HUM582 - Thelonious Sphere Monk 4-12-2010

8/9/2019 HUM582 - Thelonious Sphere Monk 4-12-2010

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HUM582

Dr. Caldwell

Final Paper

Thelonious Monk, The man and the performer

By

Tim Trevathan

Monday 7-9:45 p.m.


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Abstract

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an innovator of jazz music by genius, competitive forces in ahighly racialized world and a drive to be unique. He was a legend plagued by the ills of his daythat hampered his success, but ultimately he prevailed as the innovator of Be Bop and influencedthe jazz world profoundly. Thelonious wasnt going to take the theft of his ideas andperformance laying down, so he made it so they couldnt blatantly plagiarize him, they wouldhave to settle for a poorly performed substitute limited by their ability to play. Inaccuratemedical understanding of his mental illness at the time left people with no remedy to addressingtheir ills and little was understood on how the ups made for genius and the downs made for alife of hell for the artist and everyone around them. This is a story of tragedy and triumph with avictor; Thelonious Sphere Monk, he if left a legacy worth telling.

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Introduction

As we were given the assignment to do a literature review on a performer and an artist, I

took the opportunity to back my recent criticism of Thelonious Sphere Monk Thelonious

Monk Blue Note Sessions album as a musicians favorite because it speaks to the technical

language of musicians in notes, different musical styles incorporated under the aegis of

jazz (something that had not been done in that day what today we would call a mash-up

of music using different musical styles and incorporating them into a jazz timing format to

create new forms of musical styles within the name of jazz styles also what Chopin did tomusical styles with the Piano in his day, some called it Be-Bop). I went back and listened to

the Blue Monk album and researched his background on Wikipedia, Google Books and

watched his performances on Youtube.com as well as documentaries on Netflix, something

that could not be easily done without paying hundreds of dollars in books and or video

rentals even a few years ago. As I looked at my opinion, the reason for my opinions and

found out why others thought Miles Daviss music was so incredible (an opinion that I did

not understand as a non-musician and a mild jazz fan). In going back and reviewing that

opinion I had formed over three decades ago and had not re-visited since, I had to look at my

musical opinion and knowledge of that time (pop & rock primarily) to see how that opinion

on Monk/Miles very technical jazz of the day (that literally transformed jazz music) and

became the Chopin of jazz today by making a different musical style and taking a look

backward historically to understand the nature of change and evolution of musical styles

and how those differences made significant paradigm changes to what people knew as jazz

music and how my understanding of music and how my taste in music and broadening of

knowledge of the performers and their styles changed my perception of the performance and

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the performer alike in both an appreciation sense, a historical sense and as a performer that I

may have never seen before the Wikipedia/Youtube/Netflix age and being able to easily

get their information, history and comparatively analyze the reasons why certain opinions,

styles and definitions of music (such as Be Bop) were formed, defined and labeled.

What is difficult to understand without a deep understanding of history is why

Thelonious Sphere Monk and Chopin had so much in common in being innovators to their age,

and the influence their style and type of music brought to the world. To this day, we continue to

make specialist in every discipline of study and performance from music to theater to academia

and beyond. What startles people and causes them to feign with delight is the viva la differenceof hearing innovation come to a form of expression that they have not known before. Like all

things human, some are slow to accept change and want everything to stay the same and are

called traditionalist. Others adapt to change quickly and are quick to want to hear or see

something different and embrace change and all of the forms that it takes. These innovators in

everything from musical style, to thought and societal change to technology often act as the

small percentage of conveyors of change that act as the seed to future enhancement and

betterment to society as a whole. But because of this general lack of recognition as agents of

change and having a minority of the population as a paying audience versus the slower changing

societal norms of a lesser intelligence audience that stays static for decades and even centuries,

stuck in the tradition of what they are familiar with and seek no change. All things have a linear

and non-linear history of things staying the same while constant evolution and disruption

swirls around the exterior of those things seemingly forged in rock and begin to sand blast the

shape of the stone of historical tastes, evolution of ideas and styles and ultimately change the

face of humanity over time. This change is sometimes internal, sometimes external and takes on

many forms and shapes, but ultimately, whether called progress or civilization, the process

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and forms of humanity that express change take a deep breath of abuse before being accepted by

the many. Often times years and decades have to pass after the original new art or performance

paradigm form was expressed before finally coning to be appreciated later. The leading

innovators in society often confuse stability the way things are and the currents of change that

address societies need for disparity, difference and diversity.

Like a science fiction dystopia, cultures, people and civilization often define normal as

just like me in virtually every land, culture, civilization and life form. The diversity that often

eludes us and robs us of the joy of difference is the lack of understanding of how others operate

and why they believe what they do or just do what they do as a culture, as a people andcitizens of the planet that developed in different places, under different conditions and different

reasons for those choices of development.

So what the heck does all of that have to do with Thelonious Monk? I keep running

across these mad geniuses in history and find myself wondering how much of their genius was

mad (Im also thinking Kemperer from last weeks book on Hitlers migrs - Kemperer the

conductor) and many, many more artistic types that flourished, produced and then were driven

by the demands of the audience and business part of the performing world to reach a striking

imbalance in their lives, performing too often, traveling too far to perform and adjusting to the

demands of a celebrity world that drives people to the pressures of performance and the lifestyle

of sex, drugs & money as types of mere insanity. Names that jump off the top of my head are

Michael Jackson being driven into remote corners of his own shadow world, Johnny Cash taking

pills and drinking to meet road schedules for touring, Janis Joplin, John Bonham of Led Zepplin

drummer fame, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Marilyn Monroe, and on the list goes of overdoses

that had fame and fortune and the challenges of celebrity and the demand of performance killed

them or caused them to lose a form of balance and sanity along the way.

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Knowing people who are manics or manic/depressives, often a form of exhaustion,

sleep deprivation, excess stress from demand for performance and scheduling that made the

organizers money but destroyed the natural rhythm of a performers natural life and drove them to

self-medicate to deal with their own chemical imbalances and then the mis-diagnosis of the

medical establishments care via prescriptions of profit parading as medicinal use for sleep,

rest and mental soundness when under spectacular financial pressure and performance criticism

that few are immune from the comments and social stigma of criticism under enormous amounts

of global scrutiny and complaint in affecting ones self-image and worth. That in only the last

decade many of these stressed out, media abused, celebrities have been diagnosed and potentiallymedicated properly, I would submit that Mr. Monk may have been a slight manic or

manic/depressive, but a too heavy dose of lithium or bromide, the only drugs known and used for

this malady of the day with the lithium baths of western medicine of that day, caused a person to

be sedated, but also made them incontinent, impotent and unable to articulate the hyper-activity

of manic episodes that often led to the genius hyper-drive like productivity of artist of many

types.

