On Friday night, June 10, 1955, Monk made his television debut. The Tonight Show was only about eight months old but had already built a huge national following, launching the era of late-night television. It aired live from the Hudson Theater on 44th and Broadway five nights a week, but Fridays tended to attract more viewers. Monk’s appearance contributed to his growing legitimacy because Steve Allen’s stamp of approval carried enormous weight in America’s popular culture. A pianist, prolific composer, and columnist for Down Beat magazine, Allen was once dubbed “the greatest friend jazz had in television” by Leonard Feather.1 The list of musicians who appeared on the show during Allen’s two-and-a-half-year reign is impressive: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Lester Young, to name but a few.2 The fact that he brought on so many black artists was not lost on the African-American community, which acknowledged Allen for his contribution to civil rights. He had a reputation for treating black artists with respect, and he was not averse to addressing racial issues. The first week the show aired in September 1954, he invited singer/actress Lena Horne, even though she had been blacklisted for her associations with civil rights and left-wing organizations. At the end of her segment, Allen gave Horne a friendly peck on the cheek, which prompted hate mail from a few viewers. Rather than ignore the issue, he read one of the letters on the air and then announced to the audience, “This is an absolute bigot. If anybody knows him, he’s sick. He should go to the hospital.”3
Needless to say, Monk’s appearance wasn’t nearly as controversial as Horne’s, but he was Allen’s most unusual guest that night—the others were baritone crooner Charlie Applewhite, best-known for his frequent appearances on the Milton Berle Show, comedienne Nancy Walker, and Judy Tyler, a rising star on Broadway.4 Besides the crew from the Jazz Composers’ Workshop (Macero, Farmer, Bert, and Mingus), he had Willie Jones on drums. Allen primed the audience for Monk with a long introduction that attempted to place him in the larger pantheon of modern jazz. Calling him “a musician’s musician,” he described Thelonious as a man less interested in becoming famous than developing as an artist. “He doesn’t have a publicity man or wear funny hats or bother to travel around much. He just sort of sits where he is and plays the kind of music he likes, and he’s got a large number of rabid fans, and many of them are musicians.” He spoke indirectly about Monk’s role at Minton’s, how Bird and Dizzy loved him, how the new music kept sorry players off the bandstand, and how the musical developments derived from bebop had profoundly shaped the current direction of jazz. “You can’t stop progress,” Allen mused. “Thelonious stands out because he’s inconspicuous. He’s the kind of a guy who thinks a lot. He doesn’t say much. He just plays, and . . . here he is. I think you might like to meet him.”5 Monk came on stage, where he was greeted with applause, a warm handshake from Allen, and an invitation to have a seat, whereupon Allen proceeded to engage him in a discussion:
Allen: Ahh Monk, you’re from New York, aren’t you?
Monk: That’s right.
Allen: How did you begin playing? Did you pick it up yourself or did you study?
Monk: I took some lessons.
Allen: Do you read now?
Monk: Of course, sure [chuckling].
He could only laugh at the question, for if he didn’t know any better he might have found it insulting. Allen then took a page from Sidney Gross’s jazz class, demonstrating for the audience what standard chord progressions sound like and comparing it to Monk’s modern harmonies. He then issued his grand analysis, “The basic difference I think is one of harmonics, don’t you?” Monk hesitated a bit with “uhhhh” and Allen seized the moment for comic relief—at Monk’s expense: “That’s about what I thought you’d say there, man. I wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way, you know what I mean?” Monk never lost his composure, however. Speaking with authority, he then showed Allen the first three chords of “Off Minor.” “The first chord, G minor, the second chord, D flat, then F sharp 7.” When Allen asked, “That’s more or less it, huh?” Monk turned the comic tables with, “That’s it, almost.” Finally, Allen closed the interview by issuing the following warning to the audience: “Some of you aren’t going to be able to make it. But don’t feel bad.”6
Monk impatiently jumped into “Off Minor” before Allen could finish his introduction. Art Farmer and Teo Macero took the first solos, followed by Monk, Mingus, and Eddie Bert—and it seems the entire group was partial to huge intervallic leaps and dissonant lines. The tonal experimentalism cherished by the Jazz Composers’ Workshop dovetailed with Monk’s harmonic conception and was evident here, as well as on the next number, “Well, You Needn’t.” Although the horn players sounded less comfortable, they went out of their way not to sound too boppish. In the end, Monk’s band delivered what had to have been the most avant-garde performance of any jazz group on the Tonight Show.
Monk came off the bandstand feeling good. But backstage he was in for a rude awakening. Eddie Bert recalls, “[W]hen I was packing my trombone away after the broadcast, I heard Monk say to Steve ‘What do you mean “scale”?’ which is when I left, before the knives came out!”7 Monk was appalled to be receiving scale for playing a nationally syndicated television show, especially as a leader. He desperately needed the money, but felt cheated and exploited. His protestations fell on deaf ears.
Once again, Monk’s star was rising but his income was not. His next big gig paid very little, but the prestige and visibility it afforded more than compensated for the paltry wages. George Wein, pianist and jazz impresario, invited Thelonious to be part of an all-star band at the Newport Jazz Festival in July. Only in its second year, the brainchild of Wein and socialites Louis and Elaine Lorillard had rapidly turned the sleepy, upper-class town of Newport, Rhode Island, into one of the jazz world’s most cherished events. The band to which Monk was assigned was scheduled to play a short set on the last night of the festival, Sunday July 17, following performances by the Modern Jazz Quartet and Count Basie, just before Dave Brubeck. In other words, they were an intermission band. Wein conceived of the group as a quintet consisting of Thelonious, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, Gerry Mulligan, and the rhythm section of the MJQ—Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay (who had replaced Kenny Clarke). But a few weeks before the festival, Wein heard Miles Davis at Basin Street East in New York. After the set, Davis pestered Wein to include him at Newport. “You can’t have a jazz festival without me,” Miles said repeatedly. So Wein relented and at the last minute added Davis to the line-up as part of Monk’s all-star band. He was added so late, in fact, that his name did not appear in the program.8
The master of ceremonies was Duke Ellington. Always eloquent and witty, Duke described the band as innovative musicians who “live in the realm that Buck Rogers is trying to reach.” He gave each a separate introduction, but showed particular warmth for Monk, whom he introduced as “The High Priest of Bop, the inimitable Thelonious Monk.” And Monk returned the gesture, getting up from the piano bench to personally greet one of his all-time musical heroes.9 The band then launched into “Hackensack,” playing the original melody—bridge and all—that Coleman Hawkins played when the song was known as “Rifftide.” This time, Monk did not lay out when Miles soloed. But Miles made sure the audience could hear him. Aware of the faulty sound system (Wein fielded numerous complaints about the inadequate sound, calling it a