About This Song
About "The Ballad of Thelonious Monk (Live)" by Carmen McRae
A live tribute that swaggers and stumbles. McRae doesn’t just sing Monk’s ballad; she inhabits its angular grace, her phrasing jagged as a Thelonious chord. The band’s stop-time stabs frame a portrait of genius as beautiful, difficult, and utterly human—no easy reverence here.