Robert Baird

The whole idea of jazz “singles” seems a little absurd. It’s a widely held article of faith among jazzers and rank civilians, that jazz hasn’t had hits since Glenn Miller had folks kissing (?) in parked cars to “Moonlight Serenade.” And if truth be told, there’s only ever been one jazz album since the big band days, never mind the singles, that broke into the larger consciousness and that's Kind of Blue. No, Brubeck, “Take Five,” fans I haven’t forgotten you but if you ask casual fans what the best jazz record is, Miles trumps Dave most of the time.

Which brings me to Thelonious Monk `Round Midnight: The Complete Blue Note Singles (1947-1952). The man’s genius needs little explanation: he looked at the world and his music in a distinctly different way than every other jazz player and in turn his influence today, particularly on piano players, is almost limitless. In keeping with the ongoing celebration of that storied label’s 75th anniversary celebration, the label, now owned by Universal has released one of those bound book-like packages of all of Monk’s 78’s compiled on CD in order of release. While there’s an MP3 version of this package, and many of these tunes, are available via the Genius of Modern Music albums that exist on HDTracks in a high resolution 24/192 format, the sound here is package is very listenable, probably the best 16/44.1 CD quality yet released.

Most of Monk’s best-known tunes are here, from the title track to “Epistrophy, Misterioso,” and “Straight No Chaser.” The music in this package was remastered by Kevin Reeves at 4th Floor Studios in NYC. It was sourced from the Rudy Van Gelder series digital masters from 2001. Those were sourced from the original transcription discs. For Monk collectors, there’s a disc of bonus tracks that according to the cover copy were “later issued in various formats.” There also does seem to be one or two images in the booklet of Monk and his sidemen that I haven’t seen before. Many of the sidemen are peerless like trumpeter Kenny Dorham, alto player Lou Donaldson and drummers Max Roach and Art Blakey. There are also lesser-known talents like alto player Danny Quebec West and tenor man Billy Smith. While the liner notes by Kirk Silsbee could provide more info on the sourcing of the music and what was actually done to the RVG masters (I suspect very little), they do contain this priceless bit of understatement: “Monk apparently had a very lively interior world.”