Angular Monk meets hard-driving Art Blakey – in a session that's quite unique, and which has gone onto become one of the best-remembered Atlantic jazz sessions of the late 50s! The album features Blakey in that key non-Blue Note year of 1957 – a time when he was working with a variety of players, at a variety of labels, and taking some real chances with his music before settling into his more established hit Jazz Messengers sound. The group here is Art's own – with Johnny Griffin on tenor, Bill Hardman on trumpet, and Spanky DeBrest on bass – augmented by the piano of Thelonious Monk – a match that might seem unlikely at first, but not so much so after you consider the great work that Monk and Griffin did together at Riverside during the late 50s. There's a nice match between Johnny's sharp-edged tenor and Monk's imaginative playing – and if anything, the record has Blakey, Hardman, and DeBrest moving dynamically to keep up with the flurry of modern ideas coming from Griffin and Monk! Tracks are almost all originals by Thelonious too – a fact that definitely helps keep up the "Monk-ish" sound of the record – titles that include "Evidence", "Blue Monk", "I Mean You", and "Rhythm A Ning" – alongside Griffin's "Purple Shades". Features a full bonus album of outtakes from the sessions – most unreleased! LP, Vinyl record album

Angular Monk meets hard-driving Art Blakey – in a session that's quite unique, and which has gone onto become one of the best-remembered Atlantic jazz sessions of the late 50s! The album features Blakey in that key non-Blue Note year of 1957 – a time when he was working with a variety of players, at a variety of labels, and taking some real chances with his music before settling into his more established hit Jazz Messengers sound. The group here is Art's own – with Johnny Griffin on tenor, Bill Hardman on trumpet, and Spanky DeBrest on bass – augmented by the piano of Thelonious Monk – a match that might seem unlikely at first, but not so much so after you consider the great work that Monk and Griffin did together at Riverside during the late 50s. There's a nice match between Johnny's sharp-edged tenor and Monk's imaginative playing – and if anything, the record has Blakey, Hardman, and DeBrest moving dynamically to keep up with the flurry of modern ideas coming from Griffin and Monk! Tracks are almost all originals by Thelonious too – a fact that definitely helps keep up the "Monk-ish" sound of the record – titles that include "Evidence", "Blue Monk", "I Mean You", and "Rhythm A Ning" – alongside Griffin's "Purple Shades". LP, Vinyl record album

Early Rollins work for Prestige – recorded between 1951 and 1954, in a variety of settings! Like a lot of the other Milestone 2LP sets issued in the 70s, this album collects tracks from a number of sessions, restoring recordings to the order they were recorded in rather than how they were originally issued, which in this case was mostly as 10" LPs, under a variety of titles including Mambo Jazz, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins With The Modern Jazz Quartet and others. As such the set features five lineups, all smaller groups, mostly quartets and sidemen include Miles Davis, Roy Haynes, Elmo Hope, Kenny Dorham, Thelonius Monk, Kenny Drew, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey. Since most of this was originally issued on 10"s, the tunes are shorter than you might be used to hearing Rollins' LPs, but there's still plenty of power and imagination in the grooves – very economical solos, crafted with a great deal of imagination. 20 tracks in all, with including "Scoops", "Shadrack", "Mambo Bounce", "The Stopper", "I Know", "Movin' Out", "Solid", "Newk's Fadeaway", "Silk'N'Satin", and "No Moe". LP, Vinyl record album