At Carnegie Hall

The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane

album cover

A Lost Chapter of Jazz Found

Because so much jazz happened live, some slivers of its history are sketchy or incomplete. We know, for example, that John Coltrane spent much of 1957 (around eight months) playing with pianist Thelonious Monk's group; though a few assorted studio dates and off-quality live tapes exist, there's a short-age of recordings devoted to what musicians remember as a fiery, groundbreaking band.

So when a tape of this November 1957 Carnegie Hall benefit concert was unearthed during a vault cleanout in early 2005, it was as if the Dead Sea Scrolls had turned up on 57th Street. Produced by Voice of America radio for overseas broadcast, this pristine recording fills in a key bit of the Monk legacy: The pianist, who first emerged during the birth of bebop, had by this time assembled the most iconoclastic songbook in jazz—tunes that jabbered in a hinky, halting language all their own, each governed by an intricate internal logic. Not every soloist could contend with Monk, because where other composers provided easy chairs, he put sharp tacks down. The ever-restless Coltrane was, in many ways, Monk's perfect foil—like Monk, he was interested in elucidating a song's underlying architecture.

This performance features Coltrane and a crack rhythm team working through some of Monk's lively, mazelike music. Coltrane sounds like he's fully absorbed the intricacies of it; he slips genius flirtations into the yearning cries of "Monk's Mood," and storms through the choppy "Evidence" at tripletime, savoring the friction of the pianist's clustered supporting chords. Monk's solos are the huge surprise: Though usually resistant to anything too accessible, he's positively garrulous here, tossing out a mixture of scare-tactic melodies and jabbing, pointillist, rhythmic catchphrases like he knows he can't be caught. Off in the deep margins, you can sometimes hear Coltrane playing long tones behind Monk, to outline the harmony. It's a simple thing, something horn players did often as counterpoint in clubs, but it's electrifying all the same hearing the mighty 'Trane lifting the pianist's intense inventions just a little bit higher.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 2005, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Epistrophy," "Monk's Mood."
Catalog Choice: Monk's Dream
Next Stop: Miles Davis: Miles in Tokyo
After That: John Coltrane: Coltrane's Sound
Book Pages: 512–513