Thelonious Monk

• Born: October 10, 1917
• Birthplace: Rocky Mount, North Carolina
• Died: February 17, 1982
• Place of death: Englewood, New Jersey

Jazz musician

Widely considered one of modern jazz’s greatest musicians and most innovative composers, Monk was a pianist, composer, and band leader. His highly original and idiosyncratic style, and compositions like “Ruby My Dear,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “’Round Midnight,” and “Epistrophy,” had a major influence on the development of bebop and hard bop.

Areas of achievement: Music: composition; Music: jazz

Early Life

Thelonious Sphere Monk (theh-LOH-nee-uhs muhnk) was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to Thelonious Monk, Sr., and Barbara Batts. His father worked as a manual laborer and later as an ice puller for an ice company. In 1922, Monk, his mother, brother, and sister moved to New York. His first musical memory was of listening to piano rolls. He started playing the piano when he was five years old, and his first job in his teens was touring with an evangelist and playing the church organ. Monk attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, where he worked hard but received average grades and eventually decided to drop out. Monk possessed a broad knowledge of musical genres other than jazz; he greatly appreciated Western classical music (particularly Frédéric Chopin and Igor Stravinsky) and had encyclopedic knowledge of gospel music and hymns. Local musicians from the San Juan Hill neighborhood he grew up in, including stride pianist James P. Johnson and saxophonist Benny Carter, had a great influence upon him. He also had first-rate formal music teachers, including Simon Wolf, a classical pianist and violinist. Finally, Monk obtained an excellent grounding in the sacred music of the black Baptist tradition by attending religious holiday services at a church on Sixty-First Street.

Monk was able to find work performing jazz in his late teens. For three years starting in 1940, he played in the famous house band of Minton’s Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub whose after-hours competitions were key to the development of bebop. During this time, Monk met and worked with important bebop performers such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He started composing while working at Minton’s in 1941, and in 1944, he briefly played with Cootie Wilson’s orchestra.

Life’s Work

Monk began to draw attention when he joined the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in 1944. Hawkins was impressed by Monk’s harmonic conception, and that same year Monk made his first studio recordings with the quartet.

The period from 1945 to 1954 was a difficult time for Monk. Because of his highly unusual musical style, which relied on disconcerting dissonance, abrupt harmonic juxtaposition, and large spaces he left in his rhythmic solos, he was widely considered by jazz critics to be a mediocre pianist. Moreover, his complex compositions were thought to be unplayable, and his eccentricity (he was known for unconventional headgear that included Japanese skullcaps and Stetson hats and for his colorful dancing during group performances) made many consider him a poseur or even crazy. However, a handful of African American composers understood his musical quirkiness as a product of the black musical tradition and the influence of musicians like Johnson. Some record producers also saw Monk’s talent. Alfred Lion of Blue Note was one of these individuals, and his label recorded Monk under his own name from 1947 to 1948 and 1951 to 1952. Monk married Nellie Smith in 1947; they had a son and daughter.

In 1951, the New York police searched a parked car in which Monk and a close friend, jazz pianist Bud Powell, were sitting. During the search, Powell threw a small envelope near Monk, who did not notice it. The police discovered heroin in the package. Monk refused to testify against Powell, served sixty days in a workhouse, and had his crucial New York City cabaret card revoked. As a result, he could no longer perform in any New York club where alcohol was served, a severe restriction for a struggling musician. Monk spent several difficult years playing engagements outside the city in black-owned clubs and cabarets in Brooklyn. He also made recordings for Prestige from 1952 to 1954 and for Vogue in 1954.

Monk’s fortunes slowly began to improve in the mid-1950’s. In 1955, he was asked by famous Riverside Records producer Orrin Keepnews to record an album of Duke Ellington compositions. This album, Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington, exposed a wide audience to his unique style of playing. Soon after, his classic 1956 album, Brilliant Corners, with Sonny Rollins on saxophone and Max Roach on drums, earned him long-overdue critical respect and recognition. The album was Monk’s first major hit and contained some of his best compositions, such as “I Surrender, Dear” and the title song. Monk went on to record many albums with Riverside, which were later rereleased in a box set, The Complete Riverside Recordings (1986), that covered Monk’s work from 1955 to 1961. In 1957, Monk was booked at the famous Five Spot Café in New York for a long engagement working with a quartet that included John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. By this time, Monk was a major celebrity. In 1962, he signed with Columbia Records.

The best of Monk’s numerous recordings include Misterioso (1958), The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall (1959), Monk’s Dream (1962), Criss Cross (1963), Big Band and Quartet in Concert (1963), Straight, No Chaser (1967), and The London Connection, Vol. 3 (1971). Monk’s recordings contain not only his numerous compositions but also his favorite standards and obscure tunes from the 1920’s and 1930’s. His unique treatment of these songs is best heard in the compilation Monk Alone: The Complete Solo Studio Recordings, 1962-1968 (1998). Monk’s interpretations range from the playful, ironic, and upbeat, as in his stride through George Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” to slow, melancholic, and meditative, as in “I Love You Sweetheart of All My Dreams.” Through it all, however, Monk remains respectful of the core melody as he explores the melodic and harmonic possibilities present in the original structure of each song.

In 1973, Monk decided to retire. He suffered from mental illness and spent the last years of his life in virtual seclusion in New Jersey as a guest of his patron, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. He died of a stroke on February 17, 1982. In 2006, Monk was posthumously awarded a prestigious Pulitzer Prize special citation.

Significance

Monk’s prolific output as a composer and pianist had a major influence on modern jazz. For a long time, his quirky, angular manipulation of harmonic rhythms was misunderstood, and Monk was considered lacking in talent by jazz critics and many musicians. Over time, however, listeners began to realize that he was not only an innovator but also a creative updater of a rich, long-standing part of the black musical tradition, and that his complex music revealed an advanced technical competency and artistic sensibility. Monk changed the course not only of American jazz but also of American music.

Bibliography

Fitterling, Thomas. Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music. Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Hills Books, 1997. An excellent overview of Monk’s work that traces his musical development and contributions as a composer.

Kelly, Robin D. G. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. New York: Free Press, 2009. The most comprehensive account of Monk’s life. Contains updated information based on Monk’s family papers and private recordings.

Williams, Martin. “Thelonious Monk: Modern Jazz in Search of Maturity.” In The Jazz Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Examines Monk in the context of the development of modern jazz.