Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall

My remedial education in jazz continues. Strictly speaking, this one can’t count as something I should already know, since it wasn’t released until late in 2005. (It’s from recently-discovered tapes of a 1957 concert.) But it represents my first serious acquaintance with Thelonious Monk. I have a couple of old Monk LPs, but I guess I’d never really listened to them very attentively.

Considering how much I like Coltrane, I was slightly surprised to find that it’s Monk who captures my attention here. I’m not sure what he’s saying, but it makes me smile, and almost laugh, not at anything but in an exhilarated sort of way, the way you feel going down a playground slide. It’s playful and introspective at the same time. As complex and sophisticated as it is, it still has something of the air of a four-year-old child exploring a piano, banging here and tapping there, enthralled by the mere sound and his ability to produce it.

Coltrane’s playing seems, by comparison, more ordinary. It’s extremely good, of course, but it lacks the yearning and searching quality that his later work would have, and I can’t help hearing it as less than what was to come.

The AMG review calls this “one of those ‘historic’ recordings that becomes an instant classic.” Sounds right to me.