Monk and Coltrane

Every now and then you hear stories of lost treasures. I'll confess now that I'm rarely impressed by these stories. But just today I heard of something that made me feel genuine awe.

Apparently, in 1957, in New York, at Carnegie Hall, a Thanksgiving concert was staged by the Voice of America radio network. The show was well attended and featured some of the very best musicians playing jazz at that time. However, the treat of the evening was the Thelonius Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane.



And until now, the record of this night was lost in the VOA archives. Never released, never aired, this is the only record of Coltrane's work with Monk at the end of their collaboration. Until now, only one recording, and not a good one. And we've never heard them this unified in purpose. They had been working at the Five Spot, playing regularly, breaking open the tunes and rebuilding night after night. Monk didn't use charts, evidently. You had to fly by the seat of your pants -- until you knew the tunes and could "play" with them.

Not heard since that night. And, on a shelf, in a box, on a reel marked "T. Monk," out of thin air, this brilliance. The recording is pristine and the playing is unpretentious. It's a wonder.