To see the decline and fizzing out of Monks career and life under the care of

individuals who took care of the last days of their life, but also profited immensely by that care

makes me see the often jaded motives of those care takers (like Howard Hughes estate) who

medicated their subjects into oblivion (like Michael Jackson) and stole their fortunes from the

grave.

With this, I investigate the life of Thelonious Monk, knowing that his productivity was a

not a fluke and that his life didnt suddenly take a turn for the worse, but the exposure to

celebrity and the wine, women and song and predators around success that look to make the

performer be a tool or instrument of their income instead of the master of performance probably

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led Mr. Monk down this same path of demise that many/most performer and successful people

seem to succumb to.

Just last night I was reading in L.A. Weekly about Careen Baily Raes husband being

murdered in 2008 and She write a song I would do it all again [no regrets], President Obamas

grandmother dies a week before his historical election and landmark inauguration, Billy Cosbys

son is tragically murdered , Michael Jordans father mysteriously murdered, etc. etc.

Is success a pact with the devil and the price of success is the giving of a precious loved

one as a sacrifice, the cost to paying the devil for that success or is there a pact with an

underground society or governmental force that reminds you that you are owned, paid forand manipulated by powers-that-be as the price to be a part of the club that defines success in

America? I do not have the answer, but the level of coincidence as a golden thread that goes

through the narrative of successful people leads me to start with one and leads to the

coincidence of the othersthe cost of success in America.

The Man The Performer

Thelonious Sphere Monk[1] (October 10, 1917 February 17, 1982) was an

Americanjazz pianist and composerwho, according to The Penguin Guide to Jazz, was "one of

the giants of American music".[2]Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous

contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy," "'Round Midnight," "Blue

Monk," "Straight, No Chaser" and "Well, You Needn't."

Often regarded as a founder ofbebop, Monk's playing later evolved away from that style. His

compositions and improvisations are full ofdissonant harmonies 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. [soft & hard playing

styles are what was said of Chopin]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-0%23cite_note-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pianisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_Guide_to_Jazzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_Guide_to_Jazzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-1%23cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistrophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Round_Midnight_(song)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(composition)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well,_You_Needn'thttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebophttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-0%23cite_note-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pianisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_Guide_to_Jazzhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-1%23cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistrophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Round_Midnight_(song)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(composition)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well,_You_Needn'thttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebop


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Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip"

sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses. He was also noted for the facts that at times, 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. [A performer as well as a musician

something new to performance music at the time]. One of his regular dances consisted ofcontinuously turning counterclockwise, which has drawn comparisons to ring-shout and Sufi

whirling. Since Monk dropped out of High School at age 16 to go on the road with a evangelist

there is some likely-hood to this thought of his dance origin and the tradition of ring-shout

that was practiced by slaves and ex-slaves in the Carolinas where he resided until age 5.

He is one of only five jazz musicians to be featured on the cover ofTime (the other four

being Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, and Dave Brubeck).[3](Wikipedia Accessed

3/8/2010)

Early life

Monk was born October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and

Barbara Monk, two years after his sister Marion. A brother, Thomas, was born a couple of years

later. 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. Although he had some formal training and

eavesdropped on his sister's piano lessons, he was largely self-taught. Monk attended Stuyvesant

High School, but did not graduate. 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 the stint at Minton's, 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 Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parkerand later, Thelonious

Sphere Monk. 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 ofArt Tatum. Monk's stated influences included Duke

Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists.

Mary Lou Williams, among others, has spoken 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

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_shouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirlinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirlinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstronghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynton_Marsalishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brubeckhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-2%23cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mount,_North_Carolinahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_Schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_Schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minton's_Playhousehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebophttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespiehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Christianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Clarkehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parkerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davishttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jerry_Newman&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Johnsonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stride_pianohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williamshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_shouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirlinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_whirlinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstronghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wynton_Marsalishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Brubeckhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_monk#cite_note-2%23cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mount,_North_Carolinahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_Schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_Schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minton's_Playhousehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebophttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespiehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Christianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Clarkehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parkerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davishttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jerry_Newman&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatumhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Johnsonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stride_pianohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams


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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."[4] [3](Wikipedia Accessed 3/8/2010)

Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk

This first full-length biography of the legendary pianist/composer in English tells the

story of the tragic life and creative genius of Thelonious Monk. Based on scores of interviews

with his family, friends and compatriots, along with voluminous research, this book gives the

reader insight into the elusive and often eccentric personality of the composer. It paints a vivid

picture of the difficulties faced by a serious jazz performer in the 50s and 60s who had to battle

to overcome racism to make his mark as a musician.

Thelonious Sphere Monk Straight No Chaser the movie opens up with Monk doing his

famous dance, spinning around in circles like a kid that loves to spin to get dizzy. Later, BenRiley, the drummer, in an interview described this behavior as Monks way of expressing that

the groove was happening, the music had hit a place where getting into the groove made you a

part of the music, you were no longer just playing it. Although called Be Bop, artist like Riley

were hesitant to give this new music a label or name. Monk himself called it modern music.

The name Be-Bop stuck in style and tone.

Thelonious Monk had a different playing style (the way he held his fingers and played), a

different style (by playing all of the keys and notes on the piano keyboard), an as Monk was once

quoted as saying There aint no bad notes on a piano I play them all. Like Chopin before

him and all innovative thinkers and performers, the public at large needs decades to catch-up, so

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the minority of progressive thinkers and musicians understood that playing music could be an

expression of self and did not have to please an audience. If the audience didnt like this new

change and preferred all they had known or currently know, they missed the ingenuity and

creativity of something new. Since this has always been the case for most types of innovation,

the starving artist part of artist would often have to wait decades to build an audience and for

that audience to aggregate to a large enough audience to be at some level of commercial success.

Since racism and segregation was still prevalent, and targeting musicians for their popularity by

attacking their drug usage (as was prevalent in white musicians as well) led to the license for

police to drag blacks down and made for a perfect storm of harassment in some cities.Establishments came to an understanding with commercial interests and local

government to allow musicians to fill their places of business for clubbing to be fulfilled. Monk

was always a bit eccentric in his behavior, but it did not stop the music and genius of his

creative mind from expressing the roots and foundation of jazz music as we know it today.

Monk has been said to have influenced Miles Davis and a host of others with his demands to let

the music flow unrehearsed and dynamically in an impromptu form. One of his most successful

partnerships was with John Coltran the massively popular Sax player and added to his repertoire

of idiosyncrasies by always wearing a different cap or hat and added a pair of glasses frames to

his look. Like most individuals, Monk was just that, he did his music his way in what they called

an angular manner and insisted on keeping the music fresh by not rehearsing often, and doing

the music when recording on one or two takes to ensure the musicians were on their best game

and had to be listening and playing their best instead of predicting the music and what he called

cheating by doing it over and over in rehearsal and practice. Monk did not want a perfected,

rehearsed sound, but a raw gritty talent that came from keeping up with him and the rest of the

band and he would allow musicians to self correct until they got it and could perform like an

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athlete trying to keep up with competitors, not, a rehearsed sound that sounded static and

predictable. Monk expected a real musician to pick up on where the music was headed and fall

into the groove with it. Most musicians require rehearsals and sheet music to keep on track, but

Monk demanded they be real musicians and could pick a spot and go for it in a dynamic way. He

wanted people to communicate through the music and not step on each others feet while

playing. The ability to fill notes as well as feel the music became the enablers for the jam

sessions that brought so much life and the prolific nature to his music. When looking up his

catalog of music on lala.com, there are almost 8,000 different songs or forms (renditions) of his

work. Although his main band for four years was Charlie Rouse on Tenor Sax, Larry Gales onBass and Ben Riley on drums, his Octet also included Phil Woods on alto saxophone, Johnny

Griffin on Tenor Sax and Ray Copeland on Trumpet.

When I went to Youtube.com and looked at the first Thelonious Monk video of Around

Midnight I was blown away. The elegance of his playing struck me right away as a musicians

musician. In live audiences you could hear the crowd laughing as he danced (or twirled) on stage

to the music, but in the zippity ippity finger snapping hippie culture to come, this type of

expression would have been heralded as a new form of expressive artistry, but being ahead of his

time, it seems that he was trying to re-balance his equilibrium. His diagnosis as reclusive and

hyper-active [manic/depressive] was mis-diagnosed as schizophrenia and the difference in

medical treatment and medicines at the time alone could have exacerbated the ultimate outcome

of his life. The fear of shock therapy and memory loss alone would cause anyone to try to hide

or disguise their symptoms as long as humanly possible. There were many musicians at the time

that used heroine, making them seem unreliable and a bit crazy, but there was no evidence that

this applied to Thelonious, even though the inference to Monks potential unreliability by his

personal manager may have given that impression at times.

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His wifes name was Nellie and she stuck by his side in good times and bad. She looked

after him and made sure he was able to function in a daily manner. She tried her best to

interpret Monk and his behavior to their children, the press and musical counterparts, but few

understood mental illness in a way that people could embrace or understand at the time. Crazy

was a condition that you locked up and that was the fate of most who exhibited anything less

than societal norms in those days. Monk used his personality to deal with the racial conflicts of

the day with a streak of stubborn independence and used it to lift and empower blacks musicians

along with many other statements in raising black music as an art and performance form.

Songs like We See performed in London showed the impromptu nature of Monkstemperament. What Monk sometimes lacked in communication skills, he often used trite, dry

humor to tell reporters and the audience what he thought was superfluous jabber. A reporter ask

him What type of music do you like?, Monk responds All Types, the reporter goes on and

asks Do you like country music? Monk feigns hard of hearing and ignores the reporter, stops

for a minute and exclaims to his manager standing by his side I do believe our man has a

hearing problem? this tongue and cheek play on asking serious questions and taking Monk

seriously not loading questions or making conversation for the sake of conversation was only

allowed with a few people the Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter(of Rothschild

family inheritance worth over a billion dollars)being one of them. Monk was proud to have a fan

and supporter in the Baroness, in that even in her eccentricities with cats, she accepted him

unconditionally in any condition he happened to be in as a result of his mental health challenges.

Monk only spoke of this one time briefly before he died when one day they were driving and he

whispered something is very wrong inside my head and that was the first and last time he

mentioned the problem others had perceived and tried to cover for him to remain functional and

productive for years.

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His reception in Europe was one of immediate acceptance and acclaim. The racism that

was still so prevalent in America had been watered down by colonialisms inter-relationships

with Africa and Nigerians coming to Brittan and Cameroonians coming to France as past

colonies and immigration trade partners. There is a funny, homey clip in the film when

Thelonious is laying in bed in an Austrian hotel ordering chicken livers, then when they dont

have that he tries to settle for beef liver and finally gets chicken Marseilles as the only offered

substitute from the menu. We see that although musicians may have had some popularity and

celebrity status, the development of hotel service to meet the whims of celebrities was far from

developed in that time period. The crowds across Europe went bonkers for Monk and loved hisoctets musical style. In the tradition of Chopin, he broke ground in musical style as well as

musical form that others simply couldnt duplicate. Jimmy Hendrix did the same by tuning his

guitar a half a octave below the ordained setting to keep other players from being able to figure

out what notes he was playing [as he played them] and how he got his particular sound out of

an amplifier with re-wiring of acoustics and reverb ( a move that [white] Les Paul ((the guitar

and amp manufacturer)) seized to create his line of guitars and amps that had a unique sound

only available through the tinkering of electronics and acoustic sounds and hard-wired into his

musical devices to give him a protected monopoly on a sound he could manufacture and sell as

a monopoly of musical making.

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

childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music. This was Monks joke on

those who criticized or commented in a derogatory manner Monk was an in your face

musician that did not let the outside world determine his style , his performance or his actions

on or off stage. Above all, Thelonious MonkStraight, No Chaser is the gripping saga of an

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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. A look at

the center of the world's most important creative musical developments in those decades. Like

Billie Holiday, Monk expressed himself in an erratic manner that basically said of his inner

private world If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery and let these critical fools figure it out or do

go @#$% themselves!

Referenced Works

Gourse, L. Straight, no chaser: The life and genius ofThelonious Monk. (2001) SchirmerTradeBooks.Google Scholar. Web. 5 Mar. 2010.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. GoogleBooks. Web. 5 Mar. 2010.

McCurdy, Ronald, C. Meet the Great Jazz Legends. Google Books. Web. 5 Mar. 2010.

OMeally, Robert G. The jazz cadence of American culture. Google Books. Web. 5 Mar. 2010. p.139

Solis, Gabriel. Monk's music: Thelonious Monk and jazz history in the making. Google Books.Web. 5 Mar. 2010.

Van der Bliek, Rob. The Thelonious Monk reader. Google Books. Web. 5 Mar. 2010.

Wikipedia.com. Thelonious Monk. Accessed 5 March 2010

The Performance

Floyd Jr., Samuel A. "Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music

Inquiry."Black Music Research Journal, Vol.22. Center for Black Music Research - ColumbiaCollege Chicago and University of Illinois Press, 2002.

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Link ReferenceStraight, No Chaser: The Life and ... - Google Books12:18 AMhttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=false

12:18 AMhttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=false12:18 AMhttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=false12:18 AMhttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=false12:18 AM

http://books.google.com/books?id=xvbgAQAACAAJ&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=mmCRS4_UKYaYlQST

http://www.tsplusblog.com/2010/03/did-jazz-great-thelonius-monk-have-bipolar-disorder/

Did jazz great Thelonius Monk have Bipolar Disorder?March 29, 2010 by Leslie E. Packer PhD

Filed underFeatured,Uncategorized

Leave a Comment

During his lifetime, there was significant speculation about jazz great Thelonius Monk. It wasnt just his odd clothes

or the fact that he always wore a hat, which could have been just a signature or emblem, but his behavior, often

described as "eccentric" was unusual enough that people noticed and commented.

"He would spin suddenly in a small circle, stride three or four paces, suddenly spin again and come back to his

original position." He would do these things in the concert hall as well as in ordinary situations. Jacques Ponzio

quotes Paul Bacon on Monks first performance in the New York Town Hall. He moved very slowly. He had to cover

about 15 metres from the wings to the piano. He appeared unhurriedly and set off without any suggestion of haste on

his way to the Steinway; it seemed an eternity till he got there. When he had got the stool rightly positioned, had tried

out the pedals and opened his jacket, the audience was already on the brink of desperation. It was not a matter of

presence on the stage, or of the lack of presence, it was just a perfect example of Thelonious Monks usual

behaviour. Another example is recorded from Louisville, Kentucky. Suddenly he could no longer sit still on his stool.

During Rouses chorus he got up abruptly and went straight to the other end of the piano, staring at Rouse below the

cover as though playing hide-and-seek. Then he started to walk around the stage; at every corner he made a right-

angled turn as though under remote control. A great sigh of relief went through the wings when his excursions

brought him back to the piano again. Occasionally, when a concert was going well, Monk would get up, a clumsy,sweating hulk that staggered and stumbled and then began to dance. This was his Bear Dance. "When Monk

performed his short dance steps around us" reported Phil Woods and Charlie Rouse, "we knew that we had played

well." Source: the magazine,DU

In the documentary film Straight, No Chaser(produced in 1989 by Clint Eastwood on the subject of Monks life and

music), Monks 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

Monks symptoms suggest bipolar disorder or schizophrenia . His last years were spent as a guest in the New Jersey

home of his long-standing patron, Nica de Koenigswarter. Source:8notes.com

15
http://books.google.com/books?id=URccnU1uUwUC&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=Z3CRS975PJTGlASLjL3RDg&cd=2http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xvbgAQAACAAJ&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=mmCRS4_UKYaYlQSTwpCmDQ&cd=5http://www.tsplusblog.com/2010/03/did-jazz-great-thelonius-monk-have-bipolar-disorder/http://www.tsplusblog.com/author/leslie-e-packer-phd/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/featured/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/featured/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/featured/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/uncategorized/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/uncategorized/http://www.tsplusblog.com/2010/03/did-jazz-great-thelonius-monk-have-bipolar-disorder/#respondhttp://howardm.net/tsmonk/dumag1.phphttp://howardm.net/tsmonk/dumag1.phphttp://www.8notes.com/biographies/monk.asphttp://www.8notes.com/biographies/monk.asphttp://books.google.com/books?id=URccnU1uUwUC&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=Z3CRS975PJTGlASLjL3RDg&cd=2http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zfXxg9M-u1UC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thelonious+monk&ots=J2ns5jyCW3&sig=W079DTxjTE_cq2Bcj9YNe68mSn0#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA138&dq=thelonious+monk+institute&ei=FlORS_KyBo_OlQTgu8CRBg&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20institute&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jk3Bx7KfdO8C&pg=PA465&dq=thelonious+monk+biography&ei=FkqRS9L-LIjElQTCiNi5DQ&cd=2#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk%20biography&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=OsiDu2wDVXgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=lnSRS5LvJZ2glQSpzNngDQ&cd=4#v=onepage&q=thelonious%20monk&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=xvbgAQAACAAJ&dq=thelonious+monk&ei=mmCRS4_UKYaYlQSTwpCmDQ&cd=5http://www.tsplusblog.com/2010/03/did-jazz-great-thelonius-monk-have-bipolar-disorder/http://www.tsplusblog.com/author/leslie-e-packer-phd/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/featured/http://www.tsplusblog.com/category/uncategorized/http://www.tsplusblog.com/2010/03/did-jazz-great-thelonius-monk-have-bipolar-disorder/#respondhttp://howardm.net/tsmonk/dumag1.phphttp://www.8notes.com/biographies/monk.asp


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Monk died in 1982. Now in a new biography, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American

Original, Robin D. G. Kelley reviews the available information from multiple sources and suggests that Monk

suffered from Bipolar Disorder. In aninterviewwith Douglas Gorney ofThe Atlantic, Kelly addressed the diagnostic

and treatment questions that fans have wondered about for years:

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 hasnt been a consensus. Just a lot of contradictory assertionsautism, Tourettes 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 Monks lifetime.

Whats far more important to Monks 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 Monks career might have evolved differently if hed received proper treatment earlier, that he

might have composed more or taken his music in new directions?

Its a very tricky and fascinating problem. As Ive said, they didnt really understand manic-depression as a condition

or 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 generallynot feeling very goodhe suffered from an increasing number of health problems, some of which had to do with the

thorazine he was taking.

You can read more of the interview in The Atlantic.

16
http://www.amazon.com/Thelonious-Monk-Times-American-Original/dp/0684831902/touretsyndroplushttp://www.amazon.com/Thelonious-Monk-Times-American-Original/dp/0684831902/touretsyndroplushttp://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.amazon.com/Thelonious-Monk-Times-American-Original/dp/0684831902/touretsyndroplushttp://www.amazon.com/Thelonious-Monk-Times-American-Original/dp/0684831902/touretsyndroplushttp://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/


17/54

Addendum #1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_albums

Category:Thelonious Monk albumsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For more information, see Thelonious Monk.

Subcategories

This category has only the following subcategory.

L

[+] Thelonious Monk live albums(14 P)

Pages in category "Thelonious Monk albums"

The following 25 pages are in this category, out of 25 total. This list may not reflect recent changes

(learn more).

Thelonious Monk Blue Note

Sessions

5

5 by Monk by 5

A

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

with Thelonious Monk

B

Brilliant Corners

C

The Complete 1957 Riverside

Recordings

I cont.

It's Monk's Time

M

Monk (1964 album)

Monk (1954 album)

Monk in France

Monk's Blues

Monk's Dream

(Thelonious Monk album)

Monk's Music

Mulligan Meets Monk

S

Straight, No Chaser

(Thelonious Monk album)

T

Thelonious Himself

Thelonious Monk and Sonny

Rollins

Thelonious Monk Plays the

Music of Duke Ellington

Thelonious Monk Trio

Thelonious Monk with John

Coltrane

U

Underground (Thelonious

Monk album)

The Unique Thelonious Monk

17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Blue_Note_Sessionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Blue_Note_Sessionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_by_Monk_by_5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Blakey's_Jazz_Messengers_with_Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Blakey's_Jazz_Messengers_with_Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Cornershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_1957_Riverside_Recordingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_1957_Riverside_Recordingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Monk's_Timehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(1964_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(1954_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_in_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Blueshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Dream_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Dream_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulligan_Meets_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Himselfhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_and_Sonny_Rollinshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_and_Sonny_Rollinshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Plays_the_Music_of_Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Plays_the_Music_of_Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Triohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_with_John_Coltranehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_with_John_Coltranehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unique_Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Blue_Note_Sessionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Blue_Note_Sessionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_by_Monk_by_5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Blakey's_Jazz_Messengers_with_Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Blakey's_Jazz_Messengers_with_Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Cornershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_1957_Riverside_Recordingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_1957_Riverside_Recordingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Monk's_Timehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(1964_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_(1954_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_in_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Blueshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Dream_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Dream_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk's_Musichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulligan_Meets_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight,_No_Chaser_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Himselfhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_and_Sonny_Rollinshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_and_Sonny_Rollinshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Plays_the_Music_of_Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Plays_the_Music_of_Duke_Ellingtonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_Triohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_with_John_Coltranehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk_with_John_Coltranehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Thelonious_Monk_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unique_Thelonious_Monk


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Criss Cross (album)

G

Genius of Modern Music:

Volume 1

Genius of Modern Music:

Volume 2

I

In Orbit (Clark Terry album)

Categories:Albums by artist | Thelonious Monk|American jazz albums|Hard bop albums | Bebop

albums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albums

Category:Thelonious Monk live albumsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pages in category "Thelonious Monk live albums"

The following 14 pages are in this category, out of 14 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn

more).

18
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criss_Cross_(album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Orbit_(Clark_Terry_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Categorieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Categorieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_artisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_jazz_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_jazz_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_jazz_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hard_bop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hard_bop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bebop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bebop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criss_Cross_(album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_of_Modern_Music:_Volume_2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Orbit_(Clark_Terry_album)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Categorieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_artisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_jazz_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hard_bop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bebop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bebop_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Thelonious_Monk_live_albumshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Categories#Why_might_a_category_list_not_be_up_to_date.3F


19/54

B

Big Band and Quartet

in Concert

L

Live at the It Club

Live at the Jazz

Workshop

M

Midnight at Minton's

Miles & Monk at

Newport

M cont.

Misterioso

Monk in Tokyo

S

Solo Monk

T

Thelonious Alone in San

Francisco

Thelonious in Action

T cont.

Thelonious Monk at the Blackhawk

Thelonious Monk Nonet Live in Paris

1967 The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at

Town Hall

Thelonious Monk Quartet with John

Coltrane at Carnegie Hall

Categories:Live albums by artist | Thelonious Monk albums

Appendix #1

1964 Thelonious Monk Times Front Cover Article

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873856,00.html

Jazz: The Loneliest Monk

Friday, Feb. 28, 1964

Everyone who came to meet his plane wore a fur hat, and the sight was too much for him to

bear. "Man, we got to have those!" he told his sidemen, and for fear that the hat stores would be

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closed before they could get to downtown Helsinki, they fled from the welcome-to-Finland

ceremonies as fast as decency permitted. And sure enough, when Thelonious Monk shambled

out on the stage of the Kulttuuritalo that night to the spirited applause of 2,500 young Finns,

there on his head was a splendid creation in fake lamb's-wool.

At every turn of his long life in jazz, Monk's hats have described him almost as well as the

name his parents had the crystal vision to invent for him 43 years ago Thelonious Sphere

Monk. It sounds like an alchemist's formula or a yoga ritual, but during the many years when its

owner merely strayed through life (absurd beneath a baseball cap), it was the perfect name for

the legends dreamed up to account for his sad silence. "Thelonious Monk? He's a recluse, man."

In the mid-'40s, when Monk's reputation at last took hold in the jazz underground, his name and

his mystic utterances ("It's always night or we wouldn't need light") made him seem the ideal

Dharma Bum to an audience of hipsters: anyone who wears a Chinese coolie hat and has a name

like that must be cool.

