Monk, Thelonious

Source:

 African American National Biography

Monk, Thelonious

(10 Oct. 1917–5 Feb. 1982),

pianist, composer, and bandleader, was born Thelonious Sphere Monk (though his birth certificate reads “Thelious Junior Monk”) in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious Monk Sr., a laborer, and Barbara Batts, a maid. When Monk was three, the family moved to New York City, settling on the Upper West Side's San Juan Hill. He was surrounded by music as a youth. His father played music in the home, probably even the blues. Monk came to love the “Harlem stride” piano style, and it is likely, growing up in a West Indian neighborhood, that he heard Caribbean music and light opera. Scholars have heard echoes of all of these styles of music, especially blues and stride, in his playing. The Monk family did not initially provide for his musical education, though his sister, Marion, took piano lessons as part of the standard education of an upwardly mobile young woman. Her younger brother enjoyed watching these lessons and took in much of what she was taught. By the age of twelve, he had developed some piano technique, and Marion's teacher suggested that his talent should be cultivated.

Monk distinguished himself early on as a scholar as well, excelling particularly in mathematics and earning admission to the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. But because of an invisible race barrier at the school, he was not allowed to play in the band, and in his sophomore year he left school in order to play music full-time. Like many jazz musicians, Monk came of age musically in both the sacred and secular worlds of black vernacular music making. By his early teens he had played for “rent parties” and served as an organist at Union Baptist Church, but he became truly acquainted with the rigors of life as a professional musician working as an accompanist for a barnstorming evangelist from 1935 to 1937. There is no documentation of what Monk played for the preacher, but some things can be reasonably surmised. Playing for a preacher on a circuit of diverse African American audiences around the country would have required considerable flexibility in musical interaction and would certainly have been good training for the modern jazz performances Monk engaged in soon after.

Thelonious Monk performs at Minton's Playhouse in New York City, c. September 1947. The pianist and composer had a formative effect on modern jazz. (© William P. Gottlieb; www.jazzphotos.com.)

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Upon returning to New York, Monk played sporadically in a number of clubs around the city, with his own quartet and as a sideman, until 1947, when he was hired for the house band at Minton's Playhouse. Dizzy Gillespie singled out Monk's role in the development of bebop's complex harmonic language in jam sessions at Minton's. Monk was already a prolific composer, and his songs “'Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy,” and “I Mean You” quickly became jazz standards. Monk's dramatic sense of style and self-presentation at the time may well also have had an impact on early boppers, who were becoming famous as much for their sartorial and linguistic style as for their music.

Monk's career appeared to be gaining steam, but it was surprisingly derailed in the mid-1940s, leaving him a marginal figure as other jazz modernists gained fame. Many explanations have been suggested, the most plausible being that although his musical ideas had contributed significantly to the bop style, he really did not play bebop himself. The few recordings made in situ at Minton's in the mid-1940s give the impression that Monk's playing at the time owed a great deal to pianists from an earlier generation and that while he was a very capable accompanist, he was not a virtuoso soloist, as were his contemporaries Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Bud Powell.

In 1947 Monk married Nellie Smith. She was important to Monk in numerous ways, often earning the family living when Monk was unable to, but perhaps most significantly supporting him emotionally and physically during periods when he was under psychological strain. The home life that Thelonious and Nellie nurtured was remarkable in that it contradicts cherished stereotypes about jazz musicians. The two were devoted to each other and their two children, Thelonious Sphere III and Barbara. Both Thelonious and Nellie were essentially homebodies, more interested in cultivating family life than being “on the scene.” Leaving aside the irregularities of a musician's life and Monk's nonconformist style, their lives looked little like anything out of bohemian idylls of the jazz life.

Monk made his first recordings as a leader for the Blue Note label in 1947. These remain striking for the extent to which they present his musical conception in all its stark and complex beauty. They are remarkable especially for their distance from other jazz recordings from the time, for their sparse textures, for an idiosyncratic use of dissonance, and for the freshness of the musical signatures that would later become familiar. In 1951 Monk had a substantial setback both personally and professionally when he was convicted of possession of narcotics. Worse than his imprisonment was the loss of his cabaret card, a license to perform in New York City taverns and nightclubs. Whether Monk was framed on the narcotics charges, as has been suggested, the punitive withdrawal of his livelihood was clearly unjust—a glaring example of the ways in which New York police used the card system to punish arbitrarily.

Even though he could not appear live in New York's high-profile jazz venues, the period from 1952 began a slow process of Monk's emergence as a major public figure. In 1952 Monk signed with Prestige records, where he was unhappy despite the opportunity to record with such jazz greats as Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins. Three years later Monk's contract with Prestige was bought out by the new label Riverside Records, leading to what was perhaps the most fruitful recording period in his life. Monk's recordings with Riverside are unsurpassed, whether solo, with a trio, in quartet settings with leading tenor players of the day, including John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, and Charlie Rouse, or with larger ensembles.

With the help of his friend and sometime benefactor the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Monk secured the return of his cabaret card in 1957. There followed a period of intense activity, including two extended engagements at the Five Spot, a Greenwich Village tavern that soon became a central spot in “hipster” culture. In 1962 he signed with Columbia Records, a major label with the ability to promote him quite broadly. Throughout the 1960s Monk appeared regularly in the United States and abroad, at nightclubs, concert halls, and jazz festivals with a fairly stable quartet, and in 1964 he became only the third jazz musician to have his portrait on the cover of Time magazine.

The 1960s were, nevertheless, a period of mixed fortunes for Monk. Even as audiences appeared to have caught up to his music at last, and as bookings became more regular and fees more lucrative, Monk went into a decline. The playing on his recordings for Columbia, though marked by occasional brilliance, became routine, often lacking the quality of discovery that had made his earlier work so compelling. More alarming was the deterioration in his mental health. Periods of dissociation were exacerbated by inept psychiatric care.

Monk's contract with Columbia ended in 1968, although he continued to perform regularly, albeit sporadically, until 1974 and recorded some of his finest trio and solo performances for the Black Lion label in 1971. By the end of 1972, however, he began to withdraw. He and his wife moved to the Baroness de Koenigswarter's residence in Weehawken, New Jersey, and by 1975 Monk had become almost totally reclusive. He described himself as simply being tired, and his illness was never satisfactorily diagnosed or treated.

Monk died from an aneurysm in Weehawken just as the jazz world was beginning to rediscover his music. While he had perhaps been something of a fad in the 1960s—lauded, but not quite understood—and had quickly fallen out of favor by the early 1970s, in the 1980s Monk's lasting place in the jazz canon was cemented. Starting in 1982 musicians began exploring his music in a series of tribute albums and concerts that has not abated to the present day. Along with Duke Ellington and a few others, Monk has become one of those overarching figures that jazz musicians from literally every style draw upon and learn from.

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