THELONIOUS MONK (1917-1982): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, orchestrator, ensemble leader, music theorist, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

SUMMER/FALL, 2015

VOLUME ONE            NUMBER FOUR 

BILLIE HOLIDAY 

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

ERIC DOLPHY
July 18-24

MARVIN GAYE
July 25-31

ABBEY LINCOLN
August 1-7

RAY CHARLES
August 8-14

SADE
August 15-21

BETTY CARTER
August 22-28

CHARLIE PARKER
August 29-September 4

MICHAEL JACKSON
September 5-11

CHAKA KHAN
September 12-18

JOHN COLTRANE
September 19-25

SARAH VAUGHAN
September 26-October 2
 
THELONIOUS MONK
October 3-9

https://www.joomag.com/magazine/nyu-black-renaissance-noire-winter2014/0891201001415637624?page=4

Thelonious Monk:  The Jazz Composer As Visionary
by Kofi Natambu
Black Renaissance Noire
Volume 14  Number 2
Fall, 2014

THELONIOUS MONK

(b. October 10, 1917--d. February 17, 1982) 

"They were always telling me for years to play commercial, be commercial. I'm not commercial. I say play your own way. Don't play what the public wants--you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you're doing--even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years."

—Thelonious Monk

"Monk is a virtuoso of the specific techniques of Jazz, in challengingly original uses of accent, rhythm, meter, time and of musically expressive space, rest, and silence ... He is a major jazz composer, the first since Duke Ellington ... His repertory abounds with intriguing melodies, truly instrumental pieces ... To play Monk properly, musicians justly testify, you have to know the melody and the harmony and understand how they fit together ... It is a sign of the great Jazz composer that his sense of form extends beyond written structure and beyond individual improviser, to encompass a whole performance ... So it is with Monk.”

--Martin Williams

By 1955 the legendary pianist-composer Thelonious Sphere Monk had been playing music professionally for over twenty years.

Like everything else about him--from his highly original name to his stubbornly independent, innovative, and utterly idiosyncratic approach to nearly every aspect of his extraordinary life and career--Monk was his "own man" from very early on. Moving with his family from North Carolina to New York at the age of five in 1922, the precocious Monk always went his own way and made his own decisions about how he wanted to live--even as a child. Thus, during his junior year in the spring of 1934 Monk left the academically rigorous and prestigious Stuyvesant High School in New York (which was and is a very competitive citywide magnet school which only admitted the best and most gifted students in the city) to pursue a professional career in music. He was just 17 at the time but had already impressed a number of his teachers and musical peers as a young man of great talent and potential. Coming from a very proud and independent black working-class family who loved music and insisted that their three children take music lessons (both of Monk's parents worked and Thelonious, Sr.--Monk's father--also played piano), Monk initially resisted his mother's suggestions that he play violin and later the trumpet (neither of which Monk liked). However, young Thelonious was utterly fascinated by his sister Marion's piano lessons which she took on the family's upright piano and the ten year old much preferred listening to her, especially when her music teacher came to their house. By the age of 12 in 1930 Monk had already learned to play the piano very well on his own by ear and keen observation. Highly impressed, the music teacher, a Mr. Wolfe (who was then a student at New York's famed Julliard School of Music), told Monk's parents not to waste any more money on their daughter's lessons since Marion had no real interest in playing music, but it was very apparent to the teacher that her younger brother Thelonious had "a prodigious talent." This quickly led to the highly precocious youngster enrolling in music courses in school and taking professional lessons from a series of private teachers. Since Monk also excelled academically in math and physics it wasn't long before Monk began formally composing music, using his command of harmony and melodic ideas to augment his already extraordinary rhythmic sense. By the time Monk turned 19 in 1936 he had already written a number of major compositions, most notably "Ruby My Dear," that were destined to become Jazz classics.

In 1936 Monk began playing on the road as a touring professional with an evangelist from the Sanctified Church named Reverend Graham (known publically as "The Texas Warhorse") who sang and preached in various churches while Monk's trio played rollicking gospel and rhythm & bluestunes behind her. It's important to note that as early as 1934 Monk and his trio had already worked at small gigs and dances in New York, usually earning small amounts in tips and cover charges. Monk remained with the evangelist's troupe for over two years traveling all over the country in both cities and small rural towns alike. This day-to-day immersion in the challenging demands of black folk vernacular styles as both accompanist and ensemble leader gave the dedicated young musician very valuable experience and provided the early aesthetic foundation for his eventually unique and independent styles of composing and improvising music in the Jazz tradition.

In 1938 Monk, homesick from the lonely rough and tumble life of the road, returned to his beloved New York and soon based his own playing style on the stride piano traditions established by such living African American piano legends (and Monk's personal idols) as James P. Johnson (who happened to live near Monk’s west side Manhattan neighborhood at the time) and Fats Waller. In addition, Monk was being deeply influenced by the pianist/ composer/bandleader Duke Ellington who also rooted his piano style in the stride tradition, a profound black vernacular music aesthetic of the early 1900s. It was the highly innovative modernity of Ellington's fecund ideas in piano harmony, rhythmic structure, and orchestral arrangements that inspired Monk in a particularly special way and revealed the possibilities for him to continue and expand on his own experimental efforts.

In 1940 the now 22-year-old Monk became house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a small Harlem nightclub and nightly gathering place for many aspiring young Jazz musicians and composers who came together on a regular basis at the club to jam and experiment with new musical ideas during afterhours at all night and early morning sessions. These sessions soon became legendary as the place where, in the mid-1940s, the revolutionary Jazz style 'Bebop' was born. Monk's deep involvement with this movement during endless jam sessions in the early and mid-1940s made Monk's name well known to other musicians who became very familiar with his challenging compositions and unusual solo playing. This was of course long before the general listening public became aware of his talents. From 1940-1945, an intensely creative period in which Monk wrote many new compositions including his signature classic "'Round Midnight" in 1941 and continued to work in relative obscurity at Minton's and other small clubs in Harlem and in the famed midtown 52nd street clubs and bars where his angular dissonant harmonies, dynamic rhythms, and soaring, lyrical melodies quickly made him a leading and influential figure among the modernist Jazz cognoscenti. Working closely with such fellow pioneers of this exciting new music as the extraordinary drummer Kenny "Klook" Clarke, revolutionary guitarist Charlie Christian, iconic saxophonist Charlie 'Bird' Parker, and trumpet legend John "Dizzy" Gillespie, Monk soon became a major mentor to many young emerging musicians like the then newly arrived 19 year old Miles Davis in 1945. By this time scores of musicians were experimenting with new harmonic structures, melodic ideas, and rhythmic conceptions. The intense cross-fertilization of styles, ideas, and musical structures were deeply rooted in the modern experimentations with form and content that were sweeping all the arts of the period in literature, painting, dance, and cinema and "Bebop" (or as the musicians themselves simply called it "modern music") was at the forefront of this cultural and aesthetic revolution.

It was abundantly clear, as Monk himself told a number of interviewers, that his style was "more original" than many of the standardized, generic, and conventional forms of the Bebop movement. Yet Monk was already one of the primary architects of the best and most creative aspects of this movement and was a major source of distilling, synthesizing, and extending the ideas and structures from the myriad of historical musical sources that this generation of modernist musicians consciously absorbed, honed, and developed: Jazz swing styles inherited from the 1920s and '30s (e.g. Louis Armstrong, Ellington, Art Tatum, Lester Young, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, etc.) both 'popular' and 'avant-garde' advances in 20th century classical music (e.g. Stravinsky, Varese, Hindemith, Ives, Bartok, Prokofiev, Ravel, Debussy, etc.), and new black vernacular uses/appropriations of the rich blues and rhythm and blues/rock 'n roll traditions, as well as various forms of gospel/spiritual music.

All this and more went into Monk's complex and powerful compositions that, while quite intricate and even difficult in harmonic terms, somehow remained both very lyrical (if quirkily idiosyncratic) melodicaliy, as well as creatively connected to black vernacular dance rhythms. This combination of stylistic elements became a trademark of Monk's compositions and improvisations and led him to finally getting an offer in 1947 to record as a leader of his own ensembles. Now thirty years old and a mature young artist in many respects (though still unknown to people outside of the music), Monk recorded two albums worth of his original compositions (and a few standards) with the small recording label known as Blue Note. Boldly entitled The Genius of Modern Music, Volumes I & II these records put Monk on the mainstream music map for the first time and introduced the man often rather archly referred to in Jazz publications and the mainstream media as "The High Priest of Bebop," to a new Jazz audience that were just beginning to respond to the innovations of the modernists in the music. Despite this new limited recognition, Monk was still barely making ends meet and was desperately struggling to stay above water economically. However, Monk categorically refused to give up his musical identity or compromise his artistic vision in any way despite many pressures to do so. His first recordings were often lauded (or greatly misunderstood) by the critics and journalists who continued to interview and write about him for a wide range of magazines and newspapers both in and outside the general Jazz world. The laconic, witty, and candid pianist was always considered great copy for the media. However Monk remained almost invisible to any mainstream audience of music lovers.

This situation of severe commercial isolation and economic marginalization during a very creative and productive period of composing and performing his music was juxtaposed to a concomitant rise in status and prestige among fellow musicians, composers, and critics that continued well into the 1950s. Monk continued to record on a regular basis for the important small recording labels Blue Note, Prestige, and Riverside. Thus he began the series of major, classic recordings that quickly established his reputation as one of the most significant Jazz composers and soloists in modern music. It was also during this time that Monk first began to be mentioned as the most important composer in the music since the great Duke Ellington revolutionized the Jazz orchestra in the 1920s. At the height of the Bebop craze from 1948-1954 and the justly rapid ascension of Charlie "Bird' Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as living icons of the movement, Monk made an equally revolutionary breakthrough himself in an utterly independent personal style that drew from Bebop conventions (as it did from Swing, Rhythm and Blues, classical, and gospel traditions) but were at the same time completely fresh and different in form and content from his numerous influences. These recordings were made with many of the most important, original, and talented musicians in Modern Jazz--Parker, Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Percy Heath, Max Roach, and Kenny Dorham, among others--and in many ways served as the basic creative and aesthetic foundation of where Jazz was to evolve and grow after 1955.

Thus by the mid-fifties Thelonious Sphere Monk II was a man who already had a very clear and completely masterful command of the modernist and vernacular traditions that characterized the revolutions in both popular and avant-garde music during the post WWII era. This knowledge and understanding on both an innovative theoretical and performance level profoundly transformed the 1955-1975 era in Jazz and made Monk, along with Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman the leading musical figures in a particularly tumultuous and exciting period of American art and culture.

The visionary quality of Monk's musical aesthetic lay in an intensely self-conscious and self-reflexive effort to simultaneously question, critique, and fundamentally rethink the traditionally specific roles and identities of harmonic structure, melodic form, and rhythmic content in modern music and reassert/reclaim SOUND itself as the most important individual and collective element in both improvisational and composed ensemble settings alike. For decades since the 1890s both African American and European/white American popular, vernacular, and (semi)classical musics had been dependent on inherited conventional modes of organizing musical patterns through the predominance of either harmony (songform structures), melody (songform lyrics), or rhythm (fixed metrical time). By the early 1900s various avant-garde practices in the United States and Europe had begun to overtly upset and challenge these conventions somewhat (by breaking up and/or distorting/rearranging the forms themselves) but still largely in terms of the central role of fundamentally Western conceptions and methodologies that favored a critical embrace (dissonance) or dismissive denial (atonality) of the diatonic scale as a 'negative' reference (e.g. Schoenburg, Ives, Webern, etc.). However, through the then revolutionary interventions of such major figures as Louis Armstrong and Ellington by the early 1920s, Jazz began creatively embracing and appropriating conventional music structures and ideas from a myriad of western sources while subtly transforming and subverting them with highly idiosyncratic (and African derived) methods of either using dissonant or unorthodox harmonies as well as crosscutting and constructivist architectural rhythms (a structural and expressive device known as 'riffing') in both compositional and improvisational contexts. It's crucial to note that the major black Jazz composers, improvisors, and arrangers of the 1920s and '30s (Jelly Roll Morton, Ellington, Sidney Bechet, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins) were very adept at using these sources while also creating and improvising entirely new ways of expressing melodic lyricism and 'pop' song forms such as Louis Armstrong's brilliant inventions of 'scat' singing and 'swing' instrumental styles.

Out of this historical maelstrom of multinational aesthetic and cultural traditions and conceptions, Monk consciously critiqued, individually reworked, and creatively extended and subverted the conventions of 20th century modernist and vernacular sources (including those of 'Bebop') to forge his own vision of what constituted 'modern music.' The first principle was a reliance and insistence on changing the sound of the piano (and by extension other instrumental voices in the ensemble) through an entirely new approach to note articulation, timbrai dynamics, and use of temporal/spatial elements in his own improvisations and composing material for other musicians in his groups. As a result many early listeners of Monk's music--musicians, critics, and general listeners alike--thought that Monk was not a very technically accomplished pianist (again in the strictly Western European traditional/ classical terms which were the canonical norm in the United States). This misunderstanding and profound ignorance of the actual sources of Monk's methods and approach to instrumental expression and compositional structure was an impediment to many people in Jazz circles until the critical and listening Jazz public (and many musicians as well) finally 'caught up' to many of Monk's innovations by the late 1950s. By then Monk was already an established twenty-five year jazz veteran whose once radical contributions to voicing, phrasing, and tempo were finally the 'new modern mainstream' of the Jazz tradition.

The extraordinary recordings that Monk made from 1955-1965 only further solidified and cemented this reputation and suddenly made his work de rigueur for the young, emerging innovators and radicals of the period. In 1955 Monk finally began to receive the commercial attention (and monetary success) that had previously eluded him without compromising himself by 'going commercial' in any way as an artist. This reality completely validated Monk's famous assertion that one must 'play [your] own way' and ensured that he would enter the rarefied pantheon of the greatest musicians and composers in the history of his art completely on his own terms. It was a profound lesson in artistic integrity, dedication to craft, and disciplined perseverance that would serve as a beacon for an entire new generation of gifted, ambitious players and composers in the 1960s, the '70s, and beyond who recognized that Monk's greatest and most significant contributions lie not only in his fierce aesthetic commitment but in not allowing himself to be corrupted and distracted by the relentless demands and pressures of the marketplace. The result was one of the most singular, influential bodies of work in the entire canon of 20th century music.

This essay is an excerpt from a new book-in-progress by Kofi Natambu entitled A BRAND NEW BAG: How African Americans Revolutionized U.S. Culture & Changed the World, 1955-1975.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-best-of-thelonious-monk

May 20, 2015

The Best of Thelonious Monk
by Richard Brody
The New Yorker

Monk was the master of the single note, perfectly selected, timed, and struck so that it would have a symphonic amplitude. Credit Photograph: Burt Glinn/Magnum 

 

 

A treasure chest of jazz is being rereleased this week: “The Complete Riverside Recordings” of Thelonious Monk, a fifteen-disk set of his recording sessions, in the studio and live, for that seminal label. Spanning the period between 1955 and 1961, it’s the core of his recorded legacy. The set contains the disks of his that I return to most often, and it shows off a wide range of his art. For me, it’s the most essential trove of Monk’s recordings that exists. Most of the recordings in the set are available separately, as the albums on which they were originally released, but having them together in chronological order tells a musical story that is as much about Monk as it is about the musical times.

These fifteen disks find Monk in a wide range of musical settings—solo, trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, and a big band—and locations, including the studio, New York’s Town Hall and the Five Spot, San Francisco’s Blackhawk, and concert halls in Paris and Milan. The list of Monk’s sidemen in this set indicates the level of creativity on display; it includes John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, and Max Roach, and they’re all in stellar form, due not least to Monk’s own musical invigoration.

The boxed set was made under the aegis of Orrin Keepnews (who died in March, at the age of ninety-one), the producer and the co-founder of the Riverside label, who, as a critic in the late forties, was among the first to recognize Monk’s genius. In 1955, he succeeded in poaching him from another record company, where his albums were unappreciated and his place on the roster was subordinate. Recordings were especially important to Monk at the time because, as a result of trumped-up drug charges, he had lost his cabaret card (in effect, a New York City performance license) and couldn’t play in any venue that served alcohol—i.e., jazz clubs.

In the set’s copious booklet, Keepnews discusses his plan for establishing the modernist Monk—namely, by making explicit his ties to jazz tradition. He recorded the Monk trio playing compositions by Duke Ellington, in 1955, and followed that album early the next year with one of the trio performing standards from what wasn’t yet called the Great American Songbook. Those albums offer delightful shocks, such as the “Name That Tune” trouble that Monk so gleefully provokes with his radical rearrangements of familiar melodies. His revision of “Mood Indigo” seemingly puts more notes into the first phrase than Ellington’s whole composition contains. He reharmonizes Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose” nearly to the breaking point and plays exuberantly with “Tea for Two,” toying with its simple melody to tease out a comically obsessive syncopation.

In October, 1956, Keepnews had Monk throw down a wild gauntlet of compositional and organizational audacity, “Brilliant Corners,” featuring the saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Ernie Henry and the drummer Max Roach. In his notes, Keepnews details the trouble that the complex title tune caused the musicians, and the editing tricks that gave rise to the released performance. This recording has a grand, grave sense of moment: it is a coming out of the composer from behind the mask of eccentricity and idiosyncrasy and displaying, in several difficult and expansive works, his thoroughgoing and large-scale musical imagination, even within the relative intimacy of a quintet.

Monk was the master of the single note, perfectly selected, timed, and struck so that it would have a symphonic amplitude. The asymptote of his music is a punctuated silence, which is why he was especially sensitive to his drummers and dependent on them to organize the music’s forward motion. In “The Complete Riverside Recordings,” Monk is joined by the best, including Roach, Blakey, Roy Haynes (who, at the age of ninety, is still working today), Kenny Clarke, Shadow Wilson, and Philly Joe Jones.

Monk made his drummers—and, for that matter, almost all of his musicians—rise to the occasion. For me, the most exhilarating of these occasions is the series of recordings issued on the album titled “Monk’s Music,” from June, 1957, featuring Coltrane, Hawkins, and, in particular, Blakey, who displays a scintillating synergy with the pianist. Blakey drives the band with an astonishingly contained heat that is tempered with lyricism—his accompanying accents are witty and melodic, and his solos are the most singable, witty ones that I’ve ever heard. The entire band is electrified. Coltrane wasn’t yet the meteoric inventor that he’d become after his six-month stint with Monk at the Five Spot, but his sound is searching, his tense rhythms and broken phrases pregnant with far-reaching ideas. Hawkins, who more or less single-handedly turned the tenor sax into a jazz soloist’s heavy weaponry in the nineteen-twenties, is roaring, robust, and good-humored. The bassist Wilbur Ware, with his uniquely percussive tone, does some remarkable duets with Blakey, and the trumpeter Ray Copeland, who didn’t record often, displays a tone that veers between brazenly bright and intimately grainy for his concise, poised solos. I consider it Monk’s single greatest studio recording.


Monk is more than a bandleader and a soloist. His work as a composer is central to his career, to his legacy, and to this set, which features five versions of “’Round Midnight,” six of “Epistrophy,” five of “Crepuscule with Nellie,” four of “Rhythm-a-Ning,” and multiples of “Jackie-ing,” “Blue Monk,” “In Walked Bud,” “Well, You Needn’t,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Evidence,” and other works in Monk’s compositional canon. He could, and did, play anything brilliantly (the standards include such obscurities as “There’s Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie”), but in his compositions, he posed some very difficult problems of melody, rhythm, and harmony, which he himself worked out for most of his life and which other musicians to this day find fruitful and unresolved.

Last Thursday, the eighty-one-year-old saxophonist Wayne Shorter and his compositions were featured with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis. I was there, and the results were revealing. Shorter’s role in the jazz of the nineteen-sixties was similar to that of Monk in the jazz of the fifties. As a member, first, of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and then of Miles Davis’s bands, from 1964 through 1970, Shorter was also these groups’ chief composer and, as such, was the leading jazz composer of the day. His solos, with their analytical yet spontaneous musical imagination—with their rhythmic jolts and their surprising, disjunctive succession of phrases—have an inner logic that’s entirely Shorter’s own. Thursday’s concert, like Shorter’s recordings, proved that his improvisations and his compositions are of a piece; as with Monk, Shorter’s compositions implant his DNA in the musical times in a reproducible way, whereas his inimitable solos are entirely his own.

Monk’s musical DNA had already taken root by the time he started recording for Riverside, and that connection gives rise to one of the most startling performances in the boxed set. In 1955, at the Newport Jazz Festival, Davis staked his claim for stardom with his performance of Monk’s “’Round Midnight” (Monk was a part of the pickup group with which Davis performed it). That composition became the centerpiece of Davis’s first album for Columbia, “’Round About Midnight,” which was released in March, 1957. Monk went into the studio with Keepnews the following month to record a solo album. His performances are brash, intellectually aggressive, and self-deconstructive, nowhere more so than in his recording of “’Round Midnight,” a mighty twenty-one-minute quest for the heart of the composition; the performance has a combative air, as Monk pounced on his own tune to reclaim it with harmonic daring and a leonine attack.

