Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane - Thelonious Monk

Released on Jazzland Records in 1961, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane was assembled by producer Orrin Keepnews from studio sessions recorded in 1957, during the period when Coltrane was a member of Monk's quartet for their celebrated engagement at the Five Spot Cafe in New York. The album draws material from three separate sessions: outtakes from the Monk's Music septet date in June 1957 featuring Art Blakey on drums, tracks from a July session with Wilbur Ware on bass, and a selection from the April solo session that produced Thelonious Himself. The program consists entirely of Monk compositions — "Ruby, My Dear," "Trinkle Tinkle," "Nutty," "Off Minor," "Epistrophy," and "Functional" — performed in configurations ranging from duo to septet. The pairing of Monk's angular, rhythmically unpredictable piano with Coltrane's searching, harmonically dense tenor saxophone proved to be one of the most productive partnerships in jazz, with Coltrane later crediting Monk for teaching him to use space and to approach chords from multiple angles simultaneously. Though assembled after the fact rather than conceived as a unified album, the collection documents a musical relationship that shaped both artists' subsequent work. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007.