1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
monk, rouse, ore, dunlop, live, stockholm '61---wouldn't you love to hear it?, February 2, 2010
This review is from: Thelonious Monk Stockholm "Live" (Audio CD)
This 2-disc set was originally released (for the most part) on 2 LP's in '87 by Dragon Records of Stockholm. The LP's garnered some nice critical notice and then went missing from the Dragon catalog soon thereafter. If it's ever showed up there again then I've missed it. The "for the most part" portions on the LP's exclude the two bonus cuts listed on the Thelonious Records version which Amazon lists here, the final cut per disc. The originally issued music has appeared on occasion on CD from other labels, purportedly licensed by Dragon. I've seen the Japanese DIW and the Parisian Secret versions; Lord references an Italian release on Duke. The most recent incarnation seems to have been the one Amazon shows, this one released on Thelonious Records which I believe Monk's son Toot (T. Monk, no mean musician himself) to have headed up. I don't recall if they did simultaneous LP's. All of the releases from that label also seem to have gone off into limbo. To quote Bill Murray from Ghostbusters, "What a crime!"
Enough for discography. This is essential Monk for any collector and a great mid-career example for someone who doesn't need to have it all. Not that I understand that kind of thinking but to each their own. It comes chronologically from the same era as the last Riverside recordings with Rouse, from France and Italy if memory serves. I can't say enough for the music. Monk is typically lucid and abstract at once, creating meteoric showers of bright crystalline piano. Hard to believe now that a listening audience and the critics had to catch up to him, everything he plays here sounds absolutely right. He's a marvel but you already knew that. Charlie Rouse is solidly in Monk's pocket-lovely, light tone to the fore and playing in unison with Monk as if they're one voice. When Monk does comp behind the tenorist's solos there's a second show to consider as he's creating counterpoint and complement on the fly. Ore and Dunlop drive the band relentlessly, Monk urging them on.
Hopefully Amazon will get off the stick someday and open up its catalog to let the DIW and Secret releases see the light of day and hopefully tease some used copies out of hiding and onto the open market. I'm not holding my breath but it could happen. Let's hope too that Thelonious can get its version back up and running. In the meantime, scratch and claw to track down this version. It's worth the hunt.
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