“I’m Famous. Ain’t that a Bitch?”
Thelonious Monk
When Thelonious Monk walked the earth he was already larger than life. Upon his death in 1982, he shrunk momentarily but reemerged a giant of mythical proportions. Now, with his 100th birthday upon us in 2017—arguably the most anticipated celebration of any jazz artist since Duke Ellington’s centennial in 1999—Thelonious Monk has never been larger.
Monk’s posthumous fame has been something of a portmanteau. On the one hand, even in death he’s continued to be an accumulation of tall tales and entertaining anecdotes, one of jazzlore’s favorite weird and eccentric characters, outsized only by Sun Ra. Veracity never mattered when it came to Monk. As I argue throughout this book, the music industry, its writers and consumers, and even some musicians have kept the manufactured Monk alive. Despite my best efforts to peel back the myths, lies, and exaggerations in order to reveal the musician, the composer, the student, the teacher, the worker, the son, the husband, the father, the friend, and the black man in a changing and volatile world, the mythical version of Monk endures. Seven years after the publication of Thelonious Monk, I’m still encountering cringeworthy essays by writers who describe Monk as “self-taught,” “mystical,” and living entirely “in his head.”
On the other hand, Monk has been elevated to the realm of high art and recognized as a composer of serious music. He is taught in nearly all college music departments, academies, and conservatories as part of the canon of twentieth-century American music. In 2003, the Library of Congress added his Brilliant Corners LP to its National Recording Registry. He has attained a place in the American musical repertory that extends beyond jazz to genres such as rock, electronica, Latin, experimental music, modern orchestral music, even hip hop. Artists from every corner of the globe are performing and reinterpreting his music. Consequently, recordings of Monk’s compositions since his death thirty-four years ago vastly outnumber those made in the course of his lifetime. To prove the point one need only conduct a title search of “ ’Round Midnight” on the Tom Lord Jazz Discography website. It has not only become one of the most recorded songs in the jazz canon but the range of contexts, styles, instrumentations, and genres in which it has been performed just since the 1990s is downright dizzying.
In the last decade, literally hundreds of CDs, concerts, and repertory ensembles dedicated exclusively to Monk’s music have been produced, although none as ambitious or as visionary as Jason Moran’s In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, 1959. Commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of Monk’s historic big band concert at New York’s Town Hall, it is a multimedia project that draws on documentary recordings of Monk’s rehearsals at Eugene Smith’s downtown loft, photographs, digital sampling and mixing, and contributions from artist Glenn Ligon, combined with stunning, virtuosic performances of Moran’s arrangements that both stay true to the original Hall Overton charts while radically departing from their 1959 aesthetic vision. The piece has been performed at major concert halls and is the subject of an incisive documentary film directed by Gary Hawkins.
In the intervening years since the publication of this book, archives have opened up, unreleased music is now available, and a variety of new Monk projects have begun. In 2013, for example, Jacques Muyal and Toby Byron teamed up with Blue Note Records to release Thelonious Monk, Paris 1969, a CD/DVD box set of previously unavailable audio and video recordings of the quartet’s concert at the Salle Pleyel Hall—a concert I describe in the book. It is an illuminating find that includes a guest appearance by drummer Philly Joe Jones and an on-camera interview with Monk conducted by the French bassist Jacques Hess. Likewise, Sam Records and Saga is scheduled to release Monk’s recently discovered soundtrack for Roger Vadim’s classic 1960 film Les Liaisons Dangereuses in April 2017. The discovery of these tracks and other previously unavailable material allowed me to make several minor corrections to this edition.
As Monk’s centennial approaches, students and fans have much to be excited about. Duke University Press is set to publish a beautiful graphic novel about Monk’s life and times that, ironically, is one of the few texts that do not turn Monk into a cartoon character. The prodigious, MacArthur genius award–winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson is planning to make a new documentary about him, and as I write these words, Sara Fishko’s wonderful documentary The Jazz Loft—According to W. Eugene Smith has just had its theatrical debut and has already garnered much critical acclaim. Based on Sam Stephenson’s book The Jazz Loft Project (Knopf, 2009), the film highlights Monk’s big band rehearsals there in 1959 and 1964, drawing on Eugene Smith’s massive cache of tapes and photographs—documents that proved invaluable in writing this book. Finally, after many years of rumor and unverified press reports, it appears that a feature-length biopic on Monk is finally in the works. Of course, speculation still swirls around the project, mostly over who will snatch the coveted title role. For me the real question is whether Hollywood will portray the complex, authentic, witty, intelligent, musically adventurous, family-oriented Monk or will it fall back on all of the old myths and tired clichés that this book endeavors to debunk? Will they make a film that Thelonious and Nellie would want to see and which would ring true to them?
