During the early years of Thelonious Monk's career,
recording sessions were anything but abundant. His
first captured performances (and "captured" is really the
appropriate word in this case) were recorded at Minton's
Playhouse in 1941, where he was the house pianist. In
fact, jazz fan Jerry Newman took his recording machine to
Minton's (the place where bebop was born), to tape some
of his heroes, above all Roy Eldridge, Charlie Christian
and Hot Lips Page. Monk just happened to be there, and
we are extremely lucky that he was. The pianist's next
recordings (which also marked his first official ones) were
cut in 1944, and produced a mere four tracks with Coleman
Hawkins.
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