The set includes a batch of the most rip-roaring recordings Monk ever made: live at the Five Spot with a quartet featuring the bluff, virtuosic tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin and Haynes on drums. The big-band recording, live in Town Hall, from 1959, puts the compositions front and center; the arrangements, by Hall Overton, have a buoyant directness that highlights the sheer delight, the instant if belated classicism, that Monk’s compositions represent.

There are some things in the box that you can’t get elsewhere, including three fascinating live cuts from the Blackhawk in San Francisco in 1960. The drummer Shelly Manne was the nominal co-leader with Monk, but Manne’s sense of percussive melody didn’t quite mesh with Monk’s: Manne, a fine musician (as on Rollins’s “Way Out West,” Ornette Coleman’s “Tomorrow Is the Question!” and his own “2-3-4,” with Hawkins), adorned the tunes literally and came off too slick. But from that failure a great triumph emerged. The next night, Manne was out and Billy Higgins, fresh from his own triumph with Coleman’s seminal quartet, was in, lending Monk’s sextet a jumpy, febrile swing.

The set also bears sonic witness to the musical partnership that saw Monk through the sixties, with the tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. His early efforts with Monk are included here, in the Town Hall big band as well as a quartet set from the same concert; at the Blackhawk; and in concerts in France and Italy, from 1961. Rouse had a rectilinear bluesiness that pushed heartily against Monk’s oblique interpolations and helped to propel the pianist’s solos. But Rouse’s tenure, which ran through 1970, coincided with a slowdown in the pianist’s musical expansion, which became stepwise and incremental. There were no more Coltranes or Rollinses in Monk’s career. This boxed set catches him first rising meteorically and then settling into his ultimate groove.

https://soundcloud.com/bbcjazzon3/the-late-amiri-baraka-reading 

BBC Jazz on 3 

January 2014 saw the passing of writer, activist and jazz poet Amiri Baraka. Like many of his poems, Bang Bang Outlishly sounds out the notes of jazz classic: Thelonious Monk's Misterioso.

Listen to Jez Nelson remembering Baraka with jazz writer Kevin Le Gendre on Jazz on 3 on Monday 20 January from 11pm on BBC Radio 3, or for 7 days after broadcast on iPlayer: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q5br1

The late Amiri Baraka reading his poem Bang Bang Outlishly, inspired by Thelonious Monk [20.01.14]:

<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/130448556&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true"></iframe>

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-book-is-finally-out-and-it-is.html

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Thelonious Monk: An American Original

Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley. 

 

http://monkbook.com/about/

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original by Robin Kelley--Free Press, October 2009
 
All,

The book is finally out and it is simply INCREDIBLE. This is an absolutely stupendous achievement by one of the finest social historians and cultural critics in this country, the great Robin D.G. Kelley. Dr. Kelley has written the definitive biography of the legendary Thelonious Monk and it is a 600 page masterpiece. Over ten years of exhaustive historical research and writing went into this opus and it was more than worth the wait! So don't hesitate for another second. GET THIS BOOK TODAY AND TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND THEIR FRIENDS TO GO COP IT NOW...

Kofi

(Note: I will be doing an extensive review and analysis of Dr. Kelley's new biography on this site as soon as I finish reading the text)Kofi

http://monkbook.com/

“The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances.”

—Thelonious Monk 

Who Is Thelonious Monk? 

 

With the arrival Thelonious Sphere Monk, modern music—let alone modern culture—simply hasn’t been the same. Recognized as one of the most inventive pianists of any musical genre, Monk achieved a startlingly original sound that even his most devoted followers have been unable to successfully imitate. His musical vision was both ahead of its time and deeply rooted in tradition, spanning the entire history of the music from the “stride” masters of James P. Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith to the tonal freedom and kinetics of the “avant garde.” And he shares with Edward “Duke” Ellington the distinction of being one of the century’s greatest American composers. At the same time, his commitment to originality in all aspects of life—in fashion, in his creative use of language and economy of words, in his biting humor, even in the way he danced away from the piano—has led fans and detractors alike to call him “eccentric,” “mad” or even “taciturn.” Consequently, Monk has become perhaps the most talked about and least understood artist in the history of jazz.

Barbara Monk ca. 1922

Born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious was only four when his mother Barbara, big sister Marion, and baby brother Thomas, moved to New York City. Unlike other Southern migrants who headed straight to Harlem, the Monks settled on West 63^rd Street in the “San Juan Hill” neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family three years later, but health considerations forced him to return to North Carolina. During his stay, however, he often played the harmonica, “Jew’s harp,” and an old player piano the family acquired soon after he arrived. Thelonious’s mother also played piano, mostly hymns and other sacred music, and she encouraged her children’s musical interests by taking them to hear Franko Goldman’s band perform in nearby Central Park and paying for music lessons. She arranged piano lessons for Marion and hoped Thelonious would take up violin. He chose trumpet instead, and studied the instrument briefly but was challenged by bronchial issues. He was about eleven when Marion’s piano teacher took Thelonious on as a student. By his early teens, he was playing rent parties, sitting in on piano at a local Baptist church, and was reputed to have won several “amateur hour” competitions at the Apollo Theater.

Monk at Minton's Playhouse

Admitted to Peter Stuyvesant, one of the city’s best high schools, Monk dropped out at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music and during the summer of 1935 took a job as a pianist for a traveling evangelist and faith healer. Returning after two years, he formed his own quartet and played local bars and small clubs until the spring of 1941, when he became the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem.

Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm—notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell. Monk’s harmonic innovations proved fundamental to the development of modern jazz in this period. Anointed by some critics as the “High Priest of Bebop,” several of his compositions (“52^nd Street Theme,” “‘Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy,” “I Mean You”) were favorites among his contemporaries.

Yet, as much as Monk helped usher in the bebop revolution, he also charted a new course for modern music few were willing to follow. Whereas most pianists of the bebop era played sparse chords in the left hand and emphasized fast, even eighth and sixteenth notes in the right hand, Monk combined an active right hand with an equally active left hand, fusing stride and angular rhythms that utilized the entire keyboard. And in an era when fast, dense, virtuosic solos were the order of the day, Monk was famous for his use of space and silence. In addition to his unique phrasing and economy of notes, Monk would “lay out” pretty regularly, enabling his sidemen to experiment free of the piano’s fixed pitches. As a composer, Monk was less interested in writing new melodic lines over popular chord progressions than in creating a whole new architecture for his music, one in which harmony and rhythm melded seamlessly with the melody. “Everything I play is different,” Monk once explained, “different melody, different harmony, different structure. Each piece is different from the other. … [W]hen the song tells a story, when it gets a certain sound, then it’s through…completed.”

Despite his contribution to the early development of modern jazz, Monk remained fairly marginal during the 1940s and early 1950s. Besides occasional gigs with bands led by Kenny Clarke, Lucky Millinder, Kermit Scott, and Skippy Williams, in 1944 tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was the first to hire Monk for a lengthy engagement and the first to record with him. Most critics and many musicians were initially hostile to Monk’s sound. Blue Note, then a small record label, was the first to sign him to a contract. Thus, by the time he went into the studio to lead his first recording session in 1947, he was already thirty years old and a veteran of the jazz scene. Although all of Monk’s Blue Note sides are hailed today as some of his greatest recordings, at the time of their release in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they proved to be a commercial failure.

 

Harsh, ill-informed criticism limited Monk’s opportunities to work—opportunities he desperately needed especially after his marriage to Nellie Smith in 1948, and the birth of his son, Thelonious, Jr., in December of 1949. Monk found work where he could, but he never compromised his musical vision. His already precarious financial situation took a turn for the worse in August of 1951, when he was falsely arrested for narcotics possession, essentially taking the rap for his friend Bud Powell. It was his second arrest; the first, in 1948, was for possession of marijuana. Deprived of his cabaret card—a police-issued “license” without which jazz musicians could not perform in New York clubs—Monk was denied gigs in his home town for the next six years. Nevertheless, he played neighborhood clubs in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem, sporadic concerts, took out-of-town gigs, composed new music, and made several trio and ensemble records under the Prestige label (1952–1954), which included memorable performances with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and Milt Jackson. In the fall of1953, he celebrated the birth of his daughter Barbara, and the following summer he crossed the Atlantic for the first time to play the Paris Jazz Festival. During his stay, he recorded his first solo album for Vogue. These recordings would begin to establish Monk as one of the century’s most imaginative solo pianists.

 

In 1955, Monk signed with a new label, Riverside, and recorded several outstanding LP’s which garnered critical attention, notably Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s Music and his second solo album, Thelonious Himself. In 1957, with the help of his friend and sometime patron, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, he had finally gotten his cabaret card restored and enjoyed a very long and successful engagement at the Five Spot Café with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware and later Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. From that point on, his career began to soar; his collaborations with Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, and arranger Hall Overton, among others, were lauded by critics and studied by conservatory students. Monk even led a successful big band at Town Hall in 1959. It was as if jazz audiences had finally caught up to Monk’s music.

By 1961, Monk had established a more or less permanent quartet consisting of Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, John Ore (later Butch Warren and then Larry Gales) on bass, and Frankie Dunlop (later Ben Riley) on drums. He performed with his own big band at Lincoln Center (1963), and the quartet made a few European and world tours throughout the decade. In 1962, Monk had also signed with the gargantuan Columbia records, and in February of 1964 he became the third jazz musician in history to grace the cover of Time Magazine.

 

However, with fame came the media’s growing fascination with Monk’s alleged eccentricities. Stories of his behavior on and off the bandstand often overshadowed serious commentary about his music. The media helped invent the mythical Monk—the reclusive, naïve, idiot savant whose musical ideas were supposed to be entirely intuitive rather than the product of intensive study, knowledge and practice. Indeed, his reputation as a recluse (Time called him the “loneliest Monk”) reveals just how much Monk had been misunderstood. As his former sideman, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, explained, Monk was somewhat of a homebody: “If Monk isn’t working he isn’t on the scene. Monk stays home. He goes away and rests.” Unlike the popular stereotypes of the jazz musician, Monk was devoted to his family. He appeared at family events, played birthday parties, and wrote playfully complex songs for his children: “Little Rootie Tootie” for his son, “Boo Boo’s Birthday” and “Green Chimneys” for his daughter, and a Christmas song titled “A Merrier Christmas.” The fact is, the Monk family held together despite long stretches without work, severe money shortages, sustained attacks by critics, grueling road trips, bouts with illness, and the loss of close friends.

 

During the 1960s, Monk scored notable successes with albums such as Criss Cross, Monk’s Dream, It’s Monk Time, Straight No Chaser, and Underground. But as Columbia/CBS records pursued a younger, rock-oriented audience, Monk and other jazz musicians ceased to be a priority for the label. Monk’s final recording with Columbia was a big band session with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra in November of 1968, which turned out to be both an artistic and commercial failure. Columbia’s disinterest and Monk’s deteriorating health kept the pianist out of the studio. In January of 1970, Charlie Rouse left the band, and two years later Columbia quietly dropped Monk from its roster. For the next few years, Monk accepted fewer engagements and recorded even less. His quartet featured saxophonists Pat Patrick and Paul Jeffrey, and his son Thelonious, Jr., took over on drums in 1971. That same year and again in 1972, Monk toured widely with the “Giants of Jazz,” a kind of bop revival group consisting of Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey, and made his final public appearance in July of 1976. Physical illness, fatigue, and perhaps sheer creative exhaustion convinced Monk to give up playing altogether. On February 5, 1982, he suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness; twelve days later, on February 17^th, he died.

Today Thelonious Monk is widely accepted as a genuine master of American music. His compositions constitute the core of jazz repertory and are performed by artists from many different genres. He is the subject of award winning documentaries, biographies and scholarly studies, prime time television tributes, and he even has an Institute created in his name. The Thelonious Monk Institute was created to promote jazz education and to train and encourage new generations of musicians. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who was always willing to share his musical knowledge with others but expected originality in return.

Robin D.G. Kelley speaking via video about Thelonious Monk--Simon & Schuster:

http://videos.simonandschuster.com/Author-Robin-Kelley-on-musical-legend-Thelonius/44534277001 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/books/excerpt-thelonious-monk.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

October 18, 2009

EXCERPT:

‘Thelonious Monk’
by ROBIN D. G. KELLEY

Prologue: Prelude

"I have a choice here between writing about Monk as he is, or as he seems to be, and is generally thought to be. There isn't any great difficulty about it, because both sides are fertile ground; the stories merely differ in plausibility."

--Critic Paul Bacon, 1949

Benetta Smith — known affectionately as "Teeny" — loved to visit her Aunt Nellie and Uncle Thelonious. For a kid growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, the Monks' tiny ground-floor apartment at 243 West 63rd Street, must have seemed almost carnivalesque. Uncle Thelonious sat at the piano turning Christmas carols into Monk originals, or holding forth with a string of friendly put-downs or challenging questions about the ways of the world. Aunt Nellie chatted away, sometimes entertaining the kids with wild and wonderful stories, sometimes cursing booking agents, managers, and anyone else who took advantage of her dear husband, sometimes gently scolding one of her nieces not to "bang" on the piano. Their two children, "Toot" (Thelonious, Jr.) and "Boo Boo" (Barbara), added to the drama and the fun; they were full of energy, and their parents encouraged them to express themselves freely. The apartment and the neighborhood became a playground for Teeny's six siblings, as well as her cousins and their family friends. Uncle "Baby," Thelonious's younger brother Thomas, lived a couple of doors down, so his four children were always in the mix.

Like all his nieces and nephews, Teeny treated her uncle as an uncle — not as some eccentric genius or celebrity. During one of her many visits in 1959 or '60, when she was about twelve years old, Teeny noticed a book of compositions by Chopin perched on her uncle's rented Steinway baby grand piano. Monk's piano was notorious for its clutter. It occupied a significant portion of the kitchen and extended into the front room. The lid remained closed, since it doubled as a temporary storage space for music, miscellaneous papers, magazines, folded laundry, dishes, and any number of stray kitchen items.

Teeny thumbed through the pages of the Chopin book, then turned to her uncle and asked, "What are you doing with that on the piano? I thought you couldn't read music? You can read that?" The challenge was on. In response, Monk sat down at the piano, turned to a very difficult piece, and started playing it at breakneck speed.

"His hands were a blur," she recalled decades later. "Then after he was through, he jumped up from the piano and just started grinning. So then I said, 'You didn't play that right.'"

"Whaaaa? What are you talking about? I played it ten times faster than anyone could!"

Teeny sassed back, "It is supposed to be played adagio and you played it allegro."

Monk loved that kind of one-upmanship, the playful banter, challenges from those who weren't afraid to engage him. And he was proud of his family, including Teeny's burgeoning knowledge of music.

For well over half a century, the press and the critics have portrayed Monk as "eccentric," "mad," "childlike," "brooding," "naïve," "intuitive," "primitive," even "taciturn." As Nat Hentoff, one of the few critics who got to know Monk, observed: "Monk ... became a stock cartoon figure for writers of Sunday-supplement pieces about the exotica of jazz. Pictures of Monk in dark glasses and goatee would usually be captioned 'Mad Monk' or 'The High Priest of Bop.' Exaggerated stories of his personal life were the 'substance' of the articles. There was no attempt to discuss the nature or seriousness of his musical intentions." Journalist Lewis Lapham's sympathetic portrait of Monk for the Saturday Evening Post is typical of much of the writing about Monk. He described Thelonious as an "emotional and intuitive man, possessing a child's vision of the world, Monk talks, sleeps, eats, laughs, walks or dances as the spirit moves him." He was said to be uncommunicative, and music was the only way he could communicate. He supposedly lived in his own little world, exiled from reality, and had no interest in anything except his music and himself. The only music that interested him was his own, or the pop tunes and old standards that he transformed into his own idiom.

Even his fans and defenders made authoritative statements about Monk's lack of interest and/or knowledge of other musical genres — especially classical music. In what was intended to be a genuine compliment, French critic André Hodeir insisted that this "true jazzman" had no interest in "serious music." He assured his readers that "no twelve-tone sirens have lured Monk away from jazz. He probably doesn't even know that such music exists. I can safely say that the gradual development of his language has been the result of intuition and intuition alone." Pianist, critic, and educator John Mehegan said much the same thing in a 1963 essay. "The entire body of resources of Western man," he mused, "relating to the playing of the piano, which dates back to the sixteenth century, remains unknown to Thelonious Sphere Monk for the simple reason that Monk is not Western man. He is a Black man." Even fellow jazz pianist Bill Evans famously stated that Monk's "unique and astoundingly pure music" can be explained by his lack of "exposure to the Western classical music tradition or, for that matter, comprehensive exposure to any music other than jazz and American popular music." Quincy Jones extended the myth of pure genius to Monk's entire interaction with the world, as if he were a sealed fermentation vat: "He is not familiar with many classical works, or with much life outside himself, and I think because of this he did not create on a contrived or inhibited basis."

The myth is as attractive as it is absurd. The truth is, Thelonious Monk possessed an impressive knowledge of, and appreciation for, Western classical music, not to mention an encyclopedic knowledge of hymns and gospel music, American popular songs, and a variety of obscure art songs that defy easy categorization. For him, it was all music. Once in 1966, a phalanx of reporters in Helsinki pressed Monk about his thoughts on classical music and whether or not jazz and classical can come together. His drummer, Ben Riley, watched the conversation unfold: "Everyone wanted him to answer, give some type of definition between classical music and jazz ... So he says, 'Two is one,' and that stopped the whole room. No one else said anything else." Two is one, indeed. Monk loved Frédéric Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, and Bach, and like many of his peers of the bebop generation, he took an interest in Igor Stravinsky. And his life was no more monastic than any other urban jazzman's. Indeed, it was far more colorful and interesting than a true monk's. The myths surrounding Monk have gotten in the way of the truth, and the truth about his life and music is fascinating and complicated — and no less original or creative than the myth.

Monk wasn't born with some kind of natural musical knowledge and ability, nor was he entirely self-taught (though he did have perfect pitch). He received a formidable music education and worked very hard to achieve his distinctive sound. Nor did he withdraw into an isolated musical meditation, away from the world. It took a village to raise Monk: a village populated by formal music teachers, local musicians from the San Juan Hill neighborhood of New York in which he grew up; an itinerant preacher, a range of friends and collaborators who helped facilitate his own musical studies and exploration; and a very large, extended family willing to pitch in and sacrifice a great deal so that Thelonious could pursue a life of uncompromising creativity. He drew inspiration, ideas, and lessons from family members, daily experience, joys and hardships, and the city itself — its sounds, its colors, its drama. Hence this book is not just about him, or his music; rather, it is an intimate story about the folks who shaped him — his hardworking and devoted mother, Barbara, his wife, Nellie, and her entire family, their children, his brother and sister and their kids, his musical kith and kin, his patron saint and friend the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, his childhood friends and first crushes, the people of the local community center, his ancestors and the legacy they bestowed upon him; not to mention the agents, managers, producers, critics, judges, cops, attorneys, and others whose actions and decisions directly affected Monk's livelihood.

Thelonious Monk was very much of the world, at least until mental and physical illness finally caused him to withdraw, making his world seem much smaller, self-contained, and at times impenetrable. For most of his life he remained engaged and fascinated with his surroundings. Politics, art, commerce, nature, architecture, history were not beyond his ken, and Monk was the kind of man who loved a good debate, despite stories of his inability to communicate. Fortunately, many of his close friends and family members have been willing to share their stories, most of which have never been told before in print. They reveal a startlingly different Thelonious Monk — witty, incredibly generous, intensely family-oriented, curious, critical, and brutally honest. In addition, Monk himself was frequently captured on tape telling stories, debating, or just shooting the breeze. The tapes were made by his friend and supporter the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, the photographer W. Eugene Smith (at whose loft Monk's big band often rehearsed), or by his wife, Nellie. Such tapes are a biographer's dream, for they capture impromptu conversations and ideas unmediated by interviewers or media outlets.

One of those recordings, made by W. Eugene Smith during a big-band rehearsal in June of 1964, caught Monk in a funny conversation about the power of porpoises. Overhearing soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy talk about his friend, trombonist Roswell Rudd, getting a job at the Library of Congress working for Alan Lomax organizing recorded music from around the world, Monk's ears perked up. Monk pressed Lacy for details, and Lacy in turn explained to Monk that he was listening to "Eskimo music ... the wildest African [expletive] you've ever heard, Chinese music ... even the music of porpoises." Monk then explained to the room, "They say if you can ever make a tape of a porpoise and play it back, down slow enough, it's the same as the human voice. They are so close to the human species. Because they have the same box here [pointing to his throat]." After explaining that they communicate at very high frequencies, Monk performs a pretty convincing imitation of a porpoise cry. He then launches into a lecture about how man might benefit from harnessing the porpoise's ability to sense everything around them: "You know, it's an amazing thing to study the porpoises. With the study of the porpoise, they going to find out possibilities of completely obliterating a blind man's stick. Walk down the [expletive} street blind as a bat, and naked. They'll put a little sonar thing in his ear or something that is able to tell when you're getting up to anything, the kind of object, the texture of the object, whether it's a building or a person ... it could tell that it's either a hard surface or cloth. Because they've checked out porpoises and they can't figure out, they hadn't been able to figure out why a porpoise can swim in dark, murky waters, so you can't see nothing at all, and they won't hit a [expletive] thing."

