Limited vinyl LP pressing. Thelonious in Action: Recorded at the Five Spot Cafe is a 1958 album by jazz musician Thelonious Monk. The album was recorded live at the Five Spot Cafe. Thelonious Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire. Monk is the second most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than a thousand pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70. His compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists, and are consistent with Monk's unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences and hesitations.