Thelonious Monk Monk's Dream CD

W/ 4 Bonus Tracks

Personnel: Thelonious Monk (piano); Charlie Rouse (tenor saxophone); John Ore (bass); Frankie Dunlop (drums).
Recorded at Columbia Studios, New York, New York in 1963. Includes liner notes by Peter Keepnews.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Monk's Dream is the Columbia Records debut release featuring the Thelonious Monk Quartet: Monk (piano), Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), John Ore (bass), and Frankie Dunlop (drums). Jazz scholars and enthusiasts alike also heralded this combo as the best Monk had been involved with for several years. Although he would perform and record supported by various other musicians, the tight -- almost telepathic -- dimensions that these four shared has rarely been equalled in any genre. By the early '60s, bop had become considered passé by artists as well as fans looking for the next musical trend. This is coupled with the fact that discerning Monk fans would have undoubtedly recognized many of these titles from several live recordings issued at the end of his tenure on Riverside. Not to belabor the point, however, but precious few musicians understood the layer upon layer of complexities and challenges that Monk's music created. On tracks such as "Five Spot Blues" and "Bolivar Blues," Rouse and Dunlop demonstrate their uncanny abilities by squeezing in well-placed instrumental fills, while never getting hit by the unpredictable rhythmic frisbees being tossed about by Monk. Augmenting the six quartet recordings are two solo sides: "Just a Gigolo" and "Body and Soul." Most notable about Monk's solo work is how much he retained the same extreme level of intuition throughout the nearly two decades that separate these recordings from his initial renderings on Prestige in the late '40s. Monk's Dream is recommended, with something for every degree of Monk enthusiast. ~ Lindsay Planer
These 1962 recordings were Thelonious Monk's first for Columbia Records, with whom he spent the most commercially successful years of his career. Mixing his own highly personalized renditions of standards with originals, this was a pattern he followed for all of his subsequent releases with the label. Of his originals, only "Bright Mississippi" had never been recorded before, but after decades of toiling in obscurity, the re-recording of tunes such as "Bolivar Blues" and "Bye-Ya" was most certainly warranted. This is in part because they'd not been heard before by most of his new and wide audience, and also because this quartet (with Charlie Rouse, John Ore and Frankie Dunlop) had been playing at this point for two years--longer than he'd ever been able to keep an ensemble together before--and they'd settled into Monk's music like one charismatic and multi-limbed being.