Other tapes are more intimate, like the tapes Nellie made of Monk rehearsing at home. These tapes reveal Monk's deep and abiding love of this music, Mrs. Monk's delight in listening to her husband, and the joy they both derived from each other's company. Between and during songs, the recorder captures snippets of a love affair. Sometimes they joked with one another, or simply conversed about how to work the tape recorder; other times Nellie sang along in unison with the piano. Monk had evident trust in her knowledge and opinions about music as well as in her ability to run the tape machine, even when she was just learning how to work it. These tapes are windows into more than Monk's music. They reveal Monk as both a comic and a romantic — he had a tremendous sense of humor, and he deeply loved old songs. At the end of a tender rendition of "Tea for Two," he turned to Nellie and asked, with even greater tenderness, "Were you recording that?"

The critics who interviewed him backstage or observed him dancing across the bandstand missed these sides of Monk. Like most people, he was not one to unveil himself to strangers. Sometimes Monk's eccentric public behavior was a way of salvaging whatever private life he had left. As he once told the writer Frank London Brown, "You know people have tried to put me off as being crazy. Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy."

He got a kick out of fooling people, particularly those whom he thought were too lazy or afraid to think for themselves. One of his favorite pranks was to stare intensely at a spot on the ceiling or in the sky, either in a crowded room or on a street corner. Invariably, several people would look up with him, searching for whatever elusive object apparently fascinated him. It was an experiment in mass psychology that brought him great amusement.

But not all of Monk's bizarre actions were artifice. Thelonious suffered from bipolar disorder, the signs of which are evident as early as the 1940s. But by the early 1960s, just as he began to earn the fame and recognition that had eluded him for the first two decades of his career, various mental and physical ailments began to take an even greater toll, exacerbated by poor medical treatment, an unhealthy lifestyle, the daily stresses of a working jazz musician, and an unending financial and creative battle with the music industry. Some writers romanticize manic depression and/or schizophrenia as characteristics of creative genius, but the story of Monk's physical and mental ailments is essentially a tragedy, a story of his slow decline and the pain it caused to those closest to him. Its manifestations were episodic, so he continued to function and make incredible music up until the day of his retirement in 1976. During these nearly twenty years, his ability to lead a band and to dig out fresh interpretations of compositions he had been playing for decades, in spite of his illness and a protracted struggle with the industry, was astonishing.

Three decades ago, when I was young, messing around with piano and studying bass slightly more seriously, my new stepfather, Paul, a professional tenor sax player, had me listen to Monk and Johnny Griffin perform "Evidence." Soon I memorized everyone's solo on that record, including Roy Haynes's unaccompanied snare drum rolls, which is impossible to approximate verbally without spraying spittle on anyone standing within five feet of my mouth. I became completely obsessed with Monk's sound, his clang-clang sound of surprise, rich with deafening silences, dissonances, and harmonic ambiguities. It was that ice cream truck sound: Monk the good humor man. I worked on that sound on piano, from Monk's blues and intricate and lovely ballads to his up-tempo numbers, which nearly put me in the hospital. His sound seemed beyond my grasp, beyond my comprehension. I played more notes; I played fewer notes; I changed the chord voicings; I played in front of the beat, I danced around the beat, and finally gave up and retreated to rubato. I listened and listened some more. I even summoned him from the ancestors to help ... and he came to me, in a dream. Decked out in divine alligator shoes, a dark green silk suit, yellow tie, bamboo sunglasses, and a cold straw hat, he snuck up behind me as I sat hunched over my stepfather's Steinway upright, looked over my shoulder, and simply mumbled, "You're making the wrong mistakes."

Here, more humbly, is an attempt to evoke his world in words, not music. Monk consistently and boldly spoke the truth, no matter whose feelings were hurt. One of his favorite mantras was "Always Know," adding that the word "Know" was Monk spelled backward with the "W" inverted. He often illustrated the point with a huge custom-made ring that had "MONK" emblazoned across the top in diamonds, turning it upside down in case you didn't get it. "Always Know!" All Ways Know!

This book is my attempt to "Know" Monk, the man behind the mystique.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Thelonious Monk by Robin Kelley Copyright © 2009 by Robin D. G. Kelley. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

The Book

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes!” So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk’s hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or child-like. But, these labels tell us little about the man or his music.

In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly different Thelonious Monk–witty, intelligent, generous, family-oriented, politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father and husband. Indeed, Thelonious Monk is essentially a love story. It is a story of familial love, beginning with Monk’s enslaved descendants from whom Thelonious inherited an appreciation for community, freedom, and black traditions of sacred and secular song. It is about a doting mother who scrubbed floors to pay for piano lessons and encouraged her son to follow his dream. It is the story of romance, from Monk’s initial heartbreaks to his life-long commitment to his muse, the extraordinary Nellie Monk. And it is about his unique friendship with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, a scion of the famous Rothschild family whose relationship with Monk and other jazz musicians has long been the subject of speculation and rumor. Nellie, Nica, and various friends and family sustained Monk during the long periods of joblessness, bipolar episodes, incarceration, health crises, and other tragic and difficult moments.

Above all, Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.

Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, Best Non-Fiction Book
Best Book about Jazz 2009, Jazz Journalists Association
Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Association
PEN Open Book Award, PEN American Center
ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award
Finalist, 2010 PEN USA Literary Award
Ambassador Award for Book of Special Distinction, English Speaking Union
Booklist – Starred Review
Selected by New York Times Book Review – Top 100 books of 2009
Selected by San Francisco Gate – Top 100 books of 2009 

Advance Praise for Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original:

“Robin Kelley’s new biography Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times of an American Original is a breath of fresh air among the biographies of our legendary jazz musicians. This book is thorough, detailed and written with a true affinity for Monk’s humaneness and creative musical output. It fills in the missing pieces about the growth of the jazz scene in New York through the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, detailing each step of TSM’s development – who passed through his bands, what gigs he played and what happened on those scenes. It’s an invaluable and close look at the center of the world’s most important creative musical developments in these decades: New York City.”

—Chick Corea

“Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times of an American Original is one of the most anticipated books in jazz scholarship, and well worth the wait. Robin D. G. Kelley represents one of this generation’s most important voices equipped with the knowledge, passion and respect for both jazz and jazz musicians required to interpret the many details and nuances of Thelonious Monk’s life. This compelling book will both challenge old assumptions and inspire new assessments of the life and legacy one of the world’s greatest musicians.”

—Geri Allen, pianist/composer, Associate Professor of Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation, University Of Michigan

“Powerful, enraging and enduring. . . . In Robin Kelley’s finely grained and surely definitive life-and-times study, Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times of an American Original, has found an original biographer.”

—David Levering Lewis, biographer of W.E.B. Du Bois and Pulitzer Prize winner

“An honest and eloquent treatment of one of our most important artists, Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times of an American Original is a stunning tour de force! It is the most comprehensive treatment of Monk’s life to date. Furthermore, in Monk’s story, Kelley has found the perfect medium to shed light on a nation’s, and a people’s, history and persistent quest for freedom. In so doing he has given us a book that is as bold, brilliant and beautiful as Monk and his music.”

—Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

Reviews

"Robin D.G. Kelley. . . comes closer than anyone ever has in attempting to find out exactly who Monk was. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is a massive and impressive undertaking. . . .  Thoroughly researched, meticulously footnoted, and beautifully crafted, “Thelonious Monk’’ presents the most complete, most revealing portrait ever assembled of the man known as the high priest of bebop."

–Steve Greenlee, Boston Globe

Robin D. G. Kelley, in his extraordinary and heroically detailed new biography, “Thelonious Monk,” makes a large point time and time again that Monk was no primitive, as so many have characterized him. . . . .  I doubt there will be a biography anytime soon that is as textured, thorough and knowing as Kelley’s. The “genius of modern music” has gotten the passionate, and compassionate, advocate he deserves.

–August Kleinzahler, New York Times Book Review

This first full-dress biography of Thelonious Sphere Monk, legendary jazz pianist, prolific and vastly influential composer, and one of the creators, in the 1940s (along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie), of the revolutionary new music called bebop, is nothing short of a landmark in jazz literature. . . .  Kelley brings Monk alive for those who have heard and loved his music for generations. “Jazz is my adventure,” Monk said. “I’m after new chords . . . how to use notes differently.” Kelley gives us that adventure in the epic scope it deserves.

— Bill Ott, Booklist (starred review)

"A wealth of historical context is richly studded with details of Monk’s family background and the broader world in which he lived and worked. . . .  Kelley presents the clearest biographical picture yet of a man who was certainly a genius and may have been eccentric, but who was also both more complex and more a product of his times than those descriptors indicate."

–Library Journal

"Kelley’s understanding of Monk is multilayered, markedly different from the cracked-brain genius he was often marketed as. His sometimes erratic behavior is attributed to undiagnosed bipolar disorder, while his long relationship with wealthy baroness and benefactor Pannonica de Koenigswarter is once and for all revealed to be platonic. If every icon deserves at least one definitive bio, it’s official: Monk now has his."

–K. Leander Williams, Time Out Magazine

"This exhaustively researched work will undoubtedly now remain the definitive work on Monk, a rebel with a cause. Listen to virtually any of the recordings he left, and it should become beautifully clear what that cause was: timeless music."

–Steve Heilig, San Francisco Chronicle

Miles Davis made more money. Duke Ellington was more prolific. Charlie Parker was more revered. But no one had a more profound impact on modern jazz than Thelonious Monk. The legendary pianist/composer with the strange hats and even stranger moniker (his given name) has finally become the subject of the kind of meticulously researched biography that lesser lights were afforded long ago. The enigmatic Monk is a tough nut to crack, to be sure, but what fascinating and delicious rewards await inside Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D.G. Kelley’s illuminating biography. . . .

This affectionate biography fills in the fascinating and heart-wrenching backstory of an artist the world has always longed to know better.

–John Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

http://www.monkbook.com/about/

The Author

Robin D. G. Kelley never met Thelonious Monk, but he grew up with his music. Born in 1962, he spent his formative years in Harlem in a household and a city saturated with modern jazz. As a child he took a few trumpet lessons with the legendary Jimmy Owens, played French horn in junior high school, and picked up piano during his teen years in California. In 1987, Kelley earned his PhD in History from UCLA and focused his work on social movements, politics and culture—although music remained his passion.

During his tenure on the faculties of Emory University, the University of Michigan, New York University, and Columbia University, Kelley’s scholarly interests shifted increasingly toward music. He has written widely on jazz, hip hop, electronic music, musicians’ unions and technological displacement, and social and political movements more broadly.

Before becoming the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, Robin D. G. Kelley served on the faculty at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, where he held the first Louis Armstrong Chair in Jazz Studies. Besides Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Kelley has authored several prize-winning books, including Africa Speaks, American Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard University Press, 2012); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (The Free Press, 1994); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of 1998 by the Village Voice; Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century, written collaboratively with Dana Frank and Howard Zinn (Beacon 2001); and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002). He also edited (with Earl Lewis), To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2000), a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and a History Book Club Selection. Kelley also co-edited (with Sidney J. Lemelle) Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora(Verso, 1994). He is currently completing a general survey of African American history co-authored with Tera Hunter  to be published by Norton.

Kelley’s essays have appeared in several anthologies and journals, including The Nation, Monthly Review, The Voice Literary Supplement, New York Times (Arts and Leisure), New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Color Lines, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, Lenox Avenue, African Studies Review, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, One World, Social Text, Metropolis, American Visions, Boston Review, Fashion Theory, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, New Labor Forum, Souls, Metropolis, and frieze: contemporary art and culture, to name a few.

http://www.openskyjazz.com/2009/11/what-amiri-baraka-taught-me-about-thelonious-monk/

What Amiri Baraka taught me about Thelonious Monk
Posted on November 17, 2009 by The Independent Ear
 
Robin D.G. Kelley, author of the exhaustively-researched and superb new Thelonious Monk biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original (Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster), contributed the following piece to the recent 75th birthday commemoration for Amiri Baraka.  He granted re-print permission to The Independent Ear.  Read Robin’s contribution to our ongoing dialogue between African American music writers Ain’t But a Few of Us by clicking on the month of October.   

Author & USC Professor Robin D.G. Kelley                

"Monk was my main man."

            — Amiri Baraka

    I just spent the past fourteen years of my life researching and writing a biography of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk, and over thirty years attempting to play his music.  My obsession with Monk can be traced back to many things and many people, but paramount among them is Amiri Baraka.  Let me explain.

    My path to "jazz" began like so many others of my generation who came of age in the late 1970s — with the funky commercial fusions of Grover Washington, Jr., Bob James, Patrice Rushen, Earl Klugh, Ronnie Laws, through Stanley Clarke and Chick Corea.  But inexplicably, at the tender age of seventeen or eighteen I took a giant leap directly into the so-called "avant-garde", or the New Thing.  By 1980, the New Thing wasn’t so new (and as Baraka and others have shown us, it wasn’t so new in the 1960s), but the music appealed to my rebellious attitude, my faux sense of sophistication, and to the way I heard the piano.  As a young neophyte piano player and sometimes bassist, my heroes became Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, late ‘Trane, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, those cats.  I knew almost nothing about bebop, nor could I name anyone in Ellington’s orchestra except for Duke.  I just thought free jazz was the beginning and end of all "real" music.  My stepfather introduced me to Charlie Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, but I wasn’t yet ready to fully appreciate bebop.  Then in one of my many excursions to "Acres and Acres of Books" in Long Beach, California, I picked up two used paperbacks by one LeRoi Jones: Blues People and Black Music.

    I dove into Black Music first.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered a thoughtful piece on Monk in a book that I understood then to be a collection of essays primarily about the "New Thing."  Don’t get me wrong; I dug Monk from the first listen.  I had heard an LP recorded live at the Five Spot Cafe with Monk and tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin.  I wore it out, especially their rendition of Monk’s "Evidence".  But Monk wasn’t part of the jazz avant-garde.  He was already an old man when Ornette Coleman made his debut, or so I thought.  Baraka’s Black Music corrected me, schooling me on the roots and branches of free jazz.  Between his piece on "Recent Monk," his brilliant treatise, "The Changing Same (R&B and the New Black Music)," and several other pieces on white critics and the jazz avant-garde, I began to hear Monk and "free jazz" quite differently.  It was Baraka who dubbed the jazz avant-garde the "New Black Music," insisting that it emerged directly out of a Black tradition, bebop, as opposed to the Third Stream experiements of Gunther Schuller, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Tristano.  While Black musicians might have milked Western classical traditions for definitions and solutions to the "engineering" problems of contemporary jazz, Europe is not the source.  "[J]azz and blues," he writes, "are Western musics; products of an Afro-American culture."

    Of the few hundred times I listened to Monk, Johnny Griffin, drummer Roy Haynes, and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik tear the roof off the Five Spot, I probably heard Baraka, shouting his approval and urging them on from his table near the bandstand.  It was August of 1958 and Baraka (when he was still LeRoi Jones) had been an East Village resident for the past year.  He became a Five Spot regular when Coltrane was with Monk in the summer and fall of 1957.  His constant presence gave him unique insights into Monk’s music and the challenges it created for the musicians who played with him.  Indeed, Baraka was one of the few critics to admit that "opening night [Coltrane] was struggling with all the tunes."  Baraka just didn’t come to dig the music, he studied Monk.

    In fact, he was arguably the first American critic, along with Martin Williams, to really understand what Monk was doing and why a new generation of self-described avant-garde musicians was drawn to Monk’s music and his ideas.  By the time Baraka entered the fray, most critics had either dismissed Monk for having no technique or formal training as a pianist, or they praised him for his eccentricity and inventiveness precisely for his lack of technique or formal training.  For Baraka, the whole issue of Monk’s technique was nonsense:  "I want to explain technical so as not to be confused with people who think that Thelonious Monk is ‘a fine pianist, but limited technically.’  But by technical, I mean more specifically being able to use what important ideas are contained in the residue of history or in the now-swell of living.  For instance, to be able to double time Liszt piano pieces might help one become a musician, but it will not make a man aware of the fact that Monk was a greater composer than Liszt.  And it is the consciousness, on whatever level, of facts, ideas, etc., like this that are the most important parts of technique."

    While Baraka’s fellow Beat generation writers embraced Monk because they heard spontaneous, instinctual feeling and emotion as opposed to intellect, Baraka saw no such opposition; he was careful not to divorce consciousness and intellect from emotion.  He writes, "The roots, blues and bop, are emotion.  The technique, the ideas, the way of handling the emotion.  And this does not leave out the consideration that certainly there is pure intellect that can come out of the emotional experience and the rawest emotions that can proceed from the ideal apprehension of any hypothesis."  Like his insights about Monk’s technique, the point underscored Baraka’s general claim that bebop was roots music, no matter how deep the imperative for experimentation, because it carries deep emotions, historical and personal.  The music of the Blues People.

    And if Thelonious Monk was anything, he was Blues People.  Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the grandson of enslaved Africans, delivered by a midwife who was thirteen when Emancipation Day came, Monk was raised by parents who grew up picking cotton and survived on odd jobs and cleaning white folks’ homes.  His mother brought Thelonious and his two siblings to New York in search of a better life, and while they enjoyed more opportunities the Monks settled in the poor, predominantly black neighborhood of San Juan Hill (West 63rd Street, Manhattan).  Thelonious grew up listening to the blues, jazz, the rhythms of calypso and merengue, hymns and gospel music (he spent two years traveling through the Midwest with an evangelist).  His mother Barbara, scrubbed floors to pay for his classical piano lessons, and Monk continued his studies under the tutelage of the great Harlem stride pianists of the day.  Monk told pianist Billy Taylor "that Willie "The Lion’ and those guys that had shown him respect had… ’empowered’ him… to do his own thing.  That he could do it and that his thing is worth doing.  It doesn’t sound like Tatum.  It doesn’t sound like Willie ‘The Lion’.  It doesn’t sound like anybody but Monk and this is what he wanted to do.  He had the confidence.  The way that he does those things is the way he wanted to do them."

    Willie ‘The Lion’ never mentions Thelonious in his memoirs, but he described the all-night cutting sessions which sharpened Monk’s piano skills:  "Sometimes we got carving battles going that would last for four or five hours.  Here’s how these bashes worked: the Lion would pound the keys for a mess of choruses and then shout to the next in line, ‘Well, all right, take it from there,’ and each tickler would take his turn, trying to improve on a melody…  We would embroider the melodies with our own original ideas and try to develop patterns that had more originality than those played before us.  Sometimes it was just a question as to who could think up the most patterns within a given tune.  It was pure improvisation."  A later generation of bebop pianists would often be accused of one-handedness; their right hands flew along with melodies and improvisations, while their "weak" left hands just plunked chords.  A weak left hand was one of Smith’s pet peeves among the younger bebop piano players.  "Today the big problem is no one wants  to work their left hand — modern jazz is full of single-handed piano players.  It takes long hours of practice and concentration to perfect a good bass moving with the left hand and it seems as though the younger cats have figured they can reach their destination without paying their dues."

    Teddy Wilson, though only five years older than Monk but considered a master tickler of the swing generation, had nothing but praise for Thelonious’s piano playing.  "Thelonious Monk knew my playing very well, as well as that of Tatum, [Earl] Hines, and [Fats] Waller.  He was exceedingly well-grounded in the piano players who preceded him, adding his own originality to a very sound foundation."  Indeed, it was this very foundation that exposed him to techniques and aesthetic principles that would become essential qualities of his own music.  He heard players "bend" nots on the piano, or turn the beat around (the bass note on the one and three might be reversed to two and four, either accidentally or deliberately), or create dissonant harmonies with "splattered notes" and chord clusters.  He heard things in those parlor rooms and basement joints that, to modern ears, sounded avant-garde.  They loved to disorient listeners, to displace the rhythm by playing in front or behind the beat, to produce surprising sounds that can throw listeners momentarily off track.  Monk embraced these elements in his own playing and exaggerated them.

    Finally, Baraka was one of the first critics to predict that Monk’s long awaited success in the early 1960s might negatively impact his music.  Indeed, this was the point of his essay, "Recent Monk."  Thelonious’s fan base had expanded considerably after he signed with Columbia Records, made a couple of international tours, and appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1964.  But Baraka noted that Monk’s quartet, like so many successful groups, began to fall into a routine that sometimes dulled the band’s sense of adventure.  Baraka warned, "once [an artist] had made it safely to the ‘top,’ [he] either stopped putting out or began to imitate himself so dreadfully that early records began to have more value than new records or in-person appearances…  So Monk, someone might think taking a quick glance, has really been set up for something bad to happen to his playing."  To some degree, Baraka thought this was already happening and he placed much of the blame on his sidemen.  Of course, Monk hired great musicians during this period — Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), bassists Butch Warren and Larry Gales, and drummers Frankie Dunlap and Ben Riley.  But the repertoire remained pretty much the same, and the fire slowly dissipated.  Monk himself continued to play remarkably, but there was an element of predictability that overrode all the amazing things he was doing.  "{S}ometimes," Baraka lamented, "one wishes Monk’s group wasn’t so polished and impeccable, and that he had some musicians with him who would be willing to extend themselves a little further, dig a little deeper into the music and get out there somewhere near where Monk is, and where his compositions always point to."
 