High Philosophy. Now Monk has arrived at the summit of serious recognition he deserved all

along, and his name is spoken with the quiet reverence that jazz itself has come to demand. His

music is discussed in composition courses at Juilliard, sophisticates find in it affinities with

Webern, and French Critic Andre Hodeir hails him as the first jazzman to have "a feeling for

specifically modern esthetic values." The complexity jazz has lately acquired has always been

present in Monk's music, and there is hardly a jazz musician playing who is not in some way

indebted to him. On his tours last year he bought a silk skullcap in Tokyo and a proper chapeau

at Christian Dior's in Paris; when he comes home to New York next month with his Finnish lid,

he will say with inner glee, "YeahI got it in Helsinki." The spectacle of Monk at large in

Europe last week was cheerful evidence of his new fameand evidence, too, of how far jazz has

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come from its Deep South beginnings. In Amsterdam, Monk and his men were greeted by a

sellout crowd of 2,000 in the Concertgebouw, and their Dsseldorf audience was so responsive

that Monk gave the Germans his highest blessing: "These cats are with it!" The Swedes were

even more hip; Monk played to a Stockholm audience that applauded some of his compositions

on the first few bars, as if he were Frank Sinatra singing Night and Day, and Swedish television

broadcast the whole concert live. Such European enthusiasm for a breed of cat many Americans

still consider weird, if not downright wicked, may seem something of a puzzle. But to jazzmen

touring Europe, it is one more proof that the limits of the art at home are more sociological than

esthetic.Read more:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873856,00.html#ixzz0hLPu9NQ6

Though Monk's career has been painful and often thankless, it has also been a tortoise-

and-hare race with flashier, more ingratiating menmany of whom got lost in narcotic fogs,

died early in squalor and disgrace or abandoned their promise, to fall silent on their horns. Monkgoes on. It is his high philosophy to be different, and having steadily ignored all advice and all

the fads and vogues of jazz that made lesser musicians grow rich around him, he now reaps the

rewards of his conviction gladly but without surprise. He has a dignified, three-album-a-year

contract with Columbia Records, his quartet could get bookings 52 weeks a year, and his present

tour of Europe is almost a sell-out in 20 cities from Helsinki to Milan. In his first fat year, Monk

earned $50,000, and on checks as well as autograph books he signs his grand name grandly, like

a man drawing a bird.

Monk's lifework of 57 compositions is a diabolical and witty self-portrait, a string of

stark snapshots of his life in New York. Changing meters, unique harmonies and oddly voiced

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chords create the effect of a desperate conversation in some other language, a fit of drunken

laughter, a shout from a park at night. His melodies make mocking twins of naivet and

cynicism, of ridicule and fond memory. Ruby, My Dear and Nutty are likeably simple; Off

Minor and Trinkle Tinkle are so complex that among pianists only Monk and his early protg,

Bud Powell, have been able to improvise freely upon them.

Monk's inimitable piano style is such an integral part of the music he has written that few

jazz pianists have much luck with even the Monk tunes that have become part of the standard

jazz repertory. Monk himself plays with deliberate incaution, attacking the piano as if it were a

carillon's keyboard or a finely tuned set of 88 drums.

The array of sounds he divines from his Baldwin grand are beyond the reach of academicpianists; he caresses a note with the tremble of a bejeweled finger, then stomps it into itsgrave with a crash of elbow and forearm aimed with astonishing accuracy at a chromatictone cluster an octave long. (Krin Gabbard The Loneliest Monk (1964) TheBeat Patrol

Nov 27, 2008)

Monk's best showcase has always been a cafe on Manhattan's Lower East Side called the

Five Spot, where he ended a highly successful seven-month engagement in January. The

ambiance of the Five Spot is perfect for Monk's mooddark, a little dank, smoke-soaked and

blue. Night after night, Monk would play his compositionsthe same tunes over and over again,

with what appeared to be continuing fascination with all that they have to say.

Then he would rise from the piano to perform his Monkish dance. It is always the same. His feet

stir in a soft shuffle, spinning him slowly in small circles. His head rolls back until hat brim

meets collar, while with both hands he twists his goatee into a sharp black scabbard. His eyes are

hooded with an abstract sleepiness, his lips are pursed in a meditative O. His cultists may crowd

the room, but when he moves among them, no one risks speaking: he is absorbed in a fragile

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trance, and his three sidemen play on while he dances alone in the darkness. At the last cry of the

saxophone, he dashes to the piano and his hands strike the keys in a cat's pounce. From the first

startled chord, his music has the urgency of fire bells.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873856-

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Pretty Butterfly. At the piano, Monk is clearly tending to business, but once he stepsaway from it, people begin to wonder. Aside from his hat and the incessant shuffle of his feet, he

looks like a perfectly normal neurotic. "Solid!" and "All reet!" are about all he will say in the

gravelly sigh that serves as his voice, but his friends attribute great spiritual strength to him.

Aware of his power over people, Monk is enormously selfish in the use of it. Passive, poutish

moods sweep over him as he shuffles about, looking away, and a member of the race of

strangers.

Every day is a brand-new pharmaceutical event for Monk: alcohol, Dexedrine, sleeping

potions, whatever is at hand, charge through his bloodstream in baffling combinations.

Predictably, Monk is highly unpredictable. When gay, he is gentle and blithe to such a degree

that he takes to dancing on the sidewalks, buying extravagant gifts for anyone who comes to

mind, playing his heart out. One day last fall he swept into his brother's apartment to dance

before a full-length mirror so he could admire his collard-leaf boutonniere; he left without a

word. "Hey!" he will call out. "Butterflies faster than birds? Must be, 'cause with all the birds on

the scene up in my neighborhood, there's this butterfly, and he flies any way he wanna.

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Yeah. Black and yellow butterfly. Pretty butterfly." At such times, he seems a very happy man.

At other times he appears merely mad. He has periods of acute disconnection in which he falls

totally mute.

He stays up for days on end, prowling around desperately in his rooms, troubling his friends,

playing the piano as if jazz were a wearying curse. In Boston Monk once wandered around the

airport until the police picked him up and took him to Grafton State Hospital for a week's

observation. He was quickly released without strings, and though the experience persuaded him

never to go out on the road alone again, he now tells it as a certification of his sanity. "I can't becrazy," he says with conviction, " 'cause they had me in one of those places and they let me go."

Much of the confusion about the state of Monk's mind is simply the effect of Monkish humor.

