The most impressive point to be made about this record is that it is a product of precisely the same night's work as the earlier Riverside album, Thelonious in Action (now OJCCD-103-2); the two are in all respects a matched set. On the evening of August 7, 1958, recording equipment was rather precariously set up in the always-overcrowded Five Spot, the room where Monk had made his triumphant recent return to the New York club scene and was now appearing with a new quartet featuring Johnny Griffin. This turned out to be the first successful live recording of Thelonious (he had rejected the results of a night's work here a month earlier), and the substantial numbers of Monk-approved performances were readily programmed onto two full and equally memorable albums.

with Johnny Griffin, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Roy Haynes