Billboard : 09/30/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

The highly individual jazz piano innovator graces a basically standard program with significant performances. Tho somewhat irregular in his approach to time and development of the material at hand, one is left with the impression that each selection has been fully and colorfully investigated. Functional and the now standard of Monk‘s repertoire, Round About Midnight, are highlights. A must for modern jazz buyers.

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Cashbox : 10/12/1957

One of the mainstays of the jazz keyboard scene today, Monk is featured, with one exception, as a soloist. The performer handles a program of six standards and two Monk originals. It’s an intimate, individualized approach that meets the melody on inventive, but caressing terms. A brand of keyboard artistry that should impress jazz lovers.

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Army Times 
Tom Scanlan : 10/05/1957

Speaking of Riverside, there is still another new Thelonious Monk piano set out. As readers of this column may recall, I am one of those people who believe that Monk does not play the piano very well. I mention this because the liner notes on this album include the following sentence: “In addition to everything else, this album seems to provide a definitive answer for those who – perhaps put off by the unorthodoxies of Thelonious’ piano technique – like to claim that he really doesn’t play too well.” Later the notes read: “Thelonious, who like many revolutionaries has an almost shocking regard for fundamentals, has always had a strong and able left hand: thus his efforts here retain an explicit beat and, unquestionably, swing.”

After reading these notes and hearing – with considerable pain – this record, I wonder whether the writer and myself can possibly be talking about the same pianist.

Monk plays eight tunes, mostly standards all at a dreary deliberate drag tempo reminiscent of Jackie Gleason’s strings and decorates all with his real crazy chords. One of the tunes is Irving Berlin’s seldom heard All Alone, which is a pretty tune, too.

I see no point in arguing whether Monk does or does not play the piano well. Some apparently think he does; I do not. Listen to the record and judge for yourself.

Meanwhile, I cut out now to put a Teddy Wilson LP on the turntable. The word is expurgation. (Wilson, incidentally, received fewer votes in the Down Beat Jazz Critics Poll than did Mr. Monk, which is perhaps some indication of what sad shape contemporary jazz criticism is in.)

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Audio 
Charles A. Robertson : November, 1957

With a style designed for the support of bass and drums, few pianists of today are willing to venture into a studio and record a series of solos. Even before the rise of the trio, sessions of the intimate, searching sort found on this adventurous LP by Thelonious Monk, were all too rare. His reflective and unconventional improvisation is that of a man alone with his thoughts in a darkened room. There is none of the commercial bravura usually sought by record companies. There is a tantalizing and effective use of the instrument to convey deep feeling in a highly personalized way. As an example of a creative force at the keyboard playing not only by himself, but for himself, it will be cherished by all devotees of jazz piano.

Because Monk’s playing is spare and pithy, critics have pointed out a parallel in the piano pieces of Satie. It should also be remarked that it is a style shaped by pressures similar to those bearing on many other pioneers in modern art. An inability to be trite and derivative leads to leads to new forms and time values. As these often seem destructive and disturbing, public understanding is usually tardy. Technique is never an end in itself, but a means to coalesce the discoveries of a probing mind. On five popular tunes and three originals, Monk still shows a genius for the unexpected, tempered by the strength of maturity.

His treatment of April in Paris is a satiric gem to dismay all rococo pianists who make a forte of stunning arpeggios. All Alone becomes an epitome of pathetic barroom emotion. Ghost of a Chance and I Should Care are awarded more respect and he is at his lyrical best on I’m Getting Sentimental Over You. Extended performances are given his classic originals ‘Round Midnight and Functional, a ten-minute avowal of his ties with blues tradition and his kinship with the sources of jazz. On Monk’s Mood, a revealing illustration of how his solo ideas are worked into a group, he is joined by John Coltrane, tenor sax, and Wilbur Ware, bass. It presages the work he is doing with Coltrane in person. Excellent piano sound.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/07/1957

Thelonious Sphere Monk is a pianist who has been credited with being the Svengali of modern jazz, a bearded, obscure prophet without honor. Monk in recent years has confined his activities to recording and has not appeared at jazz clubs. Yet his influence is very important in modern jazz.

Not only is he the composer of that great tune, ‘Round Midnight, but his sparse, reflective style of playing, with attention concentrated on giving the maximum amount of time to each note, has led to a return to a melodic concept of playing. Monk is not easy to listen to; his sense of humor frequently is so unpredictable that you don’t know when he’s kidding. But time spent with him is always rewarding. His new Riverside LP Thelonious Himself offers Monk in eight tracks, seven of which are unaccompanied, and one of which has a bassist and a tenor (John Coltrane) along. The tunes are all ballads except for two originals by Monk. On all of them he displays that curious rambling, explorative, reflective style that has endeared him to jazz musicians. Monk represents a tradition in the making.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 01/19/1958

This one demands careful listening. Play it as background music, or listen with half an ear, and you will hear what sounds like not very expert piano, played not quite right. But follow it closely and you will find delight – plus an understanding of where Parker and Dizzy took off from the flight that was bop and became modern music.

Listen, for example, to the treatment given Irving Berlin‘s All Alone: at first ear-glimpse the over-stressed glissandos, the corny trills, ending in a diminished interval, sound like mere satirizing of the Berlin corn syrup. But before the track is finished you can hear Parker’s alto, or Gillespie’s horn, taking from one of these: in your mind’s ear you can hear it and follow it a little ways and then lose it – because you are no Parker nor Diz. But you will have seen the bone on which the flesh of modern jazz grew.

As though to emphasize this relationship, Monk is joined on the last track by John Coltrane‘s tenor and Wilbur Ware‘s bass.

