A young boy, sitting at a piano placed to the side of a stage in some smoke-filled barroom, was thought a beginner as he commenced to playing. He was criticized for his use of harmonic dissonance, sloppy rhythms, and the open embracement of silence. Thelonious Monk, now hailed as one the architects of Bebop, was the kid at the piano in that New York bar in the late 1930’s. It is, now, almost incomprehensible to have ever considered Monk to be a beginner. His creativeness is now understood as genius, yet still not understood in its entire.
Thelonious Monk was born October 17, 1917, in North Carolina’s Rocky Mount to Barbara Batts and Thelonious Monk, Sr. He only spent four years of his life in Rocky Mount until his mother and two siblings, Marion and Thomas, relocated to New York City; however, unlike the rest of the southern black migrants, who were heading straight to Harlem, Barbara and her children settled in Manhattan on West 63rd Street (near the Hudson River). Monk’s father arrived in Manhattan sometime around Monk’s third year there. Monk’s father played harmonica (“mouth” harp) and piano constantly; nevertheless, his father’s consistent health problems finally forced his father to return to his native South.
Monk had a brief stint on the trumpet before settling squarely on the piano as his musical voice and intellectual outlet. The piano allowed for tonal extensions thus lush chords and experimental harmonies. At the time his sister, Marion, was already enrolled in piano lessons, and her instructor agreed to take on another pupil--the nine-year-old Monk began his piano exploration and musical endeavors. Somewhere in his early teens, according to Robin D. G. Kelley Ph.D., a Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, and Jazz Studies at Columbia University, Monk commenced to “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.”
Monk, being a very able student, was admitted to Peter Stuyvesant--one of New York City’s best high schools--but drop out to chase his musical aspirations by the end of his sophomore year. He joined a band that backed an evangelist and faith healer; they journeyed around from town to town spreading “the Word” and joyous tunes to many. After two years of relentless traveling, monk returned to New York City and founded a quartet. They played local blues bars and jazz halls up to the spring of 1941, when Monk became the pianist for the house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem.
Kelley describes the setting, “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.” Kelley also adds that Monk was “[a]nointed by some critics as the ‘High Priest of Bebop,’” for “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.”
Monk’s playing style was one that differentiated him from his contemporaries--in the sense that he viewed music through not only the eyes of a player but the eyes of a composer. Yet, his perpetual and bewildering complexities never were enough to hold him back from the rawness of a lyrical blues line; he believed taste was more valuable in a piece than virtuosity. “In 1947 Monk made his first recordings as a leader for Blue Note. These albums are some of the earliest documents of his unique compositional and improvisational style, both of which employed unusual repetition of phrases, an offbeat use of space, and joyfully dissonant sounds,” excerpt from Monk’s biography on Monk Institute. Kelley continues with 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.”
Monk remained moderately marginal throughout the 1940’s and the early 1950’s in comparison to his fellow jazz musicians. Although he played with some of the biggest names of the time like well-known drummer Art Blakey, legendary trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis, and star saxophonists like Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins, and he also headed a record of all-stars (trumpeter Kenny Dorham, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, tenor saxophonist “Lucky” Thompson, bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer Max Roach) for his 1952 album, which was moreover his last for Blue Note, he just could not rise above. “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,” according to Kelley.
Working where he could after marrying his long-time love, Nellie Smith, in 1947 and having their first child, Thelonious, Jr., in 1949, the pressure mounted and thanks to many brutal, insensitive, and ill-informed critics it did not lessen. Monk found work--as scarce as it was--at local bars as much as possible. To make things worse, he took responsibility for narcotics possession intended to protect his fellow musician and friend, Bud Powell. By doing that though he lost his cabaret card--a license for musicians issued by the police department, for without it jazz musicians were prohibited from performing within New York clubs.
When 1955 rolled around, Monk began recording numerous albums with his new label, Riverside. These albums include Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, The Unique Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Monk’s Music, and Thelonious Monk Alone (second completely solo record). This time around the critics praised him and the public was now on the verge of understanding and appreciation.
“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,” Kelley wrote in a biographical essay.
By 1961 Monk had the core of his quartet tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist John Ore, and drummer Frankie Dunlop (later Ore was replaced by Butch Warren and then Larry Gales and Dunlop was replaced by Ben Riley). In 1964 Monk’s face graced the cover of the Time Magazine--only the third jazz musician in history to do so. From 1971 through 1972, Monk traveled with the “Giants of Jazz,” which had greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon, and Art Blakey.
Due to physical illness Monk “discontinued touring and recording and appeared only on rare occasions at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival,” stated on the Monk Institute's page.
Monk’s final public performance was in July of 1976. In his last days, he just gave up on writing music and playing the piano. On February 5, 1982, Monk suffered a stroke. He never fully regained cognitive thought; he hung on for another twelve days before passing away on February 17th.
Monk grained a great deal of respect by the time of his death, but posthumously he is now one of the most honored musicians in all forms of music. Monk was quoted saying, “I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don’t have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.”
Here is my term paper for Music 142 (that I just finished). I contemplated several topics for this assignment. After thinking about doing a paper on Eric Clapton (a person whom I know about very much), I decided that he would not be acquit enough to be compared to Mozart or Copland; however, I felt that Mozart and Copland would have been to commonplace. I chose Thelonious Monk, the first jazz artist into which I really got, because he in my opinion is highly over shadowed by far less creative players. If anyone wants to check him out, but cannot find an album, I will be glad to loan one of my numerous records of him just to spread the word of his musical importance.