Baraka never gave up on Monk, and while I can’t prove it I suspect Monk’s music continues to have a strong philosophical and aesthetic influence on both his literary and political work.  But more than anything, I will always be grateful to Baraka for helping me discover Monk, for revealing that Monk’s rootedness in this history, in family, in tradition explains why his music, as modern as it is, can sound like it’s a century old.  It explains why he always remained a stride pianist; why his repertoire was peppered with sacred classics like "Blessed Assurance" and "We’ll Understand it Better, By and By"; and why the careful listeners can hear in Monk’s whole-tone runs, forearm clusters, unusual tempos and spaces, shouts, field hollers, the rhythm of a slow moving train, rent parties, mourners, children playing stickball and marbles, and the Good Humor or Mr. Softee truck on a summer evening.

    Like most scholars and other voyeurs, we are always listening for, and looking at, art for personal tragedy rather than collective memory, collective histories.  Amiri Baraka understood the fallacy of this approach.   Perhaps this is why he writes in the poem "Funk Lore" (one of several associated with Monk):

                    That’s why we are the blues

                                Ourselves

                                That’s why we

                                 Are the

                                 Actual

                                 song

It should be noted that the source of the various passages from Baraka’s writings on Monk, as well as the interview segments and book passages Mr. Kelley quotes in this appreciation of Amiri Baraka are meticulously footnoted — as they are in Kelley’s exhaustively-researched book.  For the sake of webzine brevity we elected not to include Robin’s footnotes and source materials… and also to urge you to run out and purchase your copy of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original… and do that with a quickness!

Referencing this special book, here’s a passage on Ellington’s sense of Thelonious (chapter 10, p. 138) during a time when Monk and his music were widely misunderstood, or dismissed as some sort of hopeless eccentric by musicians, critics, and the listening public:

"During the summer of 1948, while Duke Ellington’s band was traveling by train in the southern coast of England, trumpter Ray Nance decided to pass the time away by listening to records on a little portable phonography he had picked up.  "I put on one of my Thelonious Monk records.  Duke was passing by in the corridor, and he stopped and asked ‘Who’s that playing?’  I told him.  ‘Sounds like he’s stealing some of my stuff,’ he said.  So he sat down and listened to my records, and he was very interested.  He understood what Monk was doing."
 

Articles/Interviews  

Robin D. G. Kelley on Monk — Interviews

 

Monk, Minus the Myth — All Things Considered, NPR
Radio Open Source Interview: Robin Kelley’s Transcendental Thelonious Monk
Tavis Smiley Show
Jazz and Justice: Freemix Radio
Fresh Air with Terri Gross
On Point with Tom Ashbrook, NPR
Jazz Police with Maxwell Chandler
All About Jazz with Victor L. Schermer
Psychology Today
Jerry Jazz Musician
Interview by Sascha Feinstein for Brilliant Corners

Articles

New York Times (Arts and Leisure), October 17, 2009
Publishers Weekly, September 7, 2009
The Nation, December 22, 2009.
Guardian.co.uk, June 19, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 18, 2010.

Links  

Order through Amazon Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

Essential  Thelonious Monk websites:

The Official Thelonious Monk Website
Jacques Ponzio’s “’Round About Monk” Website
Howard Mansfield’s Thelonious Monk Website
The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
Also, see  Robin D. G. Kelley’s Facebook Fan Page

http://www.monkzone.com/biographyHTML.htm

Thelonious Sphere Monk

With the arrival of Thelonious Sphere Monk, modern music—let alone modern culture--simply hasn’t been the same. Recognized as one of the most inventive pianists of any musical genre, Monk achieved a startlingly original sound that even his most devoted followers have been unable to successfully imitate. His musical vision was both ahead of its time and deeply rooted in tradition, spanning the entire history of the music from the “stride” masters of James P. Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith to the tonal freedom and kinetics of the “avant garde.” And he shares with Edward “Duke” Ellington the distinction of being one of the century’s greatest American composers. At the same time, his commitment to originality in all aspects of life—in fashion, in his creative use of language and economy of words, in his biting humor, even in the way he danced away from the piano—has led fans and detractors alike to call him “eccentric,” “mad” or even “taciturn.” Consequently, Monk has become perhaps the most talked about and least understood artist in the history of jazz.

Born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious was only four when his mother and his two siblings, Marion and Thomas, moved to New York City. Unlike other Southern migrants who headed straight to Harlem, the Monks settled on West 63rd Street in the “San Juan Hill” neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family three years later, but health considerations forced him to return to North Carolina. During his stay, however, he often played the harmonica, ‘Jew’s harp,” and piano—all of which probably influenced his son’s unyielding musical interests. Young Monk turned out to be a musical prodigy in addition to a good student and a fine athlete. He studied the trumpet briefly but began exploring the piano at age nine. He was about nine when Marion’s piano teacher took Thelonious on as a student. By his early teens, he was playing rent parties, sitting in on organ and piano at a local Baptist church, and was reputed to have won several “amateur hour” competitions at the Apollo Theater.

Admitted to Peter Stuyvesant, one of the city’s best high schools, Monk dropped out at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music and around 1935 took a job as a pianist for a traveling evangelist and faith healer. Returning after two years, he formed his own quartet and played local bars and small clubs until the spring of 1941, when drummer Kenny Clarke hired him as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem.

Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm—notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell. Monk’s harmonic innovations proved fundamental to the development of modern jazz in this period. Anointed by some critics as the “High Priest of Bebop,” several of his compositions (“52nd Street Theme,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy” [co-written with Kenny Clarke and originally titled “Fly Right” and then “Iambic Pentameter”], “I Mean You”) were favorites among his contemporaries.

Yet, as much as Monk helped usher in the bebop revolution, he also charted a new course for modern music few were willing to follow. Whereas most pianists of the bebop era played sparse chords in the left hand and emphasized fast, even eighth and sixteenth notes in the right hand, Monk combined an active right hand with an equally active left hand, fusing stride and angular rhythms that utilized the entire keyboard. And in an era when fast, dense, virtuosic solos were the order of the day, Monk was famous for his use of space and silence. In addition to his unique phrasing and economy of notes, Monk would “lay out” pretty regularly, enabling his sidemen to experiment free of the piano’s fixed pitches. As a composer, Monk was less interested in writing new melodic lines over popular chord progressions than in creating a whole new architecture for his music, one in which harmony and rhythm melded seamlessly with the melody. “Everything I play is different,” Monk once explained, “different melody, different harmony, different structure. Each piece is different from the other. . . . [W]hen the song tells a story, when it gets a certain sound, then it’s through . . . completed.”

Despite his contribution to the early development of modern jazz, Monk remained fairly marginal during the 1940s and early 1950s. Besides occasional gigs with bands led by Kenny Clarke, Lucky Millinder, Kermit Scott, and Skippy Williams, in 1944 tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was the first to hire Monk for a lengthy engagement and the first to record with him. Most critics and many musicians were initially hostile to Monk’s sound. Blue Note, then a small record label, was the first to sign him to a contract. Thus, by the time he went into the studio to lead his first recording session in 1947, he was already thirty years old and a veteran of the jazz scene for nearly half of his life. But he knew the scene and during the initial two years with Blue Note had hired musicians whom he believed could deliver. Most were not big names at the time but they proved to be outstanding musicians, including trumpeters Idrees Sulieman and George Taitt; twenty-two year-old Sahib Shihab and seventeen-year-old Danny Quebec West on alto saxophones; Billy Smith on tenor; and bassists Gene Ramey and John Simmons. On some recordings Monk employed veteran Count Basie drummer Rossiere “Shadow” Wilson; on others, the drum seat was held by well-known bopper Art Blakey. His last Blue Note session as a leader in 1952 finds Monk surrounded by an all-star band, including Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Lou Donaldson (alto), “Lucky” Thompson (tenor), Nelson Boyd (bass), and Max Roach (drums). In the end, although all of Monk’s Blue Note sides are hailed today as some of his greatest recordings, at the time of their release in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they proved to be a commercial failure.

Harsh, ill-informed criticism limited Monk’s opportunities to work—opportunities he desperately needed especially after his marriage to Nellie Smith in 1947, and the birth of his son, Thelonious, Jr., in 1949. Monk found work where he could, but he never compromised his musical vision. His already precarious financial situation took a turn for the worse in August of 1951, when he was falsely arrested for narcotics possession, essentially taking the rap for his friend Bud Powell. Deprived of his cabaret card—a police-issued “license” without which jazz musicians could not perform in New York clubs—Monk was denied gigs in his home town for the next six years. Nevertheless, he played neighborhood clubs in Brooklyn—most notably, Tony’s Club Grandean, sporadic concerts, took out-of-town gigs, composed new music, and made several trio and ensemble records under the Prestige Label (1952-1954), which included memorable performances with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and Milt Jackson. In the fall of1953, he celebrated the birth of his daughter Barbara, and the following summer he crossed the Atlantic for the first time to play the Paris Jazz Festival. During his stay, he recorded his first solo album for Vogue. These recordings would begin to establish Monk as one of the century’s most imaginative solo pianists.

In 1955, Monk signed with a new label, Riverside, and recorded several outstanding LP’s which garnered critical attention, notably Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s Music and his second solo album, Thelonious Monk Alone. In 1957, with the help of his friend and sometime patron, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, he had finally gotten his cabaret card restored and enjoyed a very long and successful engagement at the Five Spot Café with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware and then Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. From that point on, his career began to soar; his collaborations with Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, and arranger Hall Overton, among others, were lauded by critics and studied by conservatory students. Monk even led a successful big band at Town Hall in 1959. It was as if jazz audiences had finally caught up to Monk’s music.

By 1961, Monk had established a more or less permanent quartet consisting of Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, John Ore (later Butch Warren and then Larry Gales) on bass, and Frankie Dunlop (later Ben Riley) on drums. He performed with his own big band at Lincoln Center (1963), and at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the quartet toured Europe in 1961 and Japan in 1963. In 1962, Monk had also signed with Columbia records, one of the biggest labels in the world, and in February of 1964 he became the third jazz musician in history to grace the cover of Time Magazine.

However, with fame came the media’s growing fascination with Monk’s alleged eccentricities. Stories of his behavior on and off the bandstand often overshadowed serious commentary about his music. The media helped invent the mythical Monk—the reclusive, naïve, idiot savant whose musical ideas were supposed to be entirely intuitive rather than the product of intensive study, knowledge and practice. Indeed, his reputation as a recluse (Time called him the "loneliest Monk") reveals just how much Monk had been misunderstood. As his former sideman, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, explained, Monk was somewhat of a homebody: "If Monk isn't working he isn't on the scene. Monk stays home. He goes away and rests." Unlike the popular stereotypes of the jazz musician, Monk was devoted to his family. He appeared at family events, played birthday parties, and wrote playfully complex songs for his children: "Little Rootie Tootie" for his son, "Boo Boo's Birthday" and “Green Chimneys” for his daughter, and a Christmas song titled “A Merrier Christmas.” The fact is, the Monk family held together despite long stretches without work, severe money shortages, sustained attacks by critics, grueling road trips, bouts with illness, and the loss of close friends.

During the 1960s, Monk scored notable successes with albums such as Criss Cross, Monk’s Dream, It’s Monk Time, Straight No Chaser, and Underground. But as Columbia/CBS records pursued a younger, rock-oriented audience, Monk and other jazz musicians ceased to be a priority for the label. Monk’s final recording with Columbia was a big band session with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra in November of 1968, which turned out to be both an artistic and commercial failure. Columbia’s disinterest and Monk’s deteriorating health kept the pianist out of the studio. In January of 1970, Charlie Rouse left the band, and two years later Columbia quietly dropped Monk from its roster. For the next few years, Monk accepted fewer engagements and recorded even less. His quartet featured saxophonists Pat Patrick and Paul Jeffrey, and his son Thelonious, Jr., took over on drums in 1971. That same year through 1972, Monk toured widely with the "Giants of Jazz," a kind of bop revival group consisting of Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey, and made his final public appearance in July of 1976. Physical illness, fatigue, and perhaps sheer creative exhaustion convinced Monk to give up playing altogether. On February 5, 1982, he suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness; twelve days later, on February 17th, he died.

Today Thelonious Monk is widely accepted as a genuine master of American music. His compositions constitute the core of jazz repertory and are performed by artists from many different genres. He is the subject of award winning documentaries, biographies and scholarly studies, prime time television tributes, and he even has an Institute created in his name. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was created to promote jazz education and to train and encourage new generations of musicians. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who was always willing to share his musical knowledge with others but expected originality in return.

Robin D. G. Kelley Ph.D.

Robin D. G. Kelley, a Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies and Jazz Studies at Columbia University, has published several books on African American culture and politics. His most recent book is Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002). His articles on music have appeared in the New York Times, Black Music Research Journal, The Nation, Lenox Avenue, Rolling Stone, American Visions, among others. He is currently completing two books: Thelonious: A Life (The Free Press, forthcoming 2009), and Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2006)

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http://www.monkbook.com/sessionography/

Sessionography: 

Studio and Live Recordings, 1941 – 1976

The following is not a complete discography.  Rather, it is a listing of all known recording sessions, broadcasts, and live recordings—authorized and unauthorized, released and unreleased.  In many cases, these recordings have been released on several different discs, formats, and labels and their subsidiaries.  For a nearly complete listing of the various releases, please see Chris Sheridan’s excellent Brilliant Corners: A Bio-Discography of Thelonious Monk (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2001).   I have made an effort to identify the first release and a more recent and accessible CD release.

1941

1944 – 1946

1947 – 1951

1952 – 1954

1955 – 1957

1958 – 1962

1963 – 1965

1966 – 1969

1970 – 1975

http://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2010/02/interview-with-robin-kelley-on.html

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Interview with Historian and Scholar Robin D. G. Kelley On Thelonious Monk, Jazz History, and the Cultural Politics of American Art

Left to Right: Thelonious Monk (in beret, ascot, and sunglasses), Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge, and Teddy Hill in front of the legendary Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, NY 1947--Photograph by William Gottlieb

Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin Kelley at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, November 3, 2009
(photo by Chuleenan)

All,

The following interview with Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley was conducted by myself for The Panopticon Review and is a wide ranging discussion of Dr. Kelley's extraordinary and critically acclaimed new book Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original (New Press, 2009). Dr. Kelley is currently Professor of History and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC). He is a distinguished scholar and activist and the author of many books including Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (with Earl Lewis); and, most recently, Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora, University of Texas Press, 2009 (Edited by Franklin Rosemont and Robin D.G. Kelley).

Kofi

PR: Your text focuses a great deal of attention on the aesthetic and social relationship between the communal and collaborative ethos governing Monk's creative use, critical examination, and personal interpretation and revision of the African American 'Jazz' tradition in his work as both improvisor and composer. What is truly distinctive and idiosyncratic about Monk's singular approach to the innovative musics of the 1930s and '40s (i.e. 'Swing' and 'Bebop') and his own subsequent evolution as an independent musical stylist and innovator? Why in your view is Monk such an important composer of modern American music generally in the 1945-1965 period and what specific role does Monk's improvisational skills play in this development?

ROBIN: This is a very difficult question and I'm not sure I can do justice to it without writing a small book. As composer, no one was writing melodic lines like Monk. He often broke with the standard 16 and 32 bar song form and created a new metric and harmonic architecture for his music: “Introspection,” for example, has 36 bars and a wandering harmonic movement chock full of whole tone harmony, which very few jazz composers were building on in those days. Or take a song like “Brilliant Corners,” with its bizarre seven bar bridge, shifting tempos, melody with huge intervallic leaps. Or “Boo Boo’s Birthday,” a simple, swinging melody written in 20 bars. And of course, there is no song like “’Round Midnight,” with its insistent descending chromatic harmony, that haunting, startling melody, the sheer beauty derived from a minor tonality and rich dissonance. He also wrote many difficult songs, twisting, swift melodies that gave even the best musicians a run for their money: “ Gallop’s Gallop,” “Trinkle Tinkle,” “Work,” “Skippy.” These tunes proved so difficult, in fact, that they were often recorded once or twice and then dropped entirely.

Yet for all of Monk’s modernism, there was something very old fashioned about his playing. Indeed, I like to think of Monk as “Janus faced,” looking backward and forward simultaneously. He comes out of stride piano, his musical fathers being James P. Johnson, Willie “the Lion” Smith, Fats Waller, etc., and he appropriated many of the “tricks” these great pianists had up their sleeves—the ability to bend notes, suspend time, turn the beat around deliberately, among other things. I think Monk simply exaggerated some of these old tricks and rather than smooth out the jagged edges, like an Art Tatum, he lived in the jagged regions of the piano.

In a word, Monk occupied a category unto himself. Despite efforts to place him squarely within the “bebop school” (whatever that might be), unlike the beboppers, Monk was interested in slower tempos; in fusing older jazz ideas of improvising on the melody rather than chords; creating new architecture rather than run alternate changes over tin pan alley song form; interested more in making unique melodic statements than demonstrating virtuosity.

PR: In your examination of Monk's personal background as an artist and individual struggling with the limitations and problems imposed by the racial/social dynamics of the cultural, economic, and political doctrines of white supremacy as well as the psychological and emotional challenges of his bipolar disorder, you go to great pains to show how Monk personally succeeded and failed to address the complexities and tensions of these forces in his life. To what degree do you think Monk's music was affected either positively or negatively by these forces, and how did these factors impact his relations with his family and fellow artists and creative colleagues?

ROBIN: It is hard to speculate in hindsight because Monk left behind a body of work that many now consider genius. Some scholars have argued that manic depression, specifically the swings from highs to lows and back again, enhanced artistic vision and they cite as evidence the large number of artists who suffered from bipolar disorder. And then there is the argument that suffering and struggle are sources of great art—hence the African American musical tradition. I’m skeptical of both assertions because I think every artist must be understood in her or his specific context. For me, racism negatively affected Monk’s life and work by denying him opportunities to write, perform, and make a decent living (early on). On the other hand, the black community he grew up in, the efforts of his mother to encourage his playing, the kind of education he received – formal and informal – profoundly shaped both his music and his creative confidence to make the music he heard. So in this case, race, place and class isn’t a lack but an asset.

On the question of Monk’s mental illness, I come down on the side that it did not enhance or enrich his work or give him unique vision he would not have had otherwise. I think he still would have been “Monk” and, in fact, may have been a more prolific composer. However, I do think the kind of meds and medical treatment he received mattered more than the actual disease. Thorazine made his fingers stiff and it was often a struggle for him just to play. When he finally received lithium treatments, evidence suggests it deadened his creative drive (though it might have already diminished) and contributed to his decision to stop playing, though it successfully stabilized him. Most importantly, his approach to playing and composition were products of unceasing study and practice. He had a way of playing and writing that was labored over and I see no evidence that his manic phases contributed.

PR: In your book you go to great lengths to critically detail and expose the often oppressive and clearly exploitive working conditions and brutally capitalist political economy that black artists were forced to work in during the 20th century. How important, even central, do you think the intrusive role of agents, promoters, club owners, recording companies, and critics not only played in Monk' career but his specific generation of black musicians and composers in the 1940-1970 period?

ROBIN: One of the reasons I “followed the money,” if you will, had to do with the fact that Monk’s experience was typical of most musicians, not exceptional. Following his life exposes the music industry—especially the jazz industry—for what it was: a system of artistic production founded on exploitation. It is a system that crosses all generations of the 20th century and did not change much after so-called jazz migrated from popular culture to “high art.” But what I also document and think is equally important is the role musicians themselves played in trying to take control of their “business,” from Gigi Gryce’s efforts and musician-owned publishing, to the avant-garde’s attempt to escape the jazz club in favor of the community center, church basements, outdoor neighborhood venues. Monk wasn’t central to these movements but he was involved and his life provides a window into the constant struggle of musicians to wrestle over the means of distribution. Finally, I tried my best not to paint all musicians and all managers/owners/promoters/producers in stark terms. There were folks in the industry who believed in the music, sacrificed financially for the sake of art or in order to provide artists with more equitable terms, and the divisions between exploiter and exploited did not always cut across racial lines. If anything, I tried to provide a more complicated portrait of the jazz industry that, like capitalism itself, is wrought with contradiction and complexity and reveals not only the holes in this system but the role of human agency.

PR: What specific theoretical and scholarly implications and challenges do you think your biography of Monk holds for the future of historiography of 20th century African American artists and culture in general and Jazz musicians in particular? Why do you think your specific analytical and speculative approaches to the major questions of community and family as well as the different responses of various audiences to Monk's music as improvisor and composer is essential to any broader understanding of Monk's life and art?

ROBIN: Many, if not most, critics treat the book as primarily debunking common myths about Monk. While I did do that, even to the point of unearthing the process by which Monk was “invented,” the truth is I was less interested in what Monk was NOT than who he was, the nature of his creative process, how his family, community and the world that shaped his music and world view. To figure this out required different sources as well as a different framework for understanding the life and work of artists. First, I dug deeper into African American sources, especially the press and first-hand accounts from people who may not have been musicians but were connected the communities that shaped Monk. I found out, for example, that when most scholars assumed Monk wasn’t working (in the 1950s), black-owned clubs in the outer boroughs of New York hired him fairly regularly. There are many, many examples of what happens when we shift our purview from mainstream institutions to those that have been marginalized.

