Jazz Articles about Frankie Dunlop

Thelonious Monk: The Classic Quartet

by Chris May
February 8, 2006

Intermittently available over the years on various labels and in various guises (most recently as Thelonious Monk Quartet in Japan and 1963: In Japan), this album catches Monk on the cusp between his unflaggingly inventive, mould-breaking Riverside years and his less consistently exploratory, later period with CBS.

Clocking in at just over 38 minutes, The Classic Quartet is a set the group recorded for Japanese TV during a short tour of the country in May, 1963. The sound, enhanced from ...