Thelonious Monk – Thelonious Monk Plays The Music Of Duke Ellington

Monk's first recording for the Riverside label, where producers Keepnews and Grauer "thought that Monk's first LPs would reach a wider audience if he did not record his original music" and accordingly proposed to do an "all-Ellington album" (Robin Kelley, Thelonious Monk, 2009, page 190). Recording dates on July 21st and 27th, 1955 at Van Gelder's Hackensack studio in New Jersey. Monk with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Kenny Clarke. When Riverside reissued the album in 1958, the title was changed from "Thelonious Monk Plays the Music Of Duke Ellington" to Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington" and the cover art was replaced by Henri Rousseau's painting "The Repast of the Lion."