Consumer Guide Album

Thelonious Monk: Monk [Columbia/Legacy, 2002]
I love Columbia's recent Monk reissues: my beloved twice-purchased Criss Cross, Solo Monk with its organic bonus tracks, It's Monk's Time set up by the staggering stride of "Lulu's Back in Town." I also dig the much-praised Underground, for its full sound and wealth of originals--though I prefer "Boo Boo's Birthday" to "Ugly Beauty" and "Green Chimneys," am glad Teo Macero axed those bass solos, and consider Jon Hendricks's ratchety vocal and witless lyric to "In Walked Bud" a sacrilege. But this is my favorite, because he and his men rehab standards so crookedly (Gershwin, Berlin, p.d. playground chant), and because boon straight man Charlie Rouse is all over it--not least on Monk's "Pannonica," originally the property of Sonny Rollins himself. A