Thelonious Monk
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Thelonious Monk, as featured on the cover of his 1956 album, Brilliant Corners (1958 reissue cover shown) |
Thelonious Sphere Monk (
October 10,
1917 –
February 17,
1982) was a
jazz pianist and
composer.
He is known for his unique
improvisational style and many contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including his classic works "
'Round Midnight" and "
Blue Monk". Monk is often regarded as a founder of
bebop although his playing style evolved away from the form.His compositions and improvisations often highlight rhythmic and spatial relationships rather than melody.
Early life
Little is known about Monk's early life. He was born on
October 10,
1917 in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk, with a sister named Marian who was two years older. Monk started playing the
piano at the age of six; although he had some formal training and eavesdropped on his sister's piano lessons, he was essentially self-taught.
The son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk according to Birth records of State of North Carolina, Nash County, Rocky Mount, volume 3, page 1148. In the U.S. Federal Census of 1920 he was listed as "Theloins, Jr" age 2, living at 814 George Washington Ave. with his parents "Theloins," age 30 and Barbara, age 27, sister Marian, age 4, and grandmother George Anna Williams, age 54, a widow. There were two roomers at the address. Theloins Sr was a laborer, streets.
By
1930 the family had moved to
Manhattan, and in the Federal Census of 1930, the Monks are listed as follows: Barbara, age 37, Marian, age 14, Thelonius, age 12 and Thomas, age 10. They lived at 243 West 63rd St., and Monk attended
Stuyvesant High School, but did not graduate.
He briefly toured with an evangelist in his teens, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. He is believed to be the pianist on some recordings
Jerry Newman made around
1941 at
Minton's Playhouse, the legendary Manhattan club where Monk had been hired as the house pianist. His style at the time is described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of
Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences include
Duke Ellington,
James P. Johnson, and other early
stride pianists.
Monk's unique piano style was largely perfected during his stint as the house pianist at Minton's in the early-to-mid 1940s, when he participated in the famous after-hours "cutting competitions" that featured most of the leading jazz soloists of the day. The Minton's scene was crucial in the formulation of the
bebop genre and it brought Monk into close contact and collaboration with other leading exponents of bebop including
Dizzy Gillespie,
Charlie Parker,
Miles Davis,
Sonny Rollins,
Milt Jackson and
John Coltrane.
1944-1954
In
1944 Monk made his first studio recordings with the
Coleman Hawkins Quartet. He 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 later became a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born in
1953.
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–
52, he was under contract to
Prestige Records for the following two years. With Prestige he cut several under-recognized, but highly significant albums, including collaborations with saxophonist
Sonny Rollins and drummer
Art Blakey. In 1954, Monk participated on the famed Christmas Eve sessions which produced the album,
Bags' Groove 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.
Riverside and Columbia, 1954-1970
At the time of his signing to
Riverside Monk was highly rated by his peers and by some critics, but his records did not sell in significant numbers, and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for mass-market acceptance. Indeed, Riverside had managed to buy out his previous contract for a mere $108.24. His breakthrough came thanks to a compromise between Monk and the label, who convinced him to record two albums of his interpretations of jazz standards.
His debut for Riverside was a 'themed' record featuring Monk's distinctive interpretations of the music of
Duke Ellington. The resulting LP,
Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, was designed to bring Monk to a wider audience, and pave the way for a broader acceptance of his unique style. According to recording producer
Orrin Keepnews, Monk appeared unfamiliar with the Ellington tunes and spent a long time reading the sheet music and picking the melodies out on the piano keys. Given Monk's long history of playing, it seems unlikely that he didn't know Ellington's music, and it has been surmised that Monk's seeming ignorance of the material was a manifestation of his typically perverse humor, combined with an unstated reluctance to prove his own musical competency by playing other composers' works (even at this late date, there were still critics who carped that Monk "couldn't play"). The album is generally regarded as one of the less successful Monk studio outings.
Finally, on the 1956 LP
Brilliant Corners, Monk was able to record his own music. The complex title track (which featured legendary tenor saxophonist,
Sonny Rollins) was so difficult to play that the final version had to be put together as seamlessly as possible from different takes.
In
1954, he paid his first visit to
Europe, performing and recording in
Paris. It was here that he first met Baroness
Pannonica de Koenigswarter, "Nica", member of the
Rothschild banking family of England and patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She would be a close friend for the rest of his life.
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 during 1957, leading a quartet that included
John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. Unfortunately little of this group's music was documented, apparently because of contractual problems (Coltrane was signed to Prestige). One studio session was made by Riverside but only later released on Jazzland; an amateur tape from the Five Spot (not the original residency, it seems, but a later 1958 reunion) was uncovered in the 1990s and issued on Blue Note. On November 29 that year the quartet performed at
Carnegie Hall and the concert was recorded in high fidelity by the
Voice of America broadcasting service. The long-lost tape of that concert was rediscovered in the collection of the
Library of Congress in January 2005.
In
1958, 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.
State v. De Koenigswarter, 177 A.2d 344 (Del. Super. 1962). Monk was represented by
Theophilus Nix, the second African-American member of the
Delaware Bar Association.