He has a great reputation in the jazz world as a master of the "put-on," a mildly cruel art invented

by hipsters as a means of toying with squares. Monk is proud of his skill. "When anybody says

something that's a drag," he says, "I just say something that's a bigger drag. Ain't nobody canbeat me at it either. I've had plenty of practice." Lately, though, Monk has been more mannerly

and conventional.

He says he hates the "mad genius" legend he has lived with for 20 years though he's beginning

to wonder politely about the "genius" part.

Monk's speculations were greatly encouraged in December, when he crowned all his recent

achievements with a significant trip uptown from the Five Spot to Philharmonic Hall. There he

presided over a concert by a special ten-piece ensemble and his own quartet.


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(4 of 10)

The music was mainly Monk's own nine compositions from the early / Mean You to

Oska T., which he wrote last summer under a title that is his own transcription of an

Englishman's saying "Ask for T." ("And the T," says Thelonious, "is me.") The concert was the

most successful jazz event of the season, and Monk greeted his triumph with grace and style. At

the piano he turned to like a blacksmith at a cranky forge foot flapping madly, a moan of

exertion fleeing his lips. The music he made suggested that the better he is received by hisaudience the better he gets.

Happenings in Harlem. For Monk, the pleasure of playing in Philharmonic Hall was mainly

geographical. The hall was built three blocks from the home he has occupied for nearly 40 years,

and Monk serenely regards the choice of the site as a favor to him from the city fathers, a

personal convenience, along with the new bank and the other refinements that urban renewal hasbrought to his old turf. The neighborhood, in Manhattan's West 60s, is called San Juan Hill. It is

one of the oldest and most decent of the city's Negro ghettos. Monk's family settled there in

1924, coming north from Rocky Mount, N.C., where Thelonious was born.

He was a quiet, obedient, polite child, but his name very quickly set him apart.

"Nobody messed with Thelonious," he recalls, "but they used to call me 'Monkey,' and you know

what a drag that was." His father returned to the South alone to recover from a long illness,

leaving Monk's mother, a sternly correct civil servant, to work hard to give her three children a

genteel polish. At eleven, Thelonious began weekly piano lessons at 75 an hour.

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It took Monk only a year to discover that the pianists he really admired were not in the books

such players as Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson. By the time he was 14, Monk

was playing jazz at hard-times "rent parties" up in Harlem. He soon began turning up every

Wednesday for amateur night at the Apollo Theater, but he won so often that he was eventually

barred from the show. He was playing stride pianoa single note on the first and third beats of

the bar, a chord on the second and fourth. Unable to play with the rococo wizardry of Art Tatum

or Teddy Wilson, though, he found a way of his own. His small hands and his unusual harmonic

sense made his style unique.

Monk quit high school at 16 to go on tour with a divine healer"we played and she

healed." But within a year he was back in New York, playing the piano at Kelly's Stable on 52nd

Street.

The street was jumping in those days, and in advance of the vogue, Monk bought a zoot suit and

grew a beard; his mood, for a change, was just right for the time. The jazz world was astir under

the crushing weight of swing; the big dance bands had carried off the healthiest child of Negro

music and starved it of its spirit until its parents no longer recognized it. In defiant self-defense,

Negro players were developing something new"something they can't play," Monk once

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The New Sound. All the best players of the time would drop by to sit in at Minton's. Saxophonist

Charlie ("Bird") Parker, Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Drummer Kenny Clarke and Guitarist

Charlie Christian were all regulars and, in fitful collaboration with them, Monk presided at the

birth of bop. His playing was a needling inspiration to the others. Rhythms scrambled forward at

his touch; the oblique boldness of his harmonies forced the horn players into flights the likes of

which had never been heard before. "The Monk runs deep," Bird would say, and with some

reluctance Monk became "the High Priest of Bebop." The name of the new sound, Monk now

says, was a slight misunderstanding of his invention: "I was calling it bipbop, but the others must

have heard me wrong." When bop drifted out of Harlem and into wider popularity after the war,Monk was already embarked on his long and lonely scuffle. Straight bop which still

determines the rhythm sense of most jazzmenwas only a passing phase for Monk. He was

outside the mainstream, playing a lean, dissonant, unresolved jazz that most players found

perilously difficult to accompany. Many musicians resented him, and he quickly lost his grip on

steady jobs. Alone in his room, where he had composed his earliest music'Round Midnight,

Well, You Needn't, Ruby, My Dearhe worked or simply stared at the picture of Billie

Holiday tacked to his ceiling.

In 1947 he made his first recording under his own name and witnessed, to his horror, a breathless

publicity campaign that sounded as if the Abominable Snowman had been caged by Blue Note

Records.

The same year, Monk married a neighborhood girl named Nellie Smith, who had served a long

and affectionate apprenticeship lighting his cigarettes and washing his dishes. Monk had always

been unusually devoted to his mother; Nellie simply moved into his room so he could stay

home with mom. Thus, to his intense satisfaction, he had two mothers. He still found jobs hard

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to come by, so Nellie went to work as a clerk to buy him clothes and cheer him up with pocket

money.

A Drink at Least. Things were terrible until 1951, when they got worse.

Monk was arrested along with Bud Powell when a packet of heroin was found in their

possession. Monk had always been "clean," but he refused to let Powell take the rap alone.

"Every day I would plead with him," Nellie says. Thelonious, get yourself out of this trouble.

You didn't do anything.' But he'd just say, 'Nellie, I have to walk the streets when I get out. I

can't talk.'" Monk held his silence and was given 60 days in jail.

As soon as he was released, the police canceled his "cabaret card," a document required of all

entertainers who appear in New York nightclubs.


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Losing the card cost Monk his slender livelihood, but he had a reputation as an oddball and the

police were adamant. For six years Monk could not play in New York; though he made a few

records and went out on the road now and then, he was all but silenced. "Everybody was saying

Thelonious was weird or locked up," Nellie recalls. "But they just talked that way because they'd

never see him. He hated to be asked why he wasn't working, and he didn't want to see anybody

unless he could buy them a drink at least.

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Besides, it hurts less to be passed over for jobs if you aren't around to hear the others' names

called. It was a bad time. He even had to pay to get into Birdland." Monk was the man who was

not with it, and jazz was passing him by.

