With the arrival Thelonious Sphere Monk,
modern musiclet alone modern culture--simply hasnt 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
centurys greatest American composers. At the same time, his commitment
to originality in all aspects of lifein fashion, in his creative
use of language and economy of words, in his biting humor, even in the
way he danced away from the pianohas 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, Jews
harp, and pianoall of which probably influenced his sons
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 Marions 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 citys 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 Mintons Playhouse in Harlem.
Mintons, legend has it, was where the bebop revolution
began. The after-hours jam sessions at Mintons, along with similar
musical gatherings at Monroes Uptown House, Dan Walls Chili
Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming
with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythmnotably Charlie Parker,
Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max
Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monks close friend and fellow pianist,
Bud Powell. Monks 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 pianos 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 its 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 Monks 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 Monks
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
Monks opportunities to workopportunities 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 carda
police-issued license without which jazz musicians could
not perform in New York clubsMonk was denied gigs in his home
town for the next six years. Nevertheless, he played neighborhood clubs
in Brooklynmost notably, Tonys 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 centurys most imaginative solo pianists.
In 1955, Monk signed with a new label,
Riverside, and recorded several outstanding LPs which garnered
critical attention, notably Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The
Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monks 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 Monks 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 medias
growing fascination with Monks alleged eccentricities. Stories
of his behavior on and off the bandstand often overshadowed serious
commentary about his music. The media helped invent the mythical Monkthe
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, Monks Dream, Its
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. Monks final recording
with Columbia was a big band session with Oliver Nelsons Orchestra
in November of 1968, which turned out to be both an artistic and commercial
failure. Columbias disinterest and Monks 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.