Thelonious Sphere Monk probably did not drink as much bourbon as William Faulkner. He probably did not shoot as much heroin as William Burroughs, or smoke as much marijuana as Norman Mailer, or get as many “vitamin shots” from feel-good Manhattan doctors as John F. Kennedy. But he had his share. He had his measure. And the wonder is perhaps, not that he died so young, but that he lived so long. Born in 1917, Monk outlived many of his contemporaries, like Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Serge Chaloff, and John Coltrane, dying in 1982, though spending the better part of the last decade of his life in deep emotional and physical decline.
Nine years ago (nine long years) Robin D. G. Kelley wrote Thelonious Monk The Life and Times of an American Original, one of the best books on jazz that I’ve ever read.1 At the time, I conceived a plan to write a long (or longish) piece on Monk, but I was, naturally, distracted, not perhaps from distraction but by distraction, for quite some time. Last year, 2018, proved to be a very auspicious year for Monk fans, and for myself in particular, first of all because I learned of a fascinating project that I could have/should have learned about long ago, the commissioning of 21 contemporary composers by Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli to create compositions inspired by Monk’s most famous tune, Round Midnight. I posted a video of Spanish pianist Ricardo Descalzo playing the longest of these, “Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik”, a nine-part suite/“rumination” by George Crumb.2
Equally exciting (if not more so) was the release in 2018 of two complete sets of all of Monk’s compositions, one an extraordinary solo triumph by guitarist Miles Okazaki, called simply Work, available from his own website and the other, equally impressive, from a group led by pianist Frank Kimbrough, Monk’s Dreams. So if the whole world wasn’t telling me to get my act together and write that Monk piece, enough of it was for me to get the hint.
Naturally, my first impulse, after reading Kelley’s book, was to complain about all that Kelley left out! Yes, critics are ridiculous parasites, with all the dignity of a horse fly. If only authors had tails to swat them!
Anyone who is familiar with, and appreciative of, all of jazz (a dwindling few, I am sure) must be struck by the similarities, and the differences, between Monk and the other great “contrarian” of jazz, Lester Young. Just as Monk went out of his way to be the opposite of all the boppers on the scene in the forties, Young went out of his way to be as unlike as possible as the greatest saxophonist on the scene in the thirties, Coleman Hawkins. Both Monk and Young began their recording careers quite late (27 for both), yet both were, among musicians, already famous. Young in particular managed to have an extraordinary reputation even though he was largely based in Kansas City rather than the Big Apple. While still unrecorded, Young was invited to fill the most famous sax chair in all of jazz, that of Coleman Hawkins himself, with the Fletcher Henderson band, even though Young’s style was the precise opposite of Hawkins’.3
But the differences are significant as well. Young did not record with the Henderson band, making his first recordings with a small group drawn from the Basie band, which he joined in 1935. Young’s solos on “Shoeshine Boy” and “Lady Be Good” are among his very best, and among the very best in all of jazz.
Monk’s first recorded solos, in 1943 with a small group led by Coleman Hawkins, are, in contrast, entirely unremarkable, and even his first recordings under his own name, in 1947, sound awkward, though that may be more the fault of the band than Monk. It isn’t until the next year, in the session with Milt Jackson that produced the first recordings of both “Misterioso” and “Evidence”, that we begin to hear the “real” Thelonious, and the “real” Thelonious doesn’t emerge in quantity until 1951, when he recorded with Jackson again.
Yet Monk was already “famous” among the musicians of New York. He was mentor to Bud Powell, who became the first famous bop pianist, even though Monk was seven years older and had been the house pianist at Minton’s, the Harlem night club forever famous as ground zero of the bop revolution. Powell instantly realized, as Monk refused to do, that the way to become famous in the bop scene was to become “the Charlie Parker of the piano” (or whatever instrument one played).
Monk, of course, was not interested in being the Charlie Parker of the piano. He wanted to be the Thelonious Monk of the piano, which he already was, so, in effect, his work was complete. He expected the world to come to him and, when it did come to him, to accept him as the genius he indubitably was.4 He disdained entirely the cult of virtuosity, the surest ticket to recognition for any musician, and the virtuosity of the early boppers—the early famous boppers, like Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell—was legendary.
Charlie Parker was, of course, Monk’s great rival. While Parker was alive, at least, Monk’s attitude seems to have one of jealousy, that Parker was getting credit for all of Monk’s innovations. The contrasts between the careers of the two men could scarcely have been more complete. Parker, starting out in Kansas City, like Young, was a featured soloist with Jay McShann’s “territory” band (i.e., not nationally recognized) at age 18. At age 20, in a private recording session, he produced two brilliant solos on two tunes closely associated with Lester, “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Lady Be Good”, sounding very much like Lester on the alto. By age 25, Parker had made some of the most important records in jazz.