Thelonious Sphere Monk had come on with his "impressionist" jazz stylea rubato blowing in

spurts and swoons, free of any vibrato, cooler than ice. The Modern Jazz Quartet was playing a

kind of introverted 17th century jazz behind inscrutable faces, and Dave Brubeck (TIME cover,

Nov. 8, 1954) introduced polished sound that came with the complete approval of Darius

Milhaud. Suddenly jazzone of the loveliest and loneliest of sounds, the creation of sad and

sensitive menwas awash with rondos and fugues. The hipsters began dressing like graduate

students.

Money & Medicine.

Monk was sustained during much of this bleak time by his friend, mascot and champion,

the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, 50. The baroness had abandoned the aseptic, punctual

world of her family* for the formless life of New York's night people. In 1955 she acquired

undeserved notoriety when Charlie Parker died in her apartment (BOP KING DIES IN

HEIRESS' FLAT); she had merely made an honest stab at saving his life with gifts of money and

medicine in his last few days. From then on, though, Nica cut a wide swath in the jazz world.

She is, after all, not a Count Basie or a Duke Ellington, but an honest-to-God Baroness; seeing

her pull up in her Bentley with a purse crammed with Chivas Regal, the musicians took

enormous pride in her friendship.

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Monk was her immediate fascination, and Monk, who only has eyes for Nellie, cheerfully took

her on as another mother. She gave him rides, rooms to compose and play in and, in 1957,

help in getting back the vital cabaret card. The baroness, along with Monk's gentle manager, a

Queens high school teacher named Harry Colomby, collected medical evidence that Monk was

not a junkie, along with character references by jazzmen and musical scholars. The cops gave in,

and for the first time in years Monk began playing regularly in New York. The music he made at

the Five Spot with SAX Tenor man John Coltrane was the talk of jazz.

Monk was making a small but admired inroad into the "funk" and "soul" movements that had

superseded the "cool." Funk was a deeper reach into Negro culture than jazz had taken before, a

restatement of church music and African rhythms, but its motive was the same as bop'sfinding

something that white musicians had not taken over and, if possible, something they would sound

wrong playing.

Then Monk lost his card again.


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Monk, the baroness, and Monk's present saxophonist, Charlie Rouse, 39, were driving through

Delaware for a week's work in Baltimore. Monk stopped at a motel for a drink of water, and

when he lingered in his imposing manner, the manager called the police.

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Monk was back in the Bentley when the cops arrived, and he held fast to the steering wheel

when they tried to pull him outon the Monkish ground that he had done nothing to deserve

their attention. Even though the baroness shrieked to watch out for his hands, the furious cops

gave his knuckles such a beating that he bears the lumps to this day. The baroness took the rap

for "some loose marijuana" found in the trunk, but after three years' legal maneuvering she was

acquitted. No narcotics charges were placed against Monk, but because of the scandal the police

again picked up his card.

You Tell 'Em. Two years later, after further lobbying at Headquarters, Monk returned to the

scene. Since then his luck has changed. Three years have passed without a whisper of trouble.

Abroad, at least, he is approached as if he were a visiting professor. (Interview on an Amsterdam

radio station last week: "Who has had the greatest influence on your playing, Mr. Monk?" "Well,

me, of course.") Most pleasing of all to Monk is a new quartet led by

Soprano Saxophonist Steve Lacy that is dedicated solely to the propagation of Monk'smusic. In the past Monk has been the only voice of his music; he even has trouble finding

sidemen.

His present accompanistsRouse on tenor,

Butch Warren, 24, on bass,

and Ben Riley, 30, on drumshave a good feeling for his music. Rouse is a hard-sound

player who knows that his instrument suggests a human cry more than a bird song, and he

plays as if he is speaking the truth.

Warren's rich, loping bass is well suited to Monk's rhythms if not his harmonic ideals; he

is like a pony in pasture who traces his mother's footsteps without stealing her grace.

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Riley has just joined the band, but he could be the man Monk has been looking for. A

great drummer, as the non-pareil Baby Dodds once observed, "ought to make the other

fellas feel like playing." Riley does exactly that, with a subtle, very musical use of the

drums that forsakes thunder for thoughtfulness.

Monk's sidemen traditionally hang back, smiling and relaxed, and apart from an occasional

Rouse solo, they seem content to let Monk lead. "That's right, Monk," they seem to be saying,

"you tell 'em, baby."

But Monk demands that musicians be themselves. "A man's a genius just for looking like

himself," he will say. "Play yourself!" With such injunctions in the air, the quartet's

performances are uneven. Some nights all four play as though their very lives are at stake; some

nights, wanting inspiration, all four sink without a bubble.

But it is part of Monk's mystique never to fire anyone. He just waits, hoping to teach, trusting

that a man who cannot learn will eventually sense the master's indifference and discreetlyabandon ship.


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Now that Monk is being heard regularly, he seems more alone than ever. Jazz has unhappily

splintered into hostile camps, musically and racially. Lyrical and polished players are accused

of "playing white," which means to pursue beauty before truth. The spirit and sound of each

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variety of jazz is carefully analyzed, isolated and pronounced a "bag." Players in the soul bag, the

African bag and the freedom bag are all after various hard, aggressive and free sounds, and there

are also those engaged in "action blowing," a kind of shrieking imitation of action painting.

Within each bag, imitation of the "daddy" spreads through the ranks like summer fires.

Trumpeters try to play like Thelonious Sphere Monk. And hold their horns like Miles. And dress

like Miles. Bassists imitate Charlie Mingus or Scott La Faro; drummers, Max Roach or Elvin

Jones. Sax players copy Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, who is presently so much the vogue that

the sound of his whole quartet is being echoed by half the jazz groups in the country.

Bud Powell, Red Garland, Bill Evans and Horace Silver all have had stronger influences than

Monk's on jazz pianists. Monk's sound is so obviously his own that to imitate it would be as risky

and embarrassing as affecting a Chinese accent when ordering chop suey. Besides, Monk is off

in a bag all his own, and in the sleek, dry art that jazz threatens to become, that is the best thing

about him.

Other notable coincidences of mental instability after police brutality (cypotropic drugs

being sold to artist to destroy their influence on society).

Bud Powell

[In November 1947, Powell was admitted to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, where he stayed for

more than a year, receiving electroconvulsive therapywhich caused severe memory loss. The

young Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins became friendly with Powel

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HUM582 - Thelonious Sphere Monk 4-12-2010