In
1964, he appeared on the cover of
Time magazine. By now he was signed to a major label,
Columbia Records, and was promoted more widely than earlier in his career. Monk also had a regular working group, featuring the tenor saxophonist
Charlie Rouse, but by now his compositional output had largely dried up. Only his final Columbia disc,
Underground, featured a substantial number of new tunes, including his only waltz-time piece, "Ugly Beauty."
He disappeared from the scene in the early
1970s and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last recording was completed in November
1971.
Later life
Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip" sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses, and he developed an unusual, highly syncopated and percussive manner of playing piano. He was also noted for the fact that at times he would stop playing, stand up from the keyboard and dance in a counterclockwise fashion,
ring-shout style, while the other musicians in the combo played.
It is said that he would rarely speak to anyone other than his beloved wife Nellie, and certainly in later years it was reported that he would go through an entire tour without speaking to the other members of his group. Bassist
Al McKibbon, who had known Monk for 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."
Although these anecdotes may typify Monk's behavior in his later life, in Lewis Porter's biography of John Coltrane, the saxophonist reveals a very different side of Monk; Coltrane states that Monk was, in his opinion:
"... exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]. He talks about music all the time and 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."
There has been speculation that some of Monk's quirky behaviour was due to
mental illness. In the
documentary film Straight, No Chaser (produced in
1989 by
Clint Eastwood on the subject of Monk's life and music), Monk's son,
T.S. Monk, reported that Monk was on several occasions hospitalized due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late
1960s. No diagnosis was ever made public, but some have noted that Monk's symptoms suggest
bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia or
Tourette's Syndrome. Whatever the precise diagnosis, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that Monk was suffering from some form of pathological introversion (
cf. Syd Barrett) and that from the late sixties onward he became increasingly uncommunicative and withdrawn. As his health declined, his last years were spent as a guest in the New Jersey home of his long-standing patron, Baroness
Nica de Koenigswarter, who had also nursed
Charlie Parker during his final illness.
He died of a stroke on
February 17,
1982 and was buried in
Ferncliff Cemetery in
Hartsdale, New York. Following his death, his music has been rediscovered by a wider audience and he is now counted alongside the likes of
Miles Davis,
John Coltrane, and others as a major figure in the history of jazz. Monk's music is arguably the most recorded of any jazz composer. In 2006, Monk was posthumously awarded a special citation from the
Pulitzer Prize board for "a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz."
*
After Hours at Minton's (1943)
*
Genius Of Modern Music: Volume 1 (1947-1948)
*
Genius Of Modern Music: Volume 2 (1947-1952)
*
Thelonious Monk Trio (1952)
*
Monk (1953)
*
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins (1953)
*
Thelonious Monk plays the Music of Duke Ellington (1955)
*
The Unique Thelonious Monk (1956)
*
Brilliant Corners (1957)
*
Thelonious Himself (1957)
*
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (1957)
*
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk (1957)
*
Monk's Music (1957)
*
Mulligan Meets Monk (1957, with
Gerry Mulligan)
*
Blues Five Spot (1958)
*
Thelonious in Action (1958)
*
Misterioso (1958)
*
The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall (1959)
*
5 by Monk by 5 (1958)
*
Thelonious Alone in San Francisco (1958)
*
Thelonious Monk at the Blackhawk (1960)
*
Monk in France (1961)
*
Monk's Dream (1962)
*
Criss Cross (1962)
*
Monk in Tokyo (1963)
*
Miles and Monk at Newport (1963, with unrelated Miles Davis performance)
*
Big Band and Quartet in Concert (1963)
*
It's Monk's Time (1964)
*
Monk. (1964)
*
Solo Monk (1964)
*
Live at the It Club (1964)
*
Live at the Jazz Workshop (1964)
*
Straight, No Chaser (1966)
*
Underground (1967)
*
Monk's Blues (1968)
*
The London Collection (1971, three volumes)
*
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (2005)
*
Download sample of "Ruby My Dear"
(an incomplete list)
* Ask Me Now
* Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are
* Bemsha Swing
* Blue Monk
* Blues Five Spot
* Brilliant Corners
* Bye-Ya
* Criss Cross
* Crepuscule with Nellie
* Epistrophy
* Evidence
* Five Spot Blues
* Four in One
* Friday the 13th
* Green Chimneys
* I Mean You
* In Walked Bud
* Let's Cool One
* Little Rootie Tootie
* Locomotive
* Misterioso
* Monk's Dream
* Monk's Mood
* North of the Sunset
* Nutty
* Off Minor
*
Pannonica* Reflections
* Rhythm-A-Ning
*
'Round Midnight (song)* Ruby, My Dear
* San Francisco Holiday (Worry Later)
* Shuffle Boil
* Straight, No Chaser
* Skippy
* Thelonious
* Think of One
* Trinkle, Tinkle
* Ugly Beauty
* Well, You Needn't (It's Over Now)
* We See
*The unusual name of Thelonious is in many translations of
Ovid's
Metamorphoses as an alternate spelling for Philonius,
Mercury's son. Today, most scholars agree that the spelling should have been Thelonious.
*An episode of is sub-titled 'Felonius Monk', an obvious refence to Thelonious Monk.
*
A Thelonious Monk Website*
Thelonious Monk at All About Jazz*
IMDb entry for Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser*
Read a review of Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane...At Carnegie Hall*
CBC.ca Article on 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners
