Monk dismisses Pettiford and Clarke and plays it unaccompanied, the only such moment on the record, moving slowly into rubato at the end. The album was first issued in December 1955 as "Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington" (Riverside RLP 12-201); the 1958 reissue shortened the title and replaced the original cover photography with Henri Rousseau's "The Repast of the Lion", the version most commonly reproduced. This mono pressing is part of Victor Musical Industries' Riverside Original Recording Series, released in Japan in 1974 as Milestone SMJ-6039M.