I also found that understanding Monk’s whole life—as a father, husband, uncle, brother, community member, school kid, etc.—opens a window into his creative process and says more about who he is as a man. While “context” in most modern biographies often means listing all the big historical events occurring around an artist, I found that for Monk (and most artists probably) it can often mean something seemingly “parochial” and local—his family relationships, what happened on his block, experiences that can only be located by seeing the larger world through his eyes rather than merely seeing the subject in a larger world, if that makes sense? Biographers of jazz musicians, in particular, should adopt similar approaches because it breaks the strange cycle of Birth/Genius/Addiction/Decline which seems to dominate so many books, often accompanied by a limited landscape that shifts easily from club to recording studio to concert hall to back alley. It also means treating these artists as complete (and developing) human beings who think about more than music and act in the world in relation to others.

Finally (and I don’t mean this is all I can say on the question), my book makes a somewhat provocative claim that it was hard even for Monk to “play Monk.” This is where the homemade rehearsal tapes and other unique sources come in. Biographers, in particular, have often took for granted or ignored how artists create, what kind of work it entails. I was fortunate to have access to these wonderful tapes which demonstrate just how much work went into Monk’s distinctive sound. Tied to this, of course, is the painstaking description of Monk’s “education.” Jazz is too often seen as an interior product of spontaneous genius, natural ability, even racially determined ability. My book exposes these claims as flawed conceits and restores to the music to the realm of creative intellectual activity.

PR: What is the larger cultural and social meaning of Monk's personal and creative quest for a truly independent and self sufficient musical identity and expression in the context of the constant pressures for commercial conformity and aesthetic commodification of his work as an artist in mid 20th century America and what does this intellectual , political, and psychological resistance to these pressures and demands on Monk's art and life tell us about both the Jazz tradition that informed and inspired Monk's creativity as a cultural worker and the larger U.S. musical, social, and cultural ethos that shaped the attitudes and values of American artists and audiences during the historical era that Monk participated in and contributed to?

ROBIN: This, too, is a difficult question to answer because I think both Monk and the jazz tradition of which he was a product and producer was always of two (or more) minds when it comes to broader pressures of commodification. On the one hand, he certainly went against the grain in terms of market pressures, dominant aesthetic values, not to mention the attitudes and demands of American audiences. Yes, he was a rebel, a disturber of the sonic peace, but as the context around him shifted—musically, politically, culturally—he ceased to be so disturbing and, in fact, to conservative critics who once thought he was worthless he became one of the last bastions of the “old” style music. On the other hand, neither Monk nor the majority of jazz musicians completely resisted the terms of the market. Monk always said he wanted “a hit.” The move from Harlem to 52nd Street was partly about making some money, getting some exposure, trying to make a living. Commodification of culture and art was a fact of life, and in the eyes of musicians who have few avenues to make a living, that alone wasn’t the problem. The problem was fairness, being heard, and convincing the industry that audiences would appreciate and buy good music without having to dumb down or mimic current trends. So there will be those who read my book who will come away surprised, if not disturbed, that Monk isn’t always resisting the market to travel his own path. Rather, he is CONFOUNDED by the market because in his view, to his ears, he makes music the people love, music that swings and sticks with the melody, music that ought to be a hit. After all, if Coleman Hawkins could record “Body and Soul” as a work of improvisation then why wouldn’t his songs fly off the shelf? But regarding the very last part of your question, let’s keep in mind that the period in which Monk operated in was full of flux and transition. The music changed to rapidly and yet Monk’s own aesthetic vision did not change one iota, even though his improvisations were always fresh and innovative. For me this means two things: 1) As scholars we must always pay attention to the “background noise” because it shapes how generations actually hear music. We can get caught up in the inherent qualities of a particular body of work but to hear it in 1960 rather than 1940 or 1980 can be fundamentally different experiences. 2) We need to do a better job of understanding musicians’ attitudes toward commodification and the cultural marketplace. Terms like cooptation, accommodation, resistance, even complicity, don’t always capture the complexity of these relationships. Following Monk’s path really shook up my own preconceptions and made me appreciate what it meant for black artists to desire “a hit.”

PR: What was the importance of Monk's relationship to his parent, siblings, wife, children, and other relatives as well as local community to his work as artist and citizen? To what degree did his wife Nellie specifically contribute to Monk's ability to function and prosper as a musician and composer in the crucial 1940-1960 period before global fame and critical acclaim began to give Monk a much higher profile publically and in the broader community of 20th century art and artists both here in the United States and in the rest of the world?

ROBIN: The first part of the question I think I answered above. His mother, Barbara Monk, and his wife Nellie, however, deserve special mention because it would have been impossible for Monk to sustain his career without their support. A good portion of the book documents their role and I don’t want to rehearse that here, but I can say that both women sacrificed a great deal to allow Monk to focus on music. He was never compelled to take a waged job, and both women worked and provided valuable income. Barbara, of course, not only left the South for NYC in order to ensure her children would enjoy a good education, but she paid for piano lessons, taught Thelonious hymns and provided a deep spiritual grounding, and encouraged him every step of the way. Nellie took many odd jobs to make ends meet, gave up certain career goals she harbored, and when Monk became ill she traveled with him frequently to care for him. More importantly, she knew the music and knew it well; she eventually became his road manager, business manager, hired and fired musicians, paid sidemen, took care of the taxes, gave advice about the music, and just become completely involved in the work. As I’ve written in the New York Times a few years ago (after Nellie died), I don’t think she was the exception. Indeed, there were many partners/wives, etc. who provided crucial support as well as musical and business knowledge to working musicians, but our biographers have not always done a good job documenting them. Certainly, a limited understanding of the male artist as creative, individual genius has put blinders on the role these women played and my book tries to rectify it. At the same time, I also suggest that Nellie struggled with this work and did not always like it. She had desires and dreams of her own that were sometimes dashed by her husband’s needs. I try to examine this, too.

PR: How did Monk negotiate the technical, spiritual, and expressive challenges of his art in his specific relationships and creative communication with other major, highly independent. and idiosyncratic artists in Jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and John Coltrane etc.? How did this affect or inform how he worked with other important but lesser known musicians and composers like Gigi Gryce, Elmo Hope, Charlie Rouse, and the great Mary Lou Williams? How central was Ms. Williams role in Monk's development and evolution as a musician, improvisor, and composer, and what constituted the important and pivotal link between them as individuals, colleagues, and partners?

ROBIN: I don’t think how he worked with Dizzy, Bird, Miles, Mingus, ‘Trane, etc., was any different than how he worked with Gigi Gryce, Elmo Hope, Rouse or Mary Lou Williams. Each relationship was it’s own unique thing, and those relationships changed over time. With Miles, Monk began as a mentor figure, which ultimately evolved into a very contentious, almost competitive relationship. Monk also mentored Coltrane and Bud Powell, though the same might be said about Gryce and Hope—except that he also saw these “lesser-known” artists as his peers. Thelonious was very consistent in that he treated everyone the same irrespective of their caliber or reputation or how much money they made. He respected you if you did the work and committed to the music and were willing to “make mistakes” or stretch beyond the usual. And, when he was healthy, he was a very good friend – I was especially struck by his friendships with people like Randy Weston, David Amram, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Nichols, among others. And, of course, there was Mary Lou Williams. She constituted one of his longest lasting friendships since they met in Kansas City in 1935. If anything, she was more the mentor than he, though they had mutual respect for one another, exchanged music frequently in the 1940s and early 50s, and even tried their hand at a three-way piano collaboration with Bud Powell. In the book, I discuss some of their most important exchanges, borrowings, etc., notably Monk’s A-section of “Rhythm-a-ning” was appropriated from a few bars of her arrangement of “Walkin’ and Swingin’”; and how part of the melody for “Hackensack” was borrowed from an arrangement of “Lady Be Good” Mary Lou Williams did for Coleman Hawkins; and I talk about Monk’s home recording of Williams’s arrangement of “All God’s Chillun.” But these are just the musical exchanges; there was much more to their relationship and discussions, ranging from religion to style to fundamental questions of how to help struggling musicians. When Mary Lou put on benefits to help her Bel Canto Foundation, Monk was quick to show up and support her work. The feeling was mutual.

PR: What role did the Baroness Pannonica Koenigswarter ("Nica") really play in Monk's life and career as patron, friend, and confidant? How significant was her patronage and friendship to Monk as human being and artist and what was the nature of Pannonica's relationship to Nellie and the rest of Monk's family? How crucial do you think her role was in Monk's life and musical career and did their relationship impact how Monk viewed others outside his immediate family and community in terms of his art?

ROBIN: Nica played a crucial role in support of Monk’s life and work, though I do think it has been exaggerated and overblown in previous accounts. First, she comes into his life in 1954, and not so much as a patron but a friend. To Monk’s children and nieces and nephews, she was more like an eccentric aunt than a fount of financial support (the Monk’s continued to struggle through the 1950s). She did help out, especially when he was sick, incarcerated, or suffered from two severe fires in his apartment. And she provided a very extravagant gift in the form of a car (Buick Special). But she also struggled at times because of her divorce and at least once Monk loaned HER some money. When she decided to pursue her longstanding interest in painting, Monk encouraged her and came to her group show. Similarly, Nellie and Nica were very close. They supported each other and their link was not only Nellie’s husband, whom they both cared about, but the music, an interest in health food and vitamins, art, a fascination with France, the list goes on. My point here, of course, is that contrary to popular myths that Nica and Monk had a romantic relationship, or that he divided his time between Nica and Nellie, the three of them formed a very close bond. Moreover, Nica was well connected in the jazz world. When Monk needed a sideman at the last minute, he sometimes asked her for advice or summoned her to find someone who might fill in. Nica also traveled with Monk, both around the city and out of town sometimes, when Nellie could not. She was very involved in his physical and mental health, especially late in his life. She ended up paying some of his medical expenses and helped him find doctors (though in some cases her choices were problematic, as with Dr. Robert Freymann, her private physician, who administered amphetamines in the guise of ‘vitamin shots.’)

Their relationship became the stuff of gossip columns after Monk, Nica, and Charlie Rouse were arrested in Delaware in October of 1958. Rouse and Nica were charged with possession of narcotics because Nica had a trace amount of marijuana in her purse. Monk, the main victim, was charged with resisting arrest after he was badly beaten by cops. The story is documented in my book, but for now it is important to note that a common myth is that Nica took the “rap” for Monk by accepting the narcotics charge when it was allegedly his weed. The fact is, besides being held at the station along with Rouse and Monk, she never saw jail time. The reefer was seized illegally and the case overturned by the state supreme court. More importantly, while Nica suffered the indignity of the arrest and mistreatment—as they all did—it was Monk who was severely beaten. Afterward he suffered a breakdown and was hospitalized in Long Island.

So it is let’s be clear: Nica was no substitute for Nellie and she did not give up nearly as much.

PR: Could you compare and contrast Monk's reception as an artist in the United States, Europe, and Asia and how aware were the people of Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean of Monk's music and persona during the post WWII era? Did Monk's many global travels affect his outlook on America and in what particular, specific ways? How importantly did Monk view the musical aesthetics and contributions of other cultures throughout the world in terms of both classical and folk/vernacular traditions, and what impact if any did his appreciation and knowledge of these other musics and traditions have on his musical conceptions, tastes, and interests?

ROBIN: Despite the fact that Monk did not travel beyond North America until 1954 (and his first European tour was not until 1961), he had become an international figure in the late 1940s. In 1948, the Romanian surrealist artist, Victor Brauner, did a powerful rendering of Monk titled simply “Thelonious Monk”; the Swiss jazz magazine, Jazz-Revue, published a lengthy and thoughtful analysis of Monk’s entire recorded output in the April 1949. By the 1960s, however, he made several tours of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the European and Japanese press carried several articles about, and interviews with, Monk. He also recorded most of the soundtrack to Roger Vadim’s film Les liaisons dangereuses. His impact on musicians and other artists around the world was significant, even if he did not travel to their respective country. One might cite the Ukrainian born, Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg; or in Japan we might mention pianist Yagi Masao, who in 1960 made the first all-Monk LP outside of the U.S.

While Monk did not travel to either Africa or Latin America (except for a couple of gigs in Mexico), his impact clearly spread there. In the book I write about Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba), the brilliant drummer and composer from Ghana who befriended Monk during his sojourn in the U.S. and wrote one song dedicated to him (“The Talking Drum Looks Ahead”). Or in South Africa, we might talk about Abdullah Ibrahim (another pianist) and alto player Kippie Moeketsi. Monk to these artists in South Africa was both startling and familiar. Ibrahim once wrote: “Kippie would talk to me about Monk before I’d heard of any of his records. I was saying: ‘Monk? What’s this Monk thing?’ And then, man I heard the music and I said ‘aaaaaah! I can dig this . . . so this is Monk!’ Kippie would be screaming about how Monk was playing the same type of sound you could hear in so-called tribal music up in the Northern Transvaal. They (Monk, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, etc.) were able to get into Africa as the source of music and we could get into their ‘American jazz’ and come right back to Africa. It’s a circle, an African circle of sound and spirit.”

Monk’s impact on Latin American pianists is indisputable, though the influence goes both ways. Monk grew up in a community where Afro-Latin rhythms—the clave, rhumba, etc.—were all around him in San Juan Hill (West Manhattan). You can hear these rhythms in Monks’ early tunes such as “Bemsha Swing” and “Bye-ya” and “Monk’s Dream.” At the same time, pianists like Gonzalo Rublcaba (Cuban); Danilo Perez (Panamanian), or other instrumentalists such as Jerry Gonzalez, recorded many Monk tunes because they heard the clave in them. An early example of a Latin American piano player taking up Monk’s challenge was Argentinian pianist Enrique Villegas, who recorded a Tribute to Monk in 1967. (In fact, Villegas had first recorded Monk’s music (“Blue Monk”) with his regular trio –Jorge Lopez Ruiz (bass) and Eduardo Casalla (drums) in 1964.)

But to take up the other part of your question, the best example I have of Monk’s drawing on and absorbing global cultural forms (though this cannot be called vernacular) was his adoption of a Japanese song titled “Kojo no Tsuki,” which roughly translates as “The Moon Over the Desolate Castle.” It was composed in 1901 by Rentaro Taki, one of Japan’s legendary Meiji-era modernist composers. Then a graduate student and teacher at the Tokyo Music School, a gifted young composer who had been selected to further his music studies in Leipzig, Germany, but within months of his arrival he fell ill and died soon after returning to Japan. He was twenty-three-years old. Taki’s premature death and the song’s haunting melody transformed “Kojo no Tsuki” into something of a national treasure, especially after poet Bansui Doi contributed lyrics. When Monk heard it, he was drawn to its minor tonality, the medium tempo, and the harmonic movement--which vaguely resembled “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise.” He felt it swung naturally, and he loved the idea of playing music with which the Japanese could identify.

PR: How important do you think Monk was to the history of American music as instrumentalist and composer and do you think his contributions will survive and stand the test of time during and beyond the present century? Why do you think so in terms of the global histories of music and cultural expression?

ROBIN: I’m so happy you said “American music,” because African American artistic expression is at the core of American culture, as you know. And Monk stands among the very pinnacle of that culture; he is also one of the country’s most important composers—I’d place him up there with Charles Ives, John Cage, Gershwin, T. J. Anderson, Ruth Crawford Seeger, William L. Dawson, William Grant Still, Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland, Scott Joplin, among others. I would also place him among the global pantheon of original 20th century composers, along with Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, A. R. Rahman, Boulez, Milhaud, etc. Above I explain what I think is unique and important about Monk’s compositions. Why they will survive? Because they have become part of jazz’s global lexicon. Everyone and I mean everyone who is bold enough to play this music anywhere in the world must know some Monk. “’Round Midnight,” for example, has become an international standard and it is one of the most recorded songs in the world of improvised music.

PR: What has this intense 14 year experience with Monk's work and life as artist, citizen, and fellow African American taught you about music, history, scholarship, and life? What does it mean to you personally as a human being and historian?

ROBIN: Again, I can write another book just on what I learned from Monk, personally. Let me make just a few observations: First, his story challenges the tired idea of the individual, tortured artist—after all, he has all the elements: struggle, poverty, mental illness (and then the elements that are even more common with black rebellious artist, incarceration, police repression, exploitation). But these things don’t define Monk; it was his Village, one he loved and respected, and paid homage to in his music and actions. He survived and created largely because of this village and his family, for they provided a deep cultural foundation and fount of support. Monk was able to create this wonderful gift not because of tragedy and mental illness and incarceration, but in spite of it.Second, I think there are two things that Monk literally taught me directly about living in the now. One is that you should never be afraid of the truth. Whether or not he offended you, he always told you the truth. Even his manager said that in the whole time they worked together, only once did he catch Monk in a little lie. Otherwise, he was always going to speak truth no matter what the consequences were. More of that would certainly make our lives a lot better. The second thing is that Monk taught me the importance of slowing down. We live in a culture now that is built on sound bites. People don't even want to read a book from cover to cover—they'll go to the index to find out what they want to read about. Because in this computer world, it's Google, it's surfing, fishing for the little things, but not seeing the big picture. And Monk's whole thing was, look, slow down. Learn one bar at a time. Play the whole song. Don't skip the melody to go to the improvisation. Know the song. With Monk, there were no sound bites. Every moment in life was electric, and he made sure that we understood that. And so now, in my own life, in my writing, in my politics, I have to slow down and look at the big picture, and make sure that the whole story is told.

 
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 9:05 PM 

http://jazztimes.com/articles/25443-thelonious-monk-ode-to-a-sphere

JazzTimes
January/February 2010     
by Vijay Iyer

Thelonious Monk: Ode To A Sphere
 
There is immense power and careful logic in the music of Thelonious Sphere Monk. But you might have such a good time listening to it that you might not even notice. That, of course, would be your problem, not his.

Monk was an architect of feeling. His tunes were slick, inhabitable little rooms that warmed the heart with their odd angles and bright colors. Somehow he knew exactly how to make you feel good—and I mean exactly, as if it were medicine, or gastronomy, or massage, or feng shui.

Vijay Iyer

The idea that music that feels good might require craft, discipline and hard work runs contrary to prevailing wisdom about Monk. Many people still harbor a false and uncharitable image of an untutored, unpolished, intuitive savant. But close attention to Monk’s music reveals the result of decades of purposeful experimentation, discovery and refinement.

The groove was paramount: “When you’re swinging, swing some more,” he’d say. For this very reason, his critically maligned Columbia years are actually my favorite; the groove is so deep, anything seems possible. Monk’s sense of time alone was legendary. He could play with or against the beat but his inner pulse was always strong and centered. The complex dialogue between his two hands on the stride-piano selections demonstrates this, as do his microexpressive treatments of standards. And the rhythmic permutations of “Straight, No Chaser” or “Evidence” or “Criss Cross” or even “Jackie-Ing” reveal a mischievous rigor, grounded in a lifetime of polyrhythmic experience.

And you can’t ignore his shocking sonorities, the economy and clarity of his melodies, the specificity and care lavished on every last detail. His was an elemental approach to composition: He worked not with pre-given notions of melody, rhythm and harmony, but with the fundamentals of sound, time and perception.

Everyone knows that Monk composed brilliant, beloved songs, but less noticed is how well Monk could orchestrate and arrange. “Deceptively simple,” goes one accurate description of how shrewdly he would guide your ear. Never resorting to obvious ensemble strategies, he found a surprising variety of timbres and combinations within the small-group format to keep the listener engaged.

Even in a quartet or quintet, he would trick you into hearing a continuous melody from a hocketed composite of multiple instruments. Sometimes he’d flip things around and the horns would comp for the piano. Or he would use a second horn for fleeting, subtle shading of a melody—“so smooth you probably missed it,” to borrow an old Q-Tip lyric.

At the piano, Monk had his favorite sounds—to call them mere “voicings” or “chords” misses the point. Every one is a discovery, a hard-won jewel, found deep in some terrain where no one else was looking. With every sound he took a stand, defying you with its funk, throwing down the gauntlet with each astonishing, pungent invention. You wonder why more people don’t make discoveries like this, until you realize how difficult it is.

These chord-jewels of his were palpable, physical objects. By this I mean that they took advantage of the physics of sound; they were resonant. Sympathetic vibrations could fill in the space that a lesser pianist would stuff with more notes. Spreading out voices in a chord across multiple octaves allows each pitch to resound.

Cecil Taylor once spoke in reverential tones of Monk’s “different combinations of notes in different registers,” as if that quality were somehow the key to it all. And indeed, this is how sound works: Overtones of a low fundamental start out sparsely in the lower octaves, and become gradually denser as you climb up to the high register. Monk displayed intimate knowledge of this physical law, and he put it to the test.

The minor seventh and the flatted fifth, two of Monk’s most often-used extensions, are the piano’s versions of the seventh and eleventh partials of the harmonic series, respectively. (Remember, the ubiquity of the flatted fifth in jazz could arguably be attributed to Monk himself.) He would also combine the minor and major seventh of a chord (a.k.a. the seventh and fifteenth partials), the natural and flat ninths (i.e., the ninth and seventeenth partials) and other “forbidden” combinations that actually sound good and make physical sense.

A close study of Monk’s playing reveals this spectral quality of his chords, this clear perception of higher harmonics in the sound of the piano. In order to activate these higher partials, he had to play with a little more force than the average pianist, to get the instrument ringing and shaking. In this sense harmony and tone were integrated concepts. This is why I call them “sounds” rather than “chords”; they are not theoretical constructs but vibratory experiences—actual, specific sensations—and they feel good.

