Live At The It Club - Complete

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In an exotic age it is easy to forget how potent syncopation can be, compared with anodyne Latin shuffle. Channel Four in the UK ran a TV programme this spring (1998) about Thelonious Monk as part of a series on Jazz Masters. It was the worst TV about the best music, and it got me into a record shop to get some Monk on CD (I once owned a selection on vinyl). The opening 12 bar cycle of Blue Monk (CD1 Track 1) is a reminder that Monk was not a 'difficult' pianist, and the next 12 that a well directed quartet is much more powerful than a flabby midsize band. In short, the more Monk extended traditional structures, rhythms and motifs, the stronger those structures appeared and the more exciting his playing became. This happens as a song develops, and within a solo. Playing with the quartet Charlie Rouse sounds like an entire brass section; as a soloist he is pedestrian (this is a positive judgement), hiking with vigour up the hills, not soaring straight to their summits. For historians, this selection was recorded over two nights at the It Club, LA, in 1964. Larry Gales plays bass, Ben Riley drums. It was released in 1982 on 2 LPs, now remastered and extended in this 2 CD version. I suspect that this is as much as most music lovers would want to hear from those original tapes, however Sony have retained enough for a 'really complete, honest' DVD version.