I often wonder what Monk might do or say if he had lived to be one hundred. What would he think about the current cultural landscape? The state of the world? The state of music? His iconic status? He’d certainly appreciate the global attention his music is now receiving, and he’d probably dig many of the musicians attempting to push the boundaries of his compositions. But he would also likely take them to task for playing the wrong notes, the wrong changes, and the wrong tempos.
Of the institute that bears his name, he might be baffled by its academic legitimacy and position in the rarefied atmosphere of high culture but proud of its educational mission, its residence at the University of California at Los Angeles, its track record of developing new generations of creative musicians, and his son’s role in steering the ship from a small family-run foundation to a global leader in the jazz world.
While he may have been shocked to see his old neighborhood of San Juan Hill transformed from a diverse working-class community into a paragon of gentrification and hipsterism, he would have marveled at the street sign marking the cul-de-sac on West 63rd Street that reads, “Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle.” He would have been tickled to travel to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 2012, to witness the installation of a historic marker near his birthplace and to visit Thelonious Monk Park on South Washington Street, where a small plaque recounting the significance of his old neighborhood is prominently displayed.
But of all the most recent milestones that have occurred since his death, it is the events affecting the people close to him that would carry the most significance. This is consistent with a life in which friends and family mattered to Monk as much as his music. He would have attended the memorial service for his niece Jackie Smith Bonneau, who died August 19, 2016. He adored all of his nieces and nephews, but Jackie held a special place in his heart. The inspiration for his tune “Jackie-ing,” she was the first-born to Nellie’s brother James (“Sonny”) and sister-in-law Geraldine Smith. Jackie was hilarious, regaling the family with spot-on impressions of Monk’s voice, gestures, and quick wit. An outstanding pianist and organist, she was one of the few family members to follow her uncle’s path and make a life in music.
Another key event was a more joyous affair, though also a memorial of sorts. On Saturday, September 10, 2016, Monk would have spent the day at his old Bronx stomping grounds on Lyman Place. This was where Monk, Nellie, and their kids piled into Sonny and Geraldine’s apartment for long stretches. This is where his dear friend Elmo Hope and his talented wife, Bertha Hope, resided during good and bad times. That day hundreds gathered for the unveiling of a new street sign: “Elmo Hope Way—Jazz Pioneer.” Bertha Hope and her Nu Trio band performed some of Elmo’s compositions, and the multigenerational gathering conjured up memories of the history Monk knew so well, like the 845 Club and the all-night jam sessions in the back of Al Walker’s TV repair shop. Several participants recalled the unbearably hot day when Monk, Elmo, and a bunch of other musicians had congregated on one of the many stoops on Lyman Place, holding forth, when suddenly the ground gave way and plunged the ensemble into a sinkhole, tragically killing Elmo at the young age of forty-three. It was Monk’s choice words to the press afterward that many family and friends would never forget. When pressed by a local reporter to describe what had happened, Monk simply said: “Elmo Hope is the greatest pianist on the planet!” Baffled, family members on the scene asked why Monk chose that moment to lavish praise on his friend. Monk’s answer: “Because they need to know who Elmo is.”
This was Monk. Generous. Honest. Thoughtful. Confident. He did not live in his head as the eccentric, solitary genius he is often made out to be. As I argue throughout this book, Monk lived in the world, in a community, in a family he adored and that cherished him, even when he was impossible to deal with. It was this nurturing, loving, and challenging community that inspired him and to which he dedicated his music. He didn’t need a critic to tell him he was great. He knew it, because he worked tirelessly and against great odds to become great. But without that community, without the teachers and musicians, without the small club owners and adventurous promoters who believed in Monk when no one else would, without the women in his life whose labor and love gave him the time, support, and resources he needed to create, there would be no Monk. That is why, amid all the accolades, honors, tributes, and retrospectives, we must never lose sight of his history, of the world that made him and that he helped fashion. To reduce Monk’s legacy to the sum of his compositions and the archive of his recordings is to lose sight of the man and his labors. His music continues to capture our imaginations precisely because it encapsulates a life, a place, a time, and yet remains capacious enough for future artists to tell their stories.
So Monk lives, in spite of his fame. And if the next one hundred years is anything like the first, we’re in for a wild and exciting ride.
Happy Birthday, Thelonious.
Los Angeles, October 10, 2016