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Parsing Monk’s Dream(s) and the Vinyl Digital Divide.

Parsing Monk’s Dream(s) and the Vinyl-Digital Divide.


This album is embedded in my deepest musical memories. (fn1) 

Thelonious Monk’s album was one of four or five my dad purchased in the early 1960s. From our record collection I had few choices. 


Most striking visually were the red, really red, records consisting of a series of announcements: “The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill” then the 4 seconds of bird song. “The blue jay, the blue jay.” Five records from the Cornell Ornithology Lab.


Monk’s Dream, Monk’s Blues and Criss Cross made me a jazz fan for life.


I can’t say if these were mono or stereo records. I think we did not get a stereo system until 1968 so my earliest experience was surely of extremely low fidelity.


Today I have 2 versions of Monk’s Dream, a 1988 Columbia digitally remastered LP and a 2002 Columbia compact disc with different 24 bit remastering and 4 additional takes of tunes from the original album.


This was Thelonious Monk at the peak of his popularity. Fully established as an innovator and leading a quartet with Charlie Rouse on tenor, John Ore, bass and Frank Dunlop, drums, Monk embodied the best of angular bebop and swinging blues in 1962. Monk’s compositions and treatments of standards were radical in comparison to what little other pure jazz I might have heard and pretty far from the popular adult tunes I’d have heard on the radio. He was on the cover of Time Magazine.


Listening back, his dissonance and syncopation are steady sources of fun, not nearly as challenging as the music that Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus and others were then making. His sidemen fit perfectly within the Monk framework of the early 60s - only he, the pianist, was sufficiently sharp to be shockingly masterful - Monk hanging in the air, delaying execution, like Bill Russell after an offensive rebound, then slamming in some dissonant but perfectly imagined end of a play. Rouse gets plenty of time to solo and Ore and Dunlop are excellent.


But, you ask, LP or CD? (fn2) I’ve concluded as a general matter that the choice depends on the particular recording. Here is what I can say about these Dreams. Both have very good soundstage, with good but not exaggerated right-center-left separation and some sense of depth. Yes, the LP has some pops and defects. I think that the individual instruments come through a bit more clearly on the CD. 


Yet, especially on the solo piano pieces, with the LP I hear a piano with greater sonic extension and I hear Thelonious’ left hand notes struck 2 seconds ago remain in the air to backstop the melody’s dance ahead.


Or maybe that’s my dream.
 
1. Others: Handel’s Messiah at a Rutland church; Purple Haze cover by Uncle Sam 1967 in the  Proctor High gym; Walk On Through the Rain... Proctor Jr High Chorus; South Pacific at Proctor Players; top 40 AM pop hits via transistor radio’s single earpiece on paper route,1966-68, Jobim’s The Girl from Ipanema (another of Dad’s).  Polka Hour on Sunday from the local a.m. station, not so much.


2. Tannoy DC4000 12 in. speakers, Onix Rocket sub, AVA Synergy amp, AVA Ultra SL preamp, Arcam 23 cd player, Thorens TD126 Mk III  w/ Dynavector 10x5.


Jay Wilkinson, St. Paul, MN

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