Still, Monk had his chances. Despite their rivalry—for Monk felt that Gillespie had “stolen” from him as well—Monk took the job as pianist in Dizzy Gillespie big band, formed in 1945 (live recordings of the band exist, available on the CD Dizzy Gillespie Showtime at the Spotlite, though Monk is rarely featured). In true Monkish fashion, he messed everything up, almost invariably skipping the first set of each performance, a “habit” that persisted even for the most important date of his life, the legendary engagement at the Five Spot Café with John Coltrane in 1958.5
Monk was replaced with John Lewis, who had all the discipline Monk lacked, though little of his genius, and who took the opportunity to employ three of his bandmates–Milt Jackson (vibes), Ray Brown (bass), and Kenny Clarke (drums), all three the leading bop musicians on their instruments–to form what was originally called the Milt Jackson Quartet, later morphing into the famous Modern Jazz Quartet, a group that could have been Monk’s.
Monk’s suspicions and resentments plagued him throughout his career. He was almost always on bad terms with his labels, first Blue Note and then Prestige. Blue Note was probably just disappointed in the poor sales of his records, but Prestige seems to have been actively trying to push Monk off the label, frequently using him as a sideman. Yet, again, Monk himself often didn’t seem to be paying attention. He recorded one of his most striking works, an elaborate arrangement of Jerome Kerns’ “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” for Prestige, an almost guaranteed crowd pleaser, yet never, so far as I am aware, performed it live or ever recorded it again. In the famous Dec. 24, 1954 session led by Miles Davis, he recorded his legendary solo on the Milt Jackson composition “Bag’s Groove”, which he thereafter consciously excluded from his repertoire.
Even when Monk signed with Riverside Records, teaming him with a producer, Orrin Keepnews, convinced of Monk’s genius and determined to bring Monk the recognition he deserved, there was endless friction. Keepnews believed that the combination of Monk’s unorthodox compositions and his unorthodox piano style was too much for the masses, a theory which he “explained” (probably to excess) in the copious liner notes that were the fashion of the day and which led him to devote Monk’s first two albums to compositions of other composers. The first, a salute to Duke Ellington, was a success, and a fascinating album, for Ellington, unsurprisingly, was one of Monk’s heroes. The second, The Unique Thelonious Monk, devoted to (white) standards, was less successful. When “forced” to play other people’s music, Monk would almost invariably play the melody straight, perform a brief, perfunctory improvisation, and then conclude with random dashes at the keyboard to express his disdain for such trivial fare.
Since Keepnews “wasn’t interested” in his own compositions, Monk took four of them with him when he served as a sideman on a session led by saxophonist Gigi Gryce, which surely irritated Keepnews. When Monk was finally allowed to play his own music by Keepnews, the results were excellent, but the bloom quickly faded from the rose. There were endless delays, failed sessions, and missed dates. Monk was “offended” by the success of other musicians in Riverside’s stable, like pianist Bill Evans and saxophonist “Cannonball” Adderley. The fact that Adderley, an excellent musician and a serious student of jazz, aggressively courted popularity meant nothing to him, nor did he think that Evans’ “exquisite” renditions of Gershwin and other Broadway composers might prove both more accessible and more popular than his own mysterious compositions, not to mention his patented counter-intuitive virtuosity, which consciously discarded everything that appealed to the untutored sensibility.
Despite a large number of classic recordings, by 1960 Monk had lost interest in working with Riverside, providing, to Keepnews’ increasing frustration, nothing but “live” recordings, using the same format over and over again, a quartet featuring the always excellent Charlie Rouse as the only other solo voice, a format that, in fact, Monk retained for the rest of his career.
By the early 60s, Monk was far more famous than he had ever been, recording with one of the biggest labels in the country, Columbia. He put a great deal of effort into his first album for Columbia, Monk’s Dream. Like many jazz musicians, Monk very often insisted on “first take, best take,”6 but on Monk’s Dream he was willing to pursue as many as eight. Thereafter, however, his energy declined. Throughout his years with Columbia, he refused to take any advantage of the many opportunities his long-delayed fame offered him, clinging to the same performing format and repertoire and very rarely offering any new compositions. His passivity was such that he even complied with Columbia’s insistence on a big band album, Who’s Afraid of the Big Band Monk?, with utterly abysmal arrangements by a totally clueless Oliver Nelson. It’s more than painful to hear Monk striving against Nelson’s syrupy settings, even worse than the “Parker with Strings” and “Parker With Voices” albums cooked up for Charlie Parker by the well-meaning (but stupid) Norman Granz for the great Bird.7 Yet even here Monk managed to wrest greatness from the wreckage: his solo on “Brilliant Corners”, the famously “impossible” tune that he never recorded after its premiere on the Riverside album of the same name,8 is magnificent.
Many years ago, I heard Charlie Mingus say in an interview that Monk and Duke Ellington were the only two “compers” (accompanists) he admired.9 Every other pianist in jazz, Mingus said, simply played the same chords over and over. Only Ellington and Monk showed thought in their accompaniment, only they understood that a solo is supposed to show development. But the differences between Ellington and Monk are, if anything, even more pronounced than their similarities. Ellington was fascinated by listening to his soloists, understanding their capabilities and sensibilities–which he understood better than they did–and leading them where in effect they wanted to go, bringing out the best in them in harmony with his own overarching conceptions.
Monk, in contrast, played the accompaniment that his soloists ought to have wanted, if they had Monk’s sensibility. Not only did Monk want what he wanted, he never bothered to explain what it was he wanted, and he frequently changed his mind. Monk wanted everything to happen both the way he wanted it and of its own accord.
Monk composed a mere handful of pieces, somewhere between 70 and 75, depending on how you count them, while Ellington wrote over 1,000. At the same time that Monk was struggling to be recorded, “establishment” composers like Irving Babbitt and Ned Rorem received massive subsidies and prestigious critical recognition. Yet Amazon lists over a hundred albums each for Babbitt and Rorem, but over a thousand for Monk, an unfair comparison indeed, but one I’ll make nonetheless.10 Many of Monk’s compositions were reworkings of popular tunes of little consequence, yet almost fifty years after his death his reputation seems to grow with each passing year, and recordings of his work are almost without number. The wind bloweth where it listeth.
Afterwords
Hundred of jazz videos, most of them performances of Monk’s tunes, are available from my website here. “Mostly Monk” has hundreds more and is a wonderful source. Ten years ago I wrote a piece about “Salute to Thelonious” albums, discussing about 30 of them. A few years later I added four more but then gave up, a little overwhelmed. I also reviewed The Jazz Baroness, a documentary on the life of jazz patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who cared for Monk during his last years, for the Bright Lights Film Journal.
1. Another is Scott DeVeaux’s Bebop A Social and Musical History, a near-microscopic study of developments in jazz from about 1940 through 1945, published in 1997.
2. You can get an album from Amazon, ’Round Midnight, of Arciuli playing all of the variations except Crumb’s, and you can get Arciuli playing “Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik” on another album, Complete Crumb Edition 9; Ancient Voices of Children, Madrigals Books I-IV, Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik. (I say “album” instead of “CD” because it’s a lot cheaper to download these.)
3. Young’s first influence, apparently, was Frankie Traumbauer, a white musician who played a very obscure instrument, the C-melody sax, falling mid-way in size between an alto and tenor. Trambauer’s “fame” was closely tied to that of once-legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who is still something of a name (go here to download his music).
4. Monk often refused to answer interviewers’ questions. Why speak with ignorant people? Yet with musicians he trusted, he could be compulsively, though no doubt elliptically, voluble, in conversations that ran all through the night.
5. Live footage of this session exists, though unfortunately you won’t find it on YouTube. Multiple ironies are involved. In 1957, Monk appeared on a CBS special “The Sound of Jazz” (available on YouTube, with the Monk footage mysteriously deleted). In 1958, CBS did another special, on “Youth”, and took their cameras to the Five Spot. No one associated with the production seemed to have the least idea of who Monk or Coltrane was. The Five Spot was apparently chosen because that’s where “the kids” were going. The kids, in this case, were Ivy Leaguers, the guys in suits and the Seven Sisters gals in little black dresses and pearls, all of them smoking and drinking up a storm, while the “adult” narrator talks all over the great music we’re hearing, absolutely bewildered as to how or why anyone could or should listen to such “noise”. I saw this footage in a Monk documentary, probably The Jazz Baroness, about Monk’s patron (one of them, at least), Pannonica de Koenigswarter, which I reviewed here
6. However, this was not always the case. The CD reissue of the great Riverside solo album, Thelonious Himself, features a 25-minute cut of Monk struggling to get “Round Midnight” to come out the way it ought to.
7. These hopeless monsters—arrangements of standards whose chord changes, in many cases, served as the basis for Parker’s own compositions—are, at least, “funny” (for those possessing unusually jaundiced sensibilities), particularly the “voices” album, as Parker, who adopts a “golden’ tone for the occasion (the “real” Parker always played sharp), swoops and swirls his way around the pathetically square arrangements. But Oliver Nelson was desecrating not Gershwin but Monk, and it’s far too ugly to laugh.
8. According to the liner notes of the latest reissues of this classic album, most of the musicians on the date found the tune incomprehensible. Monk, in classic Monk fashion, refused to offer any explanation, simply yelling at them whenever they got it “wrong”. After hours of takes and retakes (and yelling), Keepnews had to splice together two takes to produce what’s heard on the album. Now, of course, there are any number of excellent performances available.
9. Dizzy Gillespie said that Ellington was “the best comper ever.”
10. I am no judge of “establishment” music, whatever that is, but I’ve listened to several albums of Rorem’s “songs”—musical settings of classic poems like Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”—and felt the music only distracted from the poetry. However, I am very much indebted to Rorem for a very odd reason. His diaries, which began to be published sometime in the late sixties (I believe) gave most of us straights our first peek into the swinging life of a gay man about town, enjoying all the pleasures that Paris had to offer, anonymous sex in particular. The diaries prompted the funniest parody I ever read, appearing in the New Yorker. I’ve forgotten the author’s name, but I haven’t forgotten the following passage: “Happened to run into X, who told me I’m the handsomest man alive. Catching sight of myself in a store window, I had to agree. How often are beauty and genius allied! How they will hate me when they read this, and I only speak the truth! How few can say as much!”
