Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Himself (1974 Japanese Riverside Mono Vinyl LP)

Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Himself | Vinyl LP - 1974 Riverside Japanese Pressing (SMJ-6053M, mono, Victor Musical Industries)

Thelonious Monk recorded Thelonious Himself across two days in April 1957 at Reeves Sound Studios in New York. It was his first solo piano album, and for seven of the eight tracks, there is nothing but Monk and the instrument. The repertoire mixes standards with originals in the way Monk always did: "April In Paris" and "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" are Tin Pan Alley songs played with Monk's characteristic dissonances, hesitations and unexpected silences. "Ghost Of A Chance" and "All Alone" are ballads treated with a tenderness that his reputation for angularity sometimes obscures. "'Round Midnight," the composition that made his name, gets a reading that strips the piece back to its harmonic skeleton. "Functional" is the most expansive piece, nine minutes of Monk exploring an idea with nobody to answer to. And then the closing "Monk's Mood" opens the room: John Coltrane enters on tenor saxophone and Wilbur Ware on bass, and the album that has been a solo recital becomes, for its final eight minutes, a trio performance.

The timing matters. Coltrane had been dismissed from Miles Davis's quintet earlier in 1957. By summer he would join Monk's quartet for the Five Spot Playhouse residency that ran from June through December, a period Coltrane later described as one of the most important of his musical education. This April session captures them in the studio two months before that residency began. Coltrane would rejoin Miles Davis in January 1958 for the Milestones session, a different musician from the one Davis had fired.

This is the 1974 Japanese pressing (SMJ-6053M), manufactured by Victor Musical Industries and lacquer cut at JVC, part of the Riverside Original Recording Series. Shoichi Yui wrote the Japanese liner notes. Swing Journal awarded it the Seal of Approval.