Landmark Jazz Album #6 - Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners (Riverside)

Monk (p, celeste), Ernie Henry (as), Sonny Rollins (ts), Oscar Pettiford/Paul Chambers (b), Max Roach (d) and Clark Terry (t). Rec. 1956

Recording of Brilliant Corners began 50 years ago next month, making an impact hard to imagine these days.

The first new Monk album to receive more than a guarded welcome in the press, the praise was entirely justified. Unlike his first two Riverside releases, respectively of Ellington standards and a bunch of other jazz standards, this was nearly all Monk’s own tunes and three of the four were new, none more so than the extraordinary title-track which gave so much trouble to the all-star cast who’d never seen it before.

Rollins and Roach, currently making a success of the newly Clifford Brown-less Roach quintet, had worked for Monk before but both were seriously challenged by his material here. The less well-known Ernie Henry was in the pianist’s regular quartet and a post-Parker deviant comparable to Jackie McLean, while Pettiford was a pioneer bopper beloved of Monk except when they disagreed.

Using the bubbly Clark Terry and Paul Chambers on a subsequent session was a stroke of genius, as was the unaccompanied piano track. And the whole thing was released just as Monk began his historic group with Coltrane.

Credits: BP