Inscribed album cover for Criss-Cross.

Inscribed by Monk to "the lady who ran the store and dance hall"

Boldly signed in full on the upper part of the front cover "Good Luck always Mrs Tiejen, Thelonious Monk." We believe the recipient was Marian Tietjen (1920-2013), who "during her teenage years... worked as a waitress in La Grange Texas and, in her spare time, played piano in her father's jazz band... Many people who visited Swiss Alp Texas throughout the decades knew and loved Marian as 'Mrs. Tietjen' - she was the lady who ran the store and dance hall" (The Schulenburg Sticker, weekly newspaper, online). The album would have almost certainly been inscribed by Monk when he headlined at the Longhorn Jazz Festival in Austin, Texas, in late April 1967, alongside the Dizzy Gillespie Quartet and Nina Simone.

This is the original Columbia Records release (Monaural-CL 2038) of Monk's second album for Columbia, following Monk's Dream (also 1963). The quartet included Charlie Rouse (tenor), John Ore (bass) and Frankie Dunlop (drums) and "features some of the finest work that Monk ever did in the studio with his '60s trio and quartet... This is prime Monk" (allmusic.com).

Monk's signature on an album cover is genuinely uncommon and this is a particularly fine example with a fittingly left-field provenance.