When Monk played someone else’s music, he would recast it in this sonic language. His versions were the result of painstaking labor. Each harmony was seemingly rebuilt from scratch, chosen with care and worked over, and every ornament, filigree, run and fill carefully considered. And yet the playing was also full of risk. You can’t help but notice the liveness of it, the sense of possibility and discovery, the chances taken and the rewards reaped.

That risk lies somewhere in the dialogue between rhythm and improvisation—in the sustained buoyancy of pulse that is his signature, and in the real-time melodic invention that forms a counterpoint to it. Monk’s heroic balancing act of groove and self-expression—the sheer human drama of it—is, for me, his most profound legacy.

But in truth there is an endless amount to learn from Monk. I always keep his music close by, and I think about him every day. I hope you will, too.

Vijay Iyer is a pianist and composer based in New York. His most recent album is Historicity (ACT). Visit him online at www.vijay-iyer.com.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/ 

THE SECRET LIFE OF THELONIOUS MONK
by Douglas Gorney
March 29, 2010
The Atlantic

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original by Robin D. G. Kelley is the first biography to put the idiosyncratic music and eccentric behavior of this jazz legend into factual context. With unprecedented access to Monk's family and records, Kelley dispels many of the myths around the eccentric pianist and the psychiatric, legal, and professional challenges he faced before he died in 1982. Through it all, he renders Monk's world in rich detail, from hardscrabble North Carolina roots to the demanding and uncertain life of the working jazz musician. Kelley, on sabbatical from the University of Southern California, spoke to me from Oxford University, where he is the Harmsworth Professor of American History. 

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You write about Thelonious Monk getting up from the piano and dancing around in circles on stage, falling asleep at the keyboard, sporting strange hats, staring off into space and wandering out of nightclubs during gigs. On eccentricity alone, I can see why he'd be a good subject for a book. But what were you really after?

For me, Monk had been an obsession—aesthetically and culturally—pretty much from the moment I was introduced to his music as a teenage wannabe jazz piano player. But when the subject of Thelonious Monk comes up, the eccentricities are what people talk about first, as you just did. Descriptions of his music become conflated with descriptions of his behavior, onstage and off. I wanted to disentangle those things, understand who Thelonious Monk was as a human being, and who he was as an artist.

What did you find when you teased them apart?

I won't lie to you—when I went into this project, I didn't know I would find what I ended up finding. I was surprised by the depth of Monk's musical education. I was surprised by the way he suffered, financially, as an artist—even after he became the one of the most recognizable faces in jazz and was on the cover of national magazines, he just wasn't making much money. I was surprised by his deep commitment to his family and his community. It was the mundane things that I found most fascinating, not the outlandish, eccentric character we usually associate with Monk. As a consequence, I ended up writing a very different book than what I thought I would write.

This was one of the most assiduously researched biographies I have ever read. I have a feeling that if I asked you, "What did Monk have for lunch on August 12, 1958," you could have told me—
[laughs] Almost...

Did you think that you'd get as deeply immersed in Monk's world as you did? It took you 14 years to write this book.

Well, of those 14 years, a good six was spent trying to convince the Monk family to give me access to them. Once Thelonious Monk, Jr. let me in, though, I suddenly had unprecedented access—not just papers, but family members who had never talked to anyone before. Nellie, Monk's wife, had never granted interviews until I came along.
Once that happened, I wanted to approach this project as a historian—meaning the more you find out, the more you have to look up. Too many biographies of jazz musicians are written by critics using liner notes from albums and articles and interviews in the jazz press, and then filling in the rest with their own commentary. 

To tell Monk's story and the story of the people who shaped his world, I was uncovering some of the most obscure individuals, people in the jazz world we know nothing about now. And what I found was that so much of what we think we know about Monk's life is just wrong. It was so hard to figure out the most basic things—in fact, I'm still finding mistakes in the book that I'm correcting for the paperback. 

So what else has jazz history had wrong? In what other ways did you find the real Monk different from the image we have of him? 

With jazz musicians, issues and assumptions about of drug use always come up—particularly in Monk's case because he was...odd. So odd, in fact, that the question of mental illness always looms large when we think of him. But with access to medical records and to his family, I got a sense of a man who suffered more from prescription drugs and bad diagnosis than he did from illicit drugs and bipolar disorder. He received very bad medical treatment, bad advice and bad prescriptions for a very long time. The impact that had on his ability to function shocked me. 

I was also struck by the role of his wife, Nellie. In films of Monk, we get an image of Nellie as the loyal helpmate—there's some truth to that, she was the person most responsible for keeping him together. But I really came to see her as a fully realized human being with her own goals and dreams, desires and frustrations, as someone who suffered quite a bit. One of the things my book tries to do is look at the so-called male genius in the context of his family...to understand how important his spouse was, his partner, in the realization of that genius.

Let's come back to the issue of diagnosis and treatment. First let me ask you about Monk the musician. When people listen to Monk for the first time, people think, hey, this guy's missing keys—he's playing the wrong notes.

Well, first of all, there's another thing I discovered: Monk's distinctive sound, his approach to the piano, was deliberate, very thought-out. It was hard for Monk to play Monk, in fact. I was privy to the home recordings that Nellie and Nica [Monk's friend and patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter] made of him practicing. You could hear in those rehearsal tapes how he methodically, laboriously developed those ideas. That blew my mind. He developed his approach over time, too. If you listen to very early recordings of Monk, from Minton's Playhouse in 1941, you can hear him beginning to develop this particular touch within a style still very much in the swing idiom of Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman's pianist.

But about those wrong notes: Monk's radical idea was not to add more notes to chords but rather take them away, creating much more dissonance. He'd often play two-note chords—for instance taking the third and the fifth out of a major seventh chord and playing just the root and major seventh—and wham, there's Monk's sound. It's the right chord, yet he makes it sound like a completely bizarre choice.

Let's talk more about his sound. It's not just his idiosyncratic chordal clusters, his timing and phrasing, but his touch. If his ideas are out of the mainstream, the way he plays them is up in your face, too. Deliberate, with a heavy hand on the keyboard...like a thumb in the eye of the musical establishment. Does that make any sense? 

I know exactly what you're talking about. Monk had small hands, and played with flat fingers, like the mallets you use on vibes, to make up for it—a trick he developed to play like James P. Johnson and the other Stride pianists he came up with. He had the same kind of percussive techniques you use on the drums, an uncanny ability to play different dynamics in different fingers. Some fingers were heavy, as you say, and some were light. And he would hit a note, hold it, then hit another note so that the open string created overtones.

All these techniques—and there are more I could talk about—come from unceasing practice. There's nothing "wrong" or naïve about Monk's playing.

Where do you place Monk in the pantheon of jazz artists? There's that traditional jazz, stride technique to his playing, yet he's part of the bebop movement—in fact, as you point out, many of his ideas were pretty far ahead of what beboppers were doing. Songs like "Criss-Cross" are still challenging, 60 years later.
 
Absolutely. I describe Monk as Janus-faced, looking in both directions at once. He pulls as much from his roots, the old-style traditions he never left, as from really futuristic stuff, musical territory he was the first to visit. He's always going to be associated with the founding of bebop, with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I don't place him on the bebop school, though—I place him in his own school. That said, he had an immeasurable influence on the important figures he worked with and taught, directly: Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman...the list goes on.

How did Monk view himself in the development of jazz? You write about how he went from being a musical maverick to someone who was almost stodgy about the music, putting down the new directions Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor were taking.

He was pissed off about the fact that other artists like Bird and Diz (Parker and Gillespie) got credit for bebop while Monk got placed in the shadows of the movement. He also didn't like the way the jazz avant-garde took credit for harmonic developments he had been working on, and became the darlings of the media. 

But as far as where Monk saw himself in what I call the tradition of sonic disturbance, his stylistic criteria came down to this: Does it Swing? Does it sound good to the ear? Does it have a melody? His greatest hero, Coleman Hawkins, said, "Music doesn't go seasonable to me. There's no thing as traditional or modern—music is music." That was Monk, too. Critics were concerned with whether he was a traditionalist or a bebopper or part of the avant-garde, but he didn't play the label game...except if he thought it could sell records. 

Both personally and professionally, Monk faced endless challenges. Bipolar disorder, bad treatment, and what Nellie called "the un- years," when Monk had lost his cabaret card and could not play in nightclubs that served alcohol—which was pretty much all of them. And there were more, any one of which could have pushed Monk out of a career in music or even onto the streets. Yet he pushed on. It's like the myth of Sisyphus, set to jazz. 

Monk's problems with his cabaret card made his case one of the most egregious in an inherently unjust system. As tough as things got for him, though, he was blessed to have a whole tribe of people who took care of him—not only Nellie, but his whole extended family and later, the baroness.

You make a very strong case for your conclusion that Monk was a manic-depressive. Does that go against the consensus regarding his eccentric behavior?

There really hasn't been a consensus. Just a lot of contradictory assertions—autism, Tourette's Syndrome, all sorts of things. The diagnoses in his medical records range from schizophrenia to, eventually, what we know today as bipolar disorder. I try to be very careful in discussing the way the medical profession understood his problems. The science of chemical imbalances was not very sophisticated during Monk's lifetime. 

What's far more important to Monk's story than his diagnoses or misdiagnoses, for me, is pharmacological history. Thelonious was given large doses of thorazine by one set of doctors, and another who was giving him large doses of amphetamines under the guise of "vitamins". You can see how that might have created the conditions for strange behavior.

Do you think Monk's career might have evolved differently if he'd received proper treatment earlier, that he might have composed more or taken his music in new directions?

It's a very tricky and fascinating problem. As I've said, they didn't really understand manic-depression as a condition or lithium as a treatment in the 1950s, when his manic-depressive episodes really began to be a problem. But for the purposes of discussion, if he had been treated that way, I actually think his creative output would have been diminished. Lithium acts like a blanket on the brain for many people. When Monk eventually was prescribed it, later in life, it contributed to an unwillingness or a lack of desire to play.

On the other hand, he would likely not have had so many of the very difficult episodes which contributed to his overall malaise and fatigue as time went on. I think his lack of creative output from the mid-1960s on, as a composer, at least, has to do with the level of fatigue he felt from travelling all the time, getting hardly any sleep, and just generally not feeling very good—he suffered from an increasing number of health problems, some of which had to do with the thorazine he was taking.

What does Monk's life and career say for the belief that radical, innovative creative vision goes hand in hand with dysfunction or instability? 

Kay Redfield Jamison has written several books on this very subject—notably Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. The idea is that the highs and lows of manic-depression create the context for opening the mind to new possibilities. I'm skeptical. This meme doesn't address the many whole, functional people who were revolutionary artists and musicians. I also think it's a romantic notion: in Monk's case, the negative consequences of the disease created barriers to being able to work. Monk was a very methodical, careful composer. He wasn't someone who could ever put a manic episode to use.

Still, on first listen the music seems kind of wacky, and his behavior was eccentric—it's natural to ask if there was something going on there...

A lot of what I try to challenge is this very issue: whether there's any correlation between Monk's music and his eccentricity. Yes, Monk was known for his crazy hats, for getting up from the piano and dancing in the middle of a song, for sometimes wandering out the club in the middle of a gig. A lot of critics, even those who were sympathetic to him, would say, well of course his music is a mirror of his behavior. But what I found in the book was that Monk was really a hard-working family man, putting two kids through private school...and he was a showman, too. If you see the documentary Straight No Chaser, there's a scene at an airport where Monk's just spinning around and around. I interviewed Michael Blackwood, who shot that footage in 1968. He said Monk was very well aware of when the camera was on him—he was performing for the camera. He knew why people paid to see him in nightclubs. He played to their expectations.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/22/hannah-rothschild-nica-jazz-thelonious-monk-interview

Hannah Rothschild on Nica: 'I saw a woman who knew where she belonged’

Biography
The Observer

Monk & The Baroness At The Five Spot

Thelonious Monk and Nica de Koenigswarter at the Five Spot jazz club, New York, 1964: ' She’s in love with him: the way she gazes at him… but I don’t believe that sex was at the heart of it.' Photograph: Ben Martin/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

The moment she first heard Thelonious Monk play the piano, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter walked out on her own life, including five children, and devoted herself to the American jazz genius. The Rothschild family disowned her, but now her great niece, Hannah Rothschild, tells her extraordinary story.

In the 19th century, the English branch of the powerful and immensely rich Rothschild family built the most famous of their country houses in the Vale of Aylesbury, which is why, one misty morning in late March, I find myself at Waddesdon Manor, a picture-perfect Victorian replica of a French chateau. "I think this house will give you a sense of how the family used to live," says Hannah Rothschild, my host. "The blinds and curtains drawn to protect the art, the panelling and drapes creating a deadening effect. These were houses that killed noise, even the noise of children." Overflowing with servants – at Tring Park, down the road, footmen were required to carry cherry trees to the table, that diners might pick their fruit straight from the branch – and run to a routine as immutable as marble, growing up in such a house was like living in a gilded cage.

Hannah wants me to soak up this atmosphere, airless and introspective, because she believes that it explains, at least in part, the extraordinary life of her great aunt, Pannonica, aka Nica, the subject of her startling new book, The Baroness. Nica, who was born in 1913, grew up at Tring Park (Tring is now a school; Waddesdon Manor, though administered by a trust under the chairmanship of Hannah's father, Jacob, was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1957). There, she wiled away her young days in a starched white dress, sewing and playing the piano; her parents did not approve of education for girls and running and hiding were forbidden lest her frock be ruined. Life was monotonous and dull but, knowing nothing else, she did not think to kick against it. In 1934, she was duly presented at court and her marriage in 1935, to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, a handsome French diplomat, was predictable, if not the soaring match her ambitious mother had dreamed of. If he was controlling, well, she was used to that.

In 1948, however, something happened. On her way to the airport after a visit to New York, Nica stopped to visit a friend, the jazz pianist Teddy Wilson, who played her a recording of "Round Midnight" by a then unknown jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk. Unable to believe her ears, she listened to it 20 times in a row and was bewitched. Having missed her plane, she never went home again. Abandoning her husband and five children, she moved into a suite at the Stanhope hotel and set about trying to meet the man who had made this extraordinary record. Naturally, it took a while to track the erratic Monk down. It wasn't until 1954 that she finally laid eyes on him, having flown to Paris for the privilege. Did he live up to her dreams? Oh, yes. He was, she said, "the most beautiful man she had ever seen". From that moment, there was no going back. For the next 28 years, Nica devoted her life to Thelonious Monk. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. He was a genius, pure and simple, and there was nothing she would not do – no money she would not spend, no place she would not go – to make his life easier.

It has taken Hannah almost as long to write about Nica. She first heard about this unlikely relative when she was 11, from her grandfather Victor, another extraordinary Rothschild (Victor famously liked to water-ski in a Schiaparelli dressing gown). "You're like my sister," he said, as Hannah struggled to master the 12-bar blues. "You love jazz, but can't be arsed to learn to play it." Hannah knew her other great aunts, Liberty and Miriam, but this Pannonica was a mystery. When she asked her father about her, all he would say was: "No one ever talks about her." When she asked Miriam, she said: "She's the Peggy Guggenheim of jazz" and: "She is vulgar."

Growing up, though, the whispers Hannah heard were tantalising. She's known as the Jazz Baroness. Charlie Parker died in her apartment. She lived with 306 cats. Twenty-four songs were written for her. She raced Miles Davis down Fifth Avenue. She went to prison so he wouldn't have to… So when, in 1984, Hannah went to New York for the first time, she decided to telephone her. "Would you like to meet up?" she said, nervously. "Wild," said her great aunt, who was then 71. "Come to the club downtown after midnight." She informed Hannah that she would know the spot by the sight of her car – a large pale-blue Bentley – parked outside.

Thelonious Monk and Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter get into her Bentley outside the Five Spot cafe, New York, 1964. Photograph: Ben Martin/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Hannah returned to London where she finally landed a job at the BBC ("I'd always wanted to work there, but I could have papered a room with rejection letters," she says). She and her aunt met again just twice; in 1988, Nica died suddenly, following a heart-bypass operation. But by then, Hannah was hooked. She wanted to know all about her aunt's mysterious life, to sort fact from fiction. In the face of some opposition from her family, one of whose primary traits is, she says, was "obsessive secrecy", she decided to research her story. It wasn't easy. Rothschild women refused to take her phone calls; she also received two threatening letters. Nica's children, having initially been enthusiastic about the idea of a book, would not co-operate. "I can't speak for them, but perhaps they felt protective, that this is their story, not mine. Do they think I'm trespassing? I don't know."

But she got there in the end. In the years since, Hannah has made a radio documentary about her aunt and a film – and now, finally, she has written her biography. Is she done? "Yes," she laughs. "I've called time, I promise." And does she think she has solved the mystery of Nica and Monk? Were they lovers? Or merely loving friends? (Monk had a devoted wife, Nellie, from whom he never officially separated.) "I don't think it was a steamy, hot love affair," she says. "There's a tendency to sexualise every relationship, especially one that crosses class and race. When you look at Nica with him [in photographs and on film], she's in love with him: the way she gazes at him, the way she's laid her life out before him like a golden cloak of devotion. But I don't believe that sex was at the heart of it, because I don't believe it would have lasted so long if it had been. This was 30 years of being tested [by Monk] to the extreme. It's difficult, though. I went through a lot of soul-searching. I didn't want to portray her as a sad groupie with lots of money. Is she using him? Is he using her? And why did Nellie put up with it? Because it didn't have to be sexual for Nellie to be fed up about it." Monk's last years, when his mental health became so bad that he disappeared from the jazz scene altogether, were spent at Nica's cat-infested New Jersey home. But at his funeral – Monk died in 1982, from a stroke – Nellie and Nica sat side by side in the front row of the church and mourners paid their respects to each of them, as if both were widows.

Hannah Rothschild grew up, not in some vast palace, but in Maida Vale, west London, in a house she now owns (a single divorcee, she lives there with her three teenage daughters). When did she realise, then, that her family was not quite like other people's? "I don't think I ever did. Your family is just your family." Her great aunt Miriam, a famous entomologist, lived in another huge country house, Ashton Wold, which was so overrun with ivy and buddleia and honeysuckle – to encourage insects – that in summer time, it was almost impossible to see out. "She had a pet owl and a pet fox. My grandfather Victor [also a distinguished scientist], had a pet owl, too, that used to fly around and hoot. So I realised they were quite eccentric, but that was all I knew. One thing I was certain of, though, was that they were frightening. They were fiercely intellectual and they didn't suffer fools. If you bored them, they would tell you. They'd leave the room mid-conversation.

"It [Rothschild] is a big name to have. It means banking, and Jewish, and money. But then, on my side, there was this extra thing of being intellectual and academically high-achieving. I didn't feel like a banker's daughter [her father, Jacob, is an extremely successful businessman, as is her brother, Nat]. But nor did I live up to this other side. Of course, there are huge advantages – huge – to growing up in that world. Financial advantages, yes, but also people remember your name, you get access to things. I cannot sit here and say: poor me. I was incredibly lucky."

Until the second world war, after which its fortunes were depleted – some 3,500 works of art were stolen by the Nazis and many of its companies nationalised – the family's rise had looked unstoppable. "Seven generations ago, we were living in a ghetto in Frankfurt in a house that was 14 feet wide," she says. "There seemed to be no chance that the family would ever escape that ghetto until, rather ironically, the French shelled it [in the 1790s], breaking down the walls, so the Jews were finally able to get out."

It was at this point that Mayer Amschel, the Rothschild patriarch, famously sent his five sons to five European capitals where, between them, they eventually built the biggest bank in the world. And of these five, it was Nathan Mayer, Nica's great-great-grandfather, who arrived in England in 1798 with no formal education, and speaking no English, who was most determined to succeed. By the late 19th century, the British branch of the family had a title, a collection of priceless art, many country estates (a painting Hannah shows me depicts some 40 Rothschild houses) and the ear of the prime minister.

Nica's father was Charles Rothschild. Like his zoologist brother, Walter, who turned the grounds of Tring into an extraordinary wildlife park with kangaroos, giant tortoises, emus, rheas and cassowaries, and who drove a carriage pulled by zebras, Charles had a passion for natural history. He was a keen amateur entomologist and named his youngest daughter Pannonica for a species of moth. However, this was not an interest he was free to pursue. Instead, every day, he was required to put on a suit and go to work in the family bank. This did not suit him one bit.

Charles also suffered from a mood disorder that may or may not have been schizophrenia (so, later, did his another of his daughters, Liberty). At times, he would not speak for days. On other occasions, he was manic, unable to sleep or stop talking. As he grew older, the gaps between these episodes grew ever shorter. Finally, in 1923, he went into a bathroom, locked the door and slit his throat with a knife.

Hannah believes that Charles's suicide lies at the heart of Nica's unlikely bond with Monk, who suffered from a similar illness, with similarly debilitating symptoms. "Her father's death was incredibly violent, but afterwards it was never mentioned: suicide was still illegal. When she met Thelonious, there must have been huge resonances. He behaved in a very similar way to Charles, and Charles had been made to live a certain kind of life, going to the office every day, when what he wanted to be doing was collecting butterflies. Her passionate attempts to dignify Thelonious's life, to protect him, to say it's all right to spend the day sleeping if that's what you want or need to do… I'm sure this was her way of addressing an earlier injustice. It was a kind of reparation. In return, he gave her an incredible sense of purpose and belonging. If you think of her as a woman who'd been evicted from a close family, that's quite a frightening thing. But Thelonious and a whole group of musicians said to her: come and be part of this. We'll hang with you." Monk wasn't the only one who wrote a song for Pannonica. So did Art Blakey, Sonny Clark, Kenny Drew and at least a dozen others.