Technically the record leaves much to be desired. The surface of my copy sounded like a well worn 78 and there was constant, and loud, pre-echo.

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Saturday Review 
Martin Williams : 10/12/1957

Monk passionately coaxes a group of familiar tunes out of the keyboard as if he were creating them out of the air. He can transform melody internally (Sentimental Over You) or reduce it almost to a shimmering tissue of alter harmonies (All Alone). Functional is a basic, emotionally unique, modern slow blues, and Monk’s Mood gets, with J. Coltrane and W. Ware, a “production” treatment. The recurrent arpeggio runs seem out of place for a man so full of surprises.

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Down Beat : 12/12/1957
Dom Cerulli : 5 stars

Listening to this recording’s solo tracks is most like eavesdropping on Monk as he relaxes at the piano. The standards handled here are probed gently to expose the melodic structure. It’s more a case of showing what the songs have in them rather than what he can get out of them.

In his spare, almost gaunt versions of the standards, Thelonious achieves a traditional feel as well as sound. This is particularly true on his own composition, Functional, which has the calm yet rhythmic feel of the oldtime blues piano despite the often jagged modernity of some of the figures.

The lagging, mournful quality of Monk’s playing is most felt in the rather banal All Alone, which becomes a cameo of solitude in this version. The Mood track, with Ware slipping in gracefully and Coltrane blowing forcefully, is a moody and oddly gentle work.

This one creates a picture I like: Monk and his piano, and the satisfying bond between them. Highly recommended.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This, you might say, is an album of undiluted Monk. Like most generalizations, that would be putting things a bit too simply, but the core of truth is there. For, with the deliberate exception of the final selection, this is literally Thelonious Himself – Monk, alone in the recording studio, offering highly personal versions of some standards and some of his own tunes.

Any musician who has had the experience can verify that it is hard (though rewarding) work to play with Monk. To some extent, the whole matter of the “difficulty” of his music has been overdone; but the fact remains that, like any true creative artist, Thelonious proceeds singlemindedly along his own path, and even the many modern musicians who admire him so deeply do not always find it easy to grasp fully or execute perfectly the intricate and demanding patterns that Monk’s mind can evolve. This does not mean that Monk playing by himself is a “perfect” situation; for when Monk is with a rhythm section or scoring for horns, the other voicings are fully necessary parts of what he has in mind for the occasion – and I do not know of any recording on which the men involved have not ultimately risen (often brilliantly) to meet the challenge. But what is special about this particular album is the rare opportunity it affords to hear Thelonious as he thinks and sounds when he has chosen to be, temporarily, complete in himself.

As might be expected, the overall tone of this album is reflective. The tempos are relaxed and there is a good deal of that sometimes deceptive feeling of searching, while playing, for an idea to explore, of almost unexpectedly finding in a single note or phrase the impetus for a full chorus that follows. This is a feeling that often gives Monk’s playing a quality of thinking-out-loud. It isn’t that he sounds unprepared, or surprised by the directions in which he takes himself; it is rather, as if he were constantly discovering and rediscovering within himself both new and remembered patterns of music.

It will be clear to anyone familiar with his work that Monk playing alone is not merely a case of a pianist performing with drums, bass and horns removed. There is something quite different in sound, and I think even in conception and approach. It may in part be that, being alone, he feels completely free to practice his unconventional and often irregular concepts of rhythmic ‘time.’ It is also, probably, partly a matter of not having to occupy a portion of his mind with the problems of being a bandleader. On the whole, though, I prefer not to fool around with analysis: the difference is there; hearing it and reacting to it on the one unaccompanied selection on each of Monk’s first three Riverside LPs led me to suggest that he make an entire album that way. He agreed that it would be an interesting venture. (One thing about making suggestions to Monk: you need never fear that he might accept one he considers second-rate merely to be polite or politic.)

In addition to everything else, this album seems to provide a definitive answer for those who – perhaps put off by the unorthodoxies of Thelonious’ piano technique – like to claim that he really doesn’t play too well. His performances here are always highly articulate, often (starting with April in Paris) compellingly lyrical. There is a deep grasp of jazz roots and tradition apparent in the blues, Functional (listening to the playback, Monk said: “I sound like James P. Johnson,” which is an exaggeration, but an apt one.) And in all cases it’s all right out in the open, where you can’t miss it.

The art of literally solo piano has virtually disappeared in current jazz, with bass and drums customarily taking over the onetime role of the pianist’s own left hand. While much that is new and valuable has come out of this, there are also piano players with a tendency to sound one-handed, and there are surely few men around who could bring off what Monk accomplishes here. Thelonious, who like many revolutionaries has an almost shocking regard for fundamentals, has always had a strong and able left hand; thus his efforts here retain an explicit beat and, unquestionably, swing. So, if you like, this LP can readily be taken as just one more object lesson to the effect that, whatever the task he turns to, the still-expanding talents of his pioneer jazz modernist enable him to be legitimately different from, and usually superior to, his contemporaries…

Finally, Monk’s Mood, where after an opening solo portion, tenor sax and bass are added. When described in advance, this sounded like a break in the unity of the album, but Thelonious insisted that it was entirely fitting. As usual in musical matters, he was right. John Coltrane, the extraordinarily impressive young tenor who came into prominence in 1956 as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, creates a segment of vast richness and sensitivity, assisted by the equally notable bassist, Wilbur Ware. (And, as evidence of younger musicians’ feelings about Thelonious, let it be noted that Coltrane came in from his home in Philadelphia specifically to cut this one number with Monk.)