While occasionally maligned, Thelonious Monk's '60s recordings for Columbia yielded many moments of warmth and ingenuity. His first two albums for the label, Monk's Dream and Criss-Cross, rank among his very best; the latter demonstrated the company's success in raising his profile, becoming in 1963 his sole LP to place on the pop charts. This three-CD box, like the 2000 collection of Prestige sessions, aims to push Monk's '60s music into the spotlight shared by his Blue Note and Riverside classics. While deviled by a handful of questionable choices, The Columbia Years for the most part succeeds. As Peter Keepnews's liner notes point out, Monk spent an inordinate amount of his time at Columbia rerecording his established repertoire, dipping into not only his own stock of compositions, but favorite standards such as "April in Paris." Often supported by the excellent likes of saxophonist Charlie Rouse and drummer Ben Riley, Monk made trio and quartet versions of such classics into keepers. He also continued his sporadic work with larger groups in settings both sublime (the performances here of "Evidence" and "Epistrophy," recorded during the 1967 European tour captured in the documentary Straight, No Chaser) and misguided (the Oliver Nelson-led Monk's Blues sessions that nonetheless supply this set's lovely, bracing "Reflections").
Unfortunately, in concentrating on Monk's best-known titles, The Columbia Years misses his more than worthwhile forays off the beaten path. The pianist's reading of "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (from the '67 Straight, No Chaser disc), for instance, is one of his slyest, most musically complete stretchings of a theme; ranging from stately to a stride-like bounce over nearly eight minutes, it would have proved the centerpiece of the box. The inclusion of a listless alternate take of "Honeysuckle Rose" near the end of disc 1 also baffles.
Still, The Columbia Years mostly dazzles, with Monk reveling in his heightened fame and, of course, his music. Listen long before deriding the best of the work here: it's the sound of one of America's greatest musician-composers continuing to challenge himself on his own terms. --Rickey Wright
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