But life in New York had a dark side, too. In 1955, Nica was evicted from her suite at the Stanhope when Charlie Parker, having turned up at her door one night with nowhere else to go, choked and died there (she claimed to have heard a clap of thunder as the life left him – a sound that has since passed into jazz folklore). In 1958, Nica decided to drive the impoverished Monk to a gig in Maryland. In a town called New Castle, Delaware, she stopped the car outside a motel so he could use the bathroom. As she waited, the police approached; in this part of America, the sight of a white woman and black man together was unusual enough to attract attention. There followed an altercation. Monk was beaten up. The police searched the car. When they found marijuana, Nica knew exactly what to do. Monk was too fragile to go to prison. She told them that the dope was hers.

The consequences of this moment of bravery were potentially dire. Nica faced a prison sentence of up to 10 years, followed by immediate deportation. Her life with Monk would be over, but the prospect of a return to England was just as painful. How would her family react? Would her husband ever let her see her children again? "It must have been terrifying," says Hannah. "I finally found out how terrifying in a letter she wrote to her friend Mary Lou Williams the night before her trial in January 1962. She is in Delaware. She writes that she is going to go into a church and light a candle. She writes, 'This is the day upon which my entire future may well depend.' She says she can't talk to Thelonious or Nellie about it because they have their own worries. She was so completely alone. I felt quite distressed on her behalf. Where is everyone? I thought." In the end, though, there came a miracle: the case was dismissed on a  technicality, her lawyer arguing that the troopers had searched her car without her permission.

In The Baroness, Hannah tells this story with care, balancing narrative tension with a desire to lay out all the facts so readers can make up their own minds. Like the rest of the book, it is wholly gripping. So will she write another or will she return to her first love, films? "I am working on a novel. It's a strange thing. Having been a documentary film-maker for my entire adult life, suddenly I'm not sure if I am one anymore." It is getting harder to find homes for the kind of films – detailed, beady, slow-burning – that she makes. Her marvellous fly-on-the-wall Peter Mandelson documentary, filmed in the build-up to the 2010 election (the one in which he ate a yoghurt in a way that made him look like a stoat devouring a field mouse), was not commissioned and she only sold it to BBC4 after it was finished.

"It was quite embarrassing. He would say, 'Where is our film going?' And I would have to tell him that I didn't know." Has she heard from him since? "He saw the film, and he liked it, and that was it." Mandelson is a friend of her brother, Nat (Mandelson famously holidayed at his home in Corfu). But she can't talk about Nat. "He really, really hates it. I love my brother. He's a fantastic guy. But I have to respect that."

To outsiders, the wonder is that she works at all. A lot of people from her background would have gone to Oxford, as she did, and got on with the business of allowing their trust fund to screw them up. "Yes," she says. "But the truth is that work is fantastically interesting. It's the one thing you can rely on, actually, and it's so exciting – my father taught me that. But while I was writing the book, I did think about the work ethic, the way it persists in our family. Unlike aristocratic British families, perhaps we haven't forgotten where we came from." As for money, she has "made my peace with it… if it were swilling round without any purpose I would feel very differently, but the inheritance enables us to do good things at our foundation. I think it's completely right that people who have more should give it away and make life better for those who don't. My father is planning to give his away. Actually, he's already started, and good for him."

We move downstairs, to tour the house, where I enjoy the silly thrill of stepping behind velvet ropes and walking through doors marked Private. The house is very beautiful but, as she points out, it is all of a piece. The Rothschilds had no furniture to inherit and this one's interiors came courtesy of a couple of French hotels that were being demolished following Haussmann's remodelling of Paris. Does she wish it was in the family still? "Good God, no," she says, with a theatrical shudder. "But writing my book has made me understand these houses. They were a way for the family to anchor itself, to show the world that they mattered. When you really think about it, this house is just a three-dimensional calling card."

 THELONIOUS MONK ON TIME MAGAZINE COVER 

FEBRUARY 28, 1964

http://jazztimes.com/articles/17049-miles-davis-and-thelonious-monk-american-history

July/August 2006

Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk: American History

by Felix Contreras

JazzTimes 

America’s attic just got a bit more musical and stylish this spring. The families of jazz pioneers Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk donated memorabilia and clothing to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Legendary photographer Herman Leonard also donated original prints of 20 of his genre-defining jazz photographs.

Photo by Hugh Talman.  Thelonius Monk Jr. poses in front of the new display, "Miles and Monk: New Jazz Acquisitions," at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

During a March 30 ceremony in Washing-ton, D.C., to mark Jazz Appreciation Month, family members of Davis and Monk shared remembrances as they made their donations.
The Davis family donated a sheaf of manuscripts with parts for Gil Evans’ arrangement of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” from their 1958 album Porgy and Bess; an electronic wind instrument that Davis experimented with; and the Versace suit worn by the trumpeter during his historic performance at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Davis’ nephew and former drummer Vince Wilburn Jr. led a group of family members including Davis’ son, sister and one of his brothers.

Wilburn keeps Davis’ personal belongings in his home, and he spoke of a visit by museum curator John Edward Hasse. “I was trying to decide what to donate when John came by to visit. At the end of the meeting John said, ‘OK, I have to go now, what can I take?’ I said, ‘Can we just send something later?’ I didn’t want to give anything up.”

Thelonious Monk Jr., also known as TS Monk, presented the Smithsonian a handwritten manuscript for “Four in One” recorded in 1951, one of his father’s famous skullcaps and other clothing items including a jacket, vest and ties.
Monk spoke of his namesake not as a jazz musician but as a devoted father. He also said Davis would often come by the Monk apartment in New York: “I was the official door opener at the Monk palace, one and half rooms. I distinctly remember going to the door and this really good-looking little black guy would come to the door and he would say [imitating the famous Davis rasp], ‘Would you tell Thelonious [that] Miles is here?’ Then he would come in and sit while my father was just laying in another room chillin’. And that would go on for about an hour and a half.”

Monk added that there was much more going on with the unusual visits than his childhood eye picked up at the time. “Early on I saw that there was a measure of reverence and respect going on. At that time I didn’t understand the dynamic of passing of torches. And I didn’t understand the dynamic of mentoring. I do now. And I understand how profound this relationship was.”

Photographer Herman Leonard’s work has been recognized around the world for its artful interpretation of the early days of modern jazz. But he told the Smithsonian audience this event went above and beyond. “Many years ago a psychic told me the sequence of my life, including this. Now this is about 40 years ago. She didn’t specifically site this but she said, ‘You will receive recognition for all the effort you put in your early life.’ And believe me, having my work in the Smithsonian is really one of the great events of my life. My mother would have been proud.”

The donated items are in good company. Other artifacts in the Smithsonian collection include memorabilia from Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Tito Puente, Artie Shaw, Mongo Santamaria and Duke Ellington.

http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/theloniousmonk

Thelonious Monk

Born: October 10, 1917 | Died: February 17, 1982

With the arrival of Thelonious Sphere Monk, modern music-- let alone modern culture--simply hasn’t been the same. Recognized as one of the most inventive pianists of any musical genre, Monk achieved a startlingly original sound that even his most devoted followers have been unable to successfully imitate. His musical vision was both ahead of its time and deeply rooted in tradition, spanning the entire history of the music from the “stride” masters of James P. Johnson and Willie “the Lion” Smith to the tonal freedom and kinetics of the “avant garde.” And he shares with Edward “Duke” Ellington the distinction of being one of the century’s greatest American composers. At the same time, his commitment to originality in all aspects of life--in fashion, in his creative use of language and economy of words, in his biting humor, even in the way he danced away from the piano--has led fans and detractors alike to call him “eccentric,” “mad” or even “taciturn.” Consequently, Monk has become perhaps the most talked about and least understood artist in the history of jazz. 

Born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious was only four when his mother and his two siblings, Marion and Thomas, moved to New York City. Unlike other Southern migrants who headed straight to Harlem, the Monks settled on West 63rd Street in the “San Juan Hill” neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family three years later, but health considerations forced him to return to North Carolina. During his stay, however, he often played the harmonica, ‘Jew’s harp,” and piano--all of which probably influenced his son’s unyielding musical interests. Young Monk turned out to be a musical prodigy in addition to a good student and a fine athlete. He studied the trumpet briefly but began exploring the piano at age nine. He was about nine when Marion’s piano teacher took Thelonious on as a student. By his early teens, he was playing rent parties, sitting in on organ and piano at a local Baptist church, and was reputed to have won several “amateur hour” competitions at the Apollo Theater. 

Admitted to Peter Stuyvesant, one of the city’s best high schools, Monk dropped out at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music and around 1935 took a job as a pianist for a traveling evangelist and faith healer. Returning after two years, he formed his own quartet and played local bars and small clubs until the spring of 1941, when drummer Kenny Clarke hired him as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. 

Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm--notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell. Monk’s harmonic innovations proved fundamental to the development of modern jazz in this period. Anointed by some critics as the “High Priest of Bebop,” several of his compositions (“52nd Street Theme,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy” [co-written with Kenny Clarke and originally titled “Fly Right” and then “Iambic Pentameter”], “I Mean You”) were favorites among his contemporaries. 

Yet, as much as Monk helped usher in the bebop revolution, he also charted a new course for modern music few were willing to follow. Whereas most pianists of the bebop era played sparse chords in the left hand and emphasized fast, even eighth and sixteenth notes in the right hand, Monk combined an active right hand with an equally active left hand, fusing stride and angular rhythms that utilized the entire keyboard. And in an era when fast, dense, virtuosic solos were the order of the day, Monk was famous for his use of space and silence. In addition to his unique phrasing and economy of notes, Monk would “lay out” pretty regularly, enabling his sidemen to experiment free of the piano’s fixed pitches. As a composer, Monk was less interested in writing new melodic lines over popular chord progressions than in creating a whole new architecture for his music, one in which harmony and rhythm melded seamlessly with the melody. “Everything I play is different,” Monk once explained, “different melody, different harmony, different structure. Each piece is different from the other. . . . [W]hen the song tells a story, when it gets a certain sound, then it’s through . . . completed.” 

Despite his contribution to the early development of modern jazz, Monk remained fairly marginal during the 1940s and early 1950s. Besides occasional gigs with bands led by Kenny Clarke, Lucky Millinder, Kermit Scott, and Skippy Williams, in 1944 tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was the first to hire Monk for a lengthy engagement and the first to record with him. Most critics and many musicians were initially hostile to Monk’s sound. Blue Note, then a small record label, was the first to sign him to a contract. Thus, by the time he went into the studio to lead his first recording session in 1947, he was already thirty years old and a veteran of the jazz scene for nearly half of his life. But he knew the scene and during the initial two years with Blue Note had hired musicians whom he believed could deliver. Most were not big names at the time but they proved to be outstanding musicians, including trumpeters Idrees Sulieman and George Taitt; twenty-two year-old Sahib Shihab and seventeen-year-old Danny Quebec West on alto saxophones; Billy Smith on tenor; and bassists Gene Ramey and John Simmons. On some recordings Monk employed veteran Count Basie drummer Rossiere “Shadow” Wilson; on others, the drum seat was held by well-known bopper Art Blakey. His last Blue Note session as a leader in 1952 finds Monk surrounded by an all-star band, including Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Lou Donaldson (alto), “Lucky” Thompson (tenor), Nelson Boyd (bass), and Max Roach (drums). In the end, although all of Monk’s Blue Note sides are hailed today as some of his greatest recordings, at the time of their release in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they proved to be a commercial failure. 

Harsh, ill-informed criticism limited Monk’s opportunities to work--opportunities he desperately needed especially after his marriage to Nellie Smith in 1947, and the birth of his son, Thelonious, Jr., in 1949. Monk found work where he could, but he never compromised his musical vision. His already precarious financial situation took a turn for the worse in August of 1951, when he was falsely arrested for narcotics possession, essentially taking the rap for his friend Bud Powell. Deprived of his cabaret card--a police-issued “license” without which jazz musicians could not perform in New York clubs-- Monk was denied gigs in his home town for the next six years. Nevertheless, he played neighborhood clubs in Brooklyn--most notably, Tony’s Club Grandean, sporadic concerts, took out-of-town gigs, composed new music, and made several trio and ensemble records under the Prestige Label (1952-1954), which included memorable performances with Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and Milt Jackson. In the fall of1953, he celebrated the birth of his daughter Barbara, and the following summer he crossed the Atlantic for the first time to play the Paris Jazz Festival. During his stay, he recorded his first solo album for Vogue. These recordings would begin to establish Monk as one of the century’s most imaginative solo pianists. 

In 1955, Monk signed with a new label, Riverside, and recorded several outstanding LP’s which garnered critical attention, notably Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s Music and his second solo album, Thelonious Monk Alone. In 1957, with the help of his friend and sometime patron, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, he had finally gotten his cabaret card restored and enjoyed a very long and successful engagement at the Five Spot Café with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware and then Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. From that point on, his career began to soar; his collaborations with Johnny Griffin, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, and arranger Hall Overton, among others, were lauded by critics and studied by conservatory students. Monk even led a successful big band at Town Hall in 1959. It was as if jazz audiences had finally caught up to Monk’s music. 

By 1961, Monk had established a more or less permanent quartet consisting of Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, John Ore (later Butch Warren and then Larry Gales) on bass, and Frankie Dunlop (later Ben Riley) on drums. He performed with his own big band at Lincoln Center (1963), and at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the quartet toured Europe in 1961 and Japan in 1963. In 1962, Monk had also signed with Columbia records, one of the biggest labels in the world, and in February of 1964 he became the third jazz musician in history to grace the cover of Time Magazine. 

However, with fame came the media’s growing fascination with Monk’s alleged eccentricities. Stories of his behavior on and off the bandstand often overshadowed serious commentary about his music. The media helped invent the mythical Monk--the reclusive, naïve, idiot savant whose musical ideas were supposed to be entirely intuitive rather than the product of intensive study, knowledge and practice. Indeed, his reputation as a recluse (Time called him the “loneliest Monk”) reveals just how much Monk had been misunderstood. As his former sideman, tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, explained, Monk was somewhat of a homebody: “If Monk isn't working he isn't on the scene. Monk stays home. He goes away and rests.” Unlike the popular stereotypes of the jazz musician, Monk was devoted to his family. He appeared at family events, played birthday parties, and wrote playfully complex songs for his children: “Little Rootie Tootie” for his son, “Boo Boo's Birthday” and “Green Chimneys” for his daughter, and a Christmas song titled “A Merrier Christmas.” The fact is, the Monk family held together despite long stretches without work, severe money shortages, sustained attacks by critics, grueling road trips, bouts with illness, and the loss of close friends. 

During the 1960s, Monk scored notable successes with albums such as Criss Cross, Monk’s Dream, It’s Monk Time, Straight No Chaser, and Underground. But as Columbia/CBS records pursued a younger, rock-oriented audience, Monk and other jazz musicians ceased to be a priority for the label. Monk’s final recording with Columbia was a big band session with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra in November of 1968, which turned out to be both an artistic and commercial failure. Columbia’s disinterest and Monk’s deteriorating health kept the pianist out of the studio. In January of 1970, Charlie Rouse left the band, and two years later Columbia quietly dropped Monk from its roster. For the next few years, Monk accepted fewer engagements and recorded even less. His quartet featured saxophonists Pat Patrick and Paul Jeffrey, and his son Thelonious, Jr., took over on drums in 1971. That same year through 1972, Monk toured widely with the “Giants of Jazz,” a kind of bop revival group consisting of Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey, and made his final public appearance in July of 1976. Physical illness, fatigue, and perhaps sheer creative exhaustion convinced Monk to give up playing altogether. On February 5, 1982, he suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness; twelve days later, on February 17th, he died. 

Today Thelonious Monk is widely accepted as a genuine master of American music. His compositions constitute the core of jazz repertory and are performed by artists from many different genres. He is the subject of award winning documentaries, biographies and scholarly studies, prime time television tributes, and he even has an Institute created in his name. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was created to promote jazz education and to train and encourage new generations of musicians. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who was always willing to share his musical knowledge with others but expected originality in return.

~ Robin D. G. Kelley Ph.D. 

Robin D. G. Kelley, a Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies and Jazz Studies at Columbia University, has published several books on African American culture and politics. His most recent book is Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002). His articles on music have appeared in the New York Times, Black Music Research Journal, The Nation, Lenox Avenue, Rolling Stone, American Visions, among others. He is currently completing two books: Thelonious: A Life (The Free Press, forthcoming 2005), and Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2006)

THE MUSIC OF THELONIOUS MONK: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. MONK:  

Thelonious Monk "Ba-lue Bolivar Blues" (Live in Japan, 1963):

 

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (1957)-- [Full album]:

 

Track listing:
1 "Ruby, My Dear"
2 "Trinkle, Tinkle"
3 "Off Minor"
4 "Nutty"
5 "Epistrophy" (Kenny Clarke, Monk)
6 "Functional"

Personnel:
Thelonious Monk — piano
John Coltrane — tenor saxophone
Ray Copeland — trumpet on "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy"
Gigi Gryce — alto saxophone on "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy"
Coleman Hawkins — tenor saxophone on "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy"
Wilbur Ware — bass
Shadow Wilson — drums on "Ruby, My Dear," "Trinkle, Tinkle," and "Nutty"
Art Blakey — drums on "Off Minor" and "Epistrophy" 

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane is a 1961 album by Thelonious Monk issued on Jazzland Records, a subsidiary of Riverside Records. It consists of material recorded four years earlier when Monk worked extensively with John Coltrane, issued after Coltrane had become a leader and jazz star in his own right.

The album was assembled by the label with material from three different sessions. The impetus for the album was the discovery of three usable studio tracks recorded by the Monk Quartet with Coltrane in July of 1957 at the beginning of the band's six-month residency at New York's legendary Five Spot club near Cooper Square.[2] To round out the release, producer Keepnews included two outtakes from the Monk's Music album recorded the previous month, and an additional outtake from Thelonious Himself recorded in April.[3] The latter selection, "Functional," is a solo piano piece by Monk.

It was reissued in 2000 on Fantasy Records as part of its series for back catalogue using the JVC 20-bit K2 coding system. Because of the historical significance of this album it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007. 

Thelonious Monk - "Don't blame me":

 

Thelonious Monk - "Ugly Beauty"--(1967): 

December 14, 1967 From the Columbia LP 'Underground'. Monk (p), Charlie Rouse (ts), Larry Gales (b), Ben Riley (d).

 

Thelonious Monk - "Epistrophy":

 

Live in Japan in 1963: Charlie Rouse (Tenor saxophone) Butch Warren (Bass) and Frankie Dunlop (Drums) Thelonious Monk (Piano and composer)

Thelonious Monk - "Blue Monk"--Prestige recording 1953:

 

'Monk's Dream' - Thelonious Monk - Full Album--1963

Monk's Dream (released in 1963) is a stellar bop album from the Thelonious Monk quartet (consisting of Monk, Charlie Rouse, John Ore and Frankie Dunlop). 


 

Tracklist:

Monk's Dream 00:00
Body And Soul 6:30
Bright Mississippi 10:58
Five Spot Blues 19:36
Bolivar Blues 22:52
Just A Gigolo 30:24
Bye-Ya 32:54
Sweet And Lovely 38:57

Thelonious Monk - "Boo Boo's Birthday”

Thelonious Monk - "Boo Boo's Birhtday”.  Recorded Dec 1, 1967. From the album 'Underground'.  Monk (p), Charlie Rouse (ts), Larry Gales (b), Ben Riley (d).

 

 All,

“Boo Boo’s Birthday” was a composition that Monk wrote for his then 10 year old daughter Barbara whom Monk nicknamed “Boo Boo” (after the shy friendly little bear who used to hang out with the super confident Yogi Bear—now there’s some authentic ‘baby boomer’ data for ya!).  Anyway this is one of my all time favorite Monk tunes (and believe me I have a ton of them!).  I always laugh out loud when I hear this tune.  Monk was such an amazing musician/artist/human being!  Long live his precious soul.  And let’s all thank the gods for MUSIC, the highest art…

Sadly Barbara Monk—a wonderful Jazz singer and musician in her own right--died of cancer in 1984 at the age of 31…But 'Boo Boo’ still lives on in our hearts and minds because of Monk’s beautiful sonic gift to his daughter…Yessssss….

Kofi

Thelonious Monk—“Body and Soul":

 

Thelonious Monk—“Bye Ya”:

 
Thelonious Monk - "Rhythm-a-Ning" (live in London 1965):

 

Thelonious Alone in San Francisco - FULL ALBUM--(1959):

"Blue Monk" (Thelonious Monk) - 3:44
"Ruby, My Dear" (Thelonious Monk) - 3:56
"Round Lights" (Thelonious Monk) - 3:34
"Everything Happens to Me" (Adair, Dennis) - 5:37
"You Took the Words Right Out of My Heart" (Ranger, Robin) - 4:01
"Bluehawk" (Thelonious Monk) - 3:37
"Pannonica" (Thelonious Monk) - 3:51
"Remember" (Irving Berlin) - 2:41
"There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie" (take 2) (Meskell, Richman, Wendling) - 4:18
"There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie" (take 1) (Meskell,   Richman, Wendling)- 4:05
"Reflections" (Thelonious Monk) - 5:06 

Thelonious Monk - “Work"  (1954)--Composition by T. Monk:

 

PERSONNEL:
 
Thelonious Monk - piano
Percy Heath - bass
Art Blakey - drums 

Thelonious Monk - "Nutty" and "Hackensack" (live):

Thelonious Monk piano  Charlie Rouse tenor Larry Gales bass  Ben Riley drums. "625", Channel BBC 2, "The Marquee Club", London, England, March 14, 1965. 

 

 

Thelonious Monk - Live in Norway & Denmark 1966.  Intimate TV Concerts

Live in Norway-Spring 1966.

00:00-15:36 Lulu's Back In Town
15:38-25:47 Blue Monk
25:48-32:25 'Round Midnight

-Live in Denmark-Spring 1966.

32:40-50:20 Lulu's Back In Town
50:27-55:51 Don't Blame Me
55:53-1:00:02 Epistrophy

 
Band:

Piano- Thelonious Monk
Tenor Sax- Charlie Rouse
Bass- Larry Gales
Drums- Ben Riley

   

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk (Full Album):

 

1. "Evidence" Thelonious Monk 0:00
2. "In Walked Bud" Thelonious Monk 6:46
3. "Blue Monk" Thelonious Monk 13:20
4. "I Mean You" Thelonious Monk 21:20
5. "Rhythm-A-Ning" Thelonious Monk 29:22
6. "Purple Shades" Johnny Griffin 36:43
7. "Evidence (alternate take)" Thelonious Monk 44:32
8. "Blue Monk (alternate take)" Thelonious Monk 50:03
9. "I Mean You (alternate take)" Thelonious Monk 57:02

Most of the titles on this album are derived from Thelonious Monk's vast catalog of bop standards. Both co-leaders are at the peak of their respective prowess with insightful interpretations of nearly half a dozen inspired performances from this incarnation of the Blakey-led Jazz Messengers. This combo features Art Blakey (drums), Johnny Griffin (tenor sax), Bill Hardman (trumpet), and Spanky Debrest (bass). Immediately, Hardman ups the ante with a piledriving lead during "Evidence" that underscores the heavy-hitting nature of this particular jazz confab. Monk counters with some powerful and inspired runs that are sonically splintered by the enthusiastic -- if not practically percussive -- chord progressions and highly logistic phrasings from the pianist. The inherent melodic buoyancy on "In Walked Bud" contains a springboard-like quality, with Griffin matching Monk's bounce measure for measure. Griffin's incessant efforts create a freshness to the tune that often escapes other less inspired readings. From Blakey's boisterous opening on "Blue Monk" through to Monk's single-note crescendo during the finale, the Jazz Messengers provide a lethargic propulsion that showcases the melody's bluesy origins. This directly contrasts the uptempo charge of "Rhythm-A-Ning." The quirky yet catchy chorus glides with the dual-lead horn section as the entire arrangement is tautly bound by the understated Debrest and Blakey. Griffin's "Purple Shades" is the only non-Monk composition that this aggregate recorded. This smartly syncopated blues seems better suited for the Jazz Messengers than for Monk. However, the pianist's opening solo alternately shimmers and shudders with Debrest as well as Griffin and Hardman, who demonstrate their own pronounced capabilities over Monk's otherwise occasional counterpoint.

Thelonious Monk, in Medley, Live Concert in Warsaw, Poland, 1966: 

Thelonious Monk piano Charles Rouse, tenor sax Lawrence Gales, bass Benjamin Riley, drums 1 "Epistrophy" 2 "Round Midnight" 3 "Lulu's Back In Town" Recorded in April 1966 in Warsaw

  

Thelonious Monk - Live In Paris 1967:

Thelonious Monk Nonet
Paris Jazz Festival, Salle Plevel, Paris 11/03/67

 

Thelonious Monk (p)
Charlie Rouse (ts)
Larry Gales (b)
Beb Riley (d)
Ray Copeland (tp/flh)
Clark Terry (tp/flh)
Johnny Griffin (ts)
Phil Woods (as)
Jimmy Cleveland (tb)

All original compositions by Thelonious Monk:

Ruby My Dear
We See
Epistrophy
Oska-T
Evidence
Blue Monk
Epistrophy(theme)

Thelonious Monk - Straight No Chaser
(Documentary film,  1988)
Director:  Charlotte Zwerin: 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk

Thelonious Monk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

For the tribute album entitled Thelonious Sphere Monk, see Thelonious Sphere Monk: Dreaming of the Masters Series Vol. 2.

Thelonious Monk
Monk at Minton's Playhouse, New York, 1947
Background information
Birth name	Thelonious Sphere Monk
Born	October 10, 1917 Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA
Died	February 17, 1982 (aged 64) Englewood, New Jersey, USA
Genres	Jazz, cool jazz, bebop, hard bop
Occupation(s)	Pianist, composer
Instruments	Piano
Years active	1940s–1973[1]
Labels	Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Columbia
Associated acts	Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford, John Coltrane, Art Blakey
Website	www.monkzone.com

Thelonious Sphere Monk^[2] (October 10, 1917^[3] – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser" "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than 1,000 pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.^[4]

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 silences and hesitations.

He was renowned for his distinctive style in suits, hats, and sunglasses. He was also noted for an idiosyncratic habit observed at times during performances: while the other musicians in the band continued playing, he would stop, stand up from the keyboard, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano.

Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time, after Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington, and before Wynton Marsalis.^[5][6]

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Early recordings (1944–1954)
• 3 Riverside Records (1955–1961)
• 4 Columbia Records (1962–1970)
• 5 Later life
• 6 Tributes
• 7 Discography
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Early life

Thelonious Sphere Monk was born two years after his sister Marion on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk. His badly written birth certificate misspelled his first name as "Thelious"^[7] or "Thelius". It also did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts.^[8] A brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920.^[9] In 1922, the family moved to 243 West 63rd Street, in Manhattan, New York City. Monk started playing the piano at the age of six. Monk was largely self-taught, although he did attend Stuyvesant High School, but did not graduate.^[10] He toured with an evangelist in his teens, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz.

In the early to mid-1940s, Monk was the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub. Much of Monk's style was developed during his time at Minton's, when he participated in after-hours "cutting competitions" which featured many leading jazz soloists of the time. The Minton's scene was crucial in the formulation of bebop and it brought Monk into close contact with other leading exponents of the emerging idiom, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker and, later, Miles Davis. Monk is believed to be the pianist featured on recordings Jerry Newman made around 1941 at the club. Monk's style at this time was later described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences included Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists. In the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, it is stated that Monk lived in the same neighborhood in New York City as Johnson and knew him as a teenager.

Mary Lou Williams, who mentored Monk and his compatriots, spoke of Monk's rich inventiveness in this period, and how such invention was vital for musicians since at the time it was common for fellow musicians to incorporate overheard musical ideas into their own works without giving due credit. "So, the boppers worked out a music that was hard to steal. I'll say this for the 'leeches', though: they tried. I've seen them in Minton's busily writing on their shirt cuffs or scribbling on the tablecloth. And even our own guys, I'm afraid, did not give Monk the credit he had coming. Why, they even stole his idea of the beret and bop glasses."^[11]

Early recordings (1944–1954)

From left, Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge, and Teddy Hill, Minton's Playhouse, New York, N.Y., c. September 1947

In 1944 Monk made his first studio recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was one of the earliest established jazz musicians to promote Monk, and Monk later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on the 1957 session with John Coltrane. Monk made his first recordings as leader for Blue Note in 1947 (later anthologised on Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1) which showcased his talents as a composer of original melodies for improvisation. Monk married Nellie Smith the same year, and in 1949 the couple had a son, T. S. Monk, who is a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born in 1953. Barbara died in 1984 from cancer.

In August 1951, New York City police searched a parked car occupied by Monk and friend Bud Powell. The police found narcotics in the car, presumed to have belonged to Powell. Monk refused to testify against his friend, so the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card. Without the all-important cabaret card he was unable to play in any New York venue where liquor was served, and this severely restricted his ability to perform for several crucial years. Monk spent most of the early and mid-1950s composing, recording, and performing at theaters and out-of-town gigs.

After his cycle of intermittent recording sessions for Blue Note during 1947–1952, he was under contract to Prestige Records for the following two years. With Prestige he cut several highly significant, but at the time under-recognized, albums, including collaborations with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. In 1954, Monk participated in a Christmas Eve session which produced most of the albums Bags' Groove and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants by Miles Davis. Davis found Monk's idiosyncratic accompaniment style difficult to improvise over and asked him to lay out (not accompany), which almost brought them to blows. However, in Miles Davis' autobiography Miles, Davis claims that the anger and tension between Monk and himself never took place and that the claims of blows being exchanged were "rumors" and a "misunderstanding".^[12]

In 1954, Monk paid his first visit to Paris. As well as performing at concerts, he recorded a solo piano session for French radio (later issued as an album by Disques Vogue). Backstage, Mary Lou Williams introduced him to Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild family and a patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She would be a close friend for the rest of Monk's life, including taking responsibility for him when she and Monk were charged with marijuana possession.

Riverside Records (1955–1961)

By the time of his signing to Riverside, Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers, and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance. Indeed, with Monk's consent, Riverside had managed to buy out his previous Prestige contract for a mere $108.24. He willingly recorded two albums of jazz standards as a means of increasing his profile: Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington (1955) and The Unique Thelonious Monk (1956).

On the LP Brilliant Corners, recorded in late 1956, Monk mainly performed his own music. The complex title track, which featured tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, was so difficult to play that the final version had to be edited together from multiple takes. The album, however, was largely regarded as the first success for Monk; according to Orrin Keepnews, "It was the first that made a real splash."^{[citation needed]}

After having his cabaret card restored, Monk relaunched his New York career with a landmark six-month residency at the Five Spot Cafe in New York beginning in June 1957, leading a quartet with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. However, little of this group's music was documented due to contractual problems. Coltrane was signed to Prestige at the time, but Monk refused to return to his former label. One studio session by the quartet was made for Riverside, three tunes which were not released until 1961 by the subsidiary label Jazzland along with outtakes from a larger group recording with Coltrane and saxophone pioneer Coleman Hawkins, those results appearing in 1957 as the album Monk's Music. An amateur tape from the Five Spot (not the original residency, but a later September 1958 reunion with Coltrane sitting in for Johnny Griffin) was issued on Blue Note in 1993; and a recording of the quartet performing at a Carnegie Hall concert on November 29, previously "rumoured to exist,"^[13] was recorded in high fidelity by Voice of America engineers, rediscovered in the collection of the Library of Congress in 2005, and released by Blue Note

"Crepuscule With Nellie", recorded in 1957, "was Monk's only, what's called through-composed composition, meaning that there is no improvising. It is Monk's concerto, if you will, and in some ways it speaks for itself. But he wrote it very, very carefully and very deliberately and really struggled to make it sound the way it sounds. [... I]t was his love song for Nellie," said biographer Robin Kelley in an interview.^[14]

The Five Spot residency ended Christmas 1957, Coltrane left to rejoin Miles Davis's group, and the band was effectively disbanded. Monk did not form another long-term band until June 1958, when he began a second residency at the Five Spot, again with a quartet, this time with Griffin (and later Charlie Rouse) on tenor, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums.

On October 15, 1958, en route to a week-long engagement for the quartet at the Comedy Club in Baltimore, Maryland, Monk and de Koenigswarter were detained by police in Wilmington, Delaware. When Monk refused to answer the policemen's questions or cooperate with them, they beat him with a blackjack. Though the police were authorized to search the vehicle and found narcotics in suitcases held in the trunk of the Baroness's car, Judge Christie of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that the unlawful detention of the pair, and the beating of Monk, rendered the consent to the search void as given under duress.^[15]

Columbia Records (1962–1970)

After extended negotiations, Monk signed in 1962 to Columbia Records, one of the big four American record labels of the day along with RCA Victor, Capitol, and Decca. Monk's relationship with Riverside had soured over disagreements concerning royalty payments and had concluded with a brace of European live albums; he had not recorded a studio album since 5 by Monk by 5 in June 1959.

Working with producer Teo Macero on his debut for the label,^[16] the sessions in the first week of November had a stable line-up that had been with him for two years: tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse (who worked with Monk from 1959 to 1970), bassist John Ore, and drummer Frankie Dunlop. Monk's Dream, his earliest Columbia album, was released in 1963.

Columbia's resources allowed Monk to be promoted more heavily than earlier in his career. Monk's Dream would become the best-selling LP of his lifetime,^[17] and on February 28, 1964, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, being featured in the article "The Loneliest Monk".^[18] He continued to record studio albums, particularly Criss Cross, also from 1963, and Underground, from 1968. But by the Columbia years his compositional output was limited, and only his final Columbia studio record Underground featured a substantial number of new tunes, including his only waltz time piece, "Ugly Beauty".

As had been the case with Riverside, his period with Columbia Records contains many live albums, including Miles and Monk at Newport (1963), Live at the It Club and Live at the Jazz Workshop, both recorded in 1964, the latter not being released until 1982. After the departure of Ore and Dunlop, the remainder of the rhythm section in Monk's quartet during the bulk of his Columbia period was Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums, both of whom joined in 1964, Along with Rouse, they remained with Monk for over four years, his longest-serving band.

According to biographer Kelley, the 1964 Time appearance came because "Barry Farrell, who wrote the cover story, wanted to write about a jazz musician and almost by default Monk was chosen, because they thought Ray Charles and Miles Davis were too controversial. ... [Monk] wasn't so political. [...O]f course, I challenge that [in the biography]," said Kelley.^[14]

Later life

Monk had disappeared from the scene by the mid-1970s, and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last studio recordings as a leader were made in November 1971 for the English Black Lion label, near the end of a worldwide tour with the Giants of Jazz, a group which included Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey. Bassist Al McKibbon, who had known Monk for over twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said: "On that tour Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning', 'Goodnight', 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly."^[19] A different side of Monk is revealed in Lewis Porter's biography, John Coltrane: His Life and Music; Coltrane states: "Monk is exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]: he talks about music all the time, and he wants so much for you to understand that if, by chance, you ask him something, he'll spend hours if necessary to explain it to you."^[20] Art Blakey reports that Monk was excellent at both chess and checkers.^[21]

The documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) attributes Monk's quirky behaviour to mental illness. In the film, Monk's son, T. S. Monk, says that his father sometimes did not recognize him, and he reports that Monk was hospitalized on several occasions due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late 1960s. No reports or diagnoses were ever publicized, but Monk would often become excited for two or three days, pace for days after that, after which he would withdraw and stop speaking. Physicians recommended electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment option for Monk's illness, but his family would not allow it; antipsychotics and lithium were prescribed instead.^[22][23] Other theories abound: Leslie Gourse, author of the book Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk (1997), reported that at least one of Monk's psychiatrists failed to find evidence of manic depression (bipolar disorder) or schizophrenia. Another physician maintains that Monk was misdiagnosed and prescribed drugs during his hospital stay that may have caused brain damage.^[22]

As his health declined, Monk's last six years were spent as a guest in the Weehawken, New Jersey home of his long-standing patron and friend, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who had also nursed Charlie Parker during his final illness. Monk did not play the piano during this time, even though one was present in his room, and he spoke to few visitors. He died of a stroke on February 17, 1982, and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. In 1993, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.^[24] In 2006 he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize citing "a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz."^[25] During his lifetime, his style was not universally appreciated. Poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin once dismissed Monk as "the elephant on the keyboard".^[26]

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was established in 1986 by the Monk family and Maria Fisher. Its mission is to offer public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the globe, helping students develop imaginative thinking, creativity, curiosity, a positive self-image, and a respect for their own and others' cultural heritage. In addition to hosting an annual International Jazz Competition since 1987, the Institute also recently helped, through its partnership with UNESCO, designate April 30, 2012, as the first annual International Jazz Day.

Monk was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.^[27]

Tributes

• Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy performed as Monk's accompanist in 1960. Monk's tunes became a permanent part of his repertoire in concert and on albums. Lacy recorded many albums entirely focused on Monk's compositions.
• Gunther Schuller wrote the work "Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk" in 1960. It was later performed and recorded by other artists, including Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Bill Evans.
• In 1983, saxophonist Arthur Blythe's album Light Blue: Arthur Blythe Plays Thelonious Monk was released by Columbia Records.
• In 1984, a compilation album That's The Way I Feel Now : A Tribute To Thelonious Monk was released by A&M Records. The album features such notable musicians as Donald Fagen, Todd Rundgren, Peter Frampton, Carla Bley, Joe Jackson, Steve Lacy, John Zorn, NRBQ, Bruce Fowler, Chris Spedding, Steve Khan, Sharon Freeman, Gil Evans, Mark Bingham, Was Not Was.
• Anthony Braxton recorded Six Monk's Compositions (1987) in 1987. Singer Carmen McRae released Carmen Sings Monk in 1988. Pianist Ran Blake recorded Epistrophy in 1991.
• Round Midnight Variations is a collection of variations on the song "'Round Midnight" premiered in 2002. Composers contributing included Milton Babbitt, William Bolcom, David Crumb. George Crumb, Michael Daugherty, John Harbison, Joel Hoffman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Gerald Levinson, Tobias Picker, Frederic Rzewski, Augusta Read Thomas and Michael Torke.^[28]
• Free jazz pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and his band recorded every composition by Monk for Monk's Casino released as a triple CD set in 2005.

Discography

Main article: Thelonious Monk discography

Further information: List of Thelonious Monk compositions

References

Yanow, Scott. "Thelonious Monk". AllMusic. Retrieved 2012-03-31.

"Thelonious Monk (American musician) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2012-03-31.

Robin D.G. Kelley Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of American Original, London: JR Books, 2010, p.1. The source identifies the day of Monk's fortieth birthday in 1957.

Giddins, Gary & Scott DeVeaux. Jazz (2009). New York: W.W. Norton & Co, ISBN 978-0-393-06861-0.

Time cover Feb. 28, 1964. Retrieved 2010-12-22.

Search of Time covers for "jazz". Retrieved 2010-12-22.

Solis, Gabriel (2007). Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making. University of California Press. pp. 19–20. ISBN 9780520940963.

Mathieson, Kenny (2012). Giant Steps: Bebop And The Creators Of Modern Jazz, 1945–65. Canongate Books. p. 127. ISBN 9780857866172.

Robin D.G. Kelley Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, London: JR Books, 2010, p13

Kelley, Robin D. G. (2009). Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. Free Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-684-83190-9. Retrieved November 23, 2013.

"Mary Lou Williams interview, Melody Maker, 1954". Ratical.org. Retrieved 2012-03-31.

Miles: The Autobiography With Quincy Troupe, 80

Chris Sheridan Brilliant Corners: A Bio-Discography, 2001, Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, p.80

"Looking At The Life And Times Of Thelonious Monk", transcript of interview with Robin D.G. Kelley by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, NPR; conducted in 2009, replayed December 17, 2010. Retrieved 2010-12-22.

State v. De Koenigswarter, 177 A.2d 344 (Del. Super. 1962).

Marmorstein, Gary. The Label The Story of Columbia Records. New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2007, pp. 314–315.

Monk, Thelonious. Monk's Dream. Columbia reissue CK 63536, 2002, liner notes, p. 8

Gabbard, Krin (February 28, 1964). "The Loneliest Monk". Time (Time, Inc.) 83 (9). Retrieved 2007-11-12.

Voce, Steve (August 1, 2005). "Obituary: Al McKibbon". The Independent (Findarticles.com). Retrieved 2007-11-12.

Porter, Lewis (1998). John Coltrane: His Life and Music. University of Michigan Press. p. 109. ISBN 0-472-10161-7.

"Art Blakey: Bu's Delights and Laments," by John B Litweiler in Downbeat magazine, March 25, 1976.

Gabbard, Krin (Autumn 1999). "Evidence: Monk as Documentary Subject". Black Music Research Journal (Center for Black Music Research — Columbia College Chicago) 19 (2): 207–225. doi:10.2307/779343. JSTOR 779343.

Spence, Sean A (October 24, 1998). "Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music". British Medical Journal (BMJ Publishing Group) 317 (7166): 1162A. doi:10.1136/bmj.317.7166.1162a. PMC 1114134. PMID 9784478.

"GRAMMY.com — Lifetime Achievement Award". Past Recipients. National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2007-11-12.

"The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners: Special Awards and Citations". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2007-11-12.

Spencer, Charles (September 4, 2010) "In the steps of Larkin. The Spectator, London.

"2009 Inductees". North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Retrieved September 10, 2012.

28. Matthew Quayle

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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Thelonious Monk

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thelonious Monk.

• Thelonious Monk at DMOZ
• Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
• The Official Thelonious Sphere Monk Website and Home of Thelonius Records
• Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original – website for the biography by Robin D. G. Kelley
• Thelonious Monk page in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame
• Thelonious Monk's birth certificate
• Roundabout Monk: The European Monk Website
• Thelonious Monk at All About Jazz
• IMDb entry for Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser
• CBC.ca Article on 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners
• Thelonious Monk Multimedia Directory – Kerouac Alley
• Not So Misterioso: Robert Christgau on Monk
• Photo of Monk's grave at Findagrave
• Thelonius Monk at Library of Congress Authorities, with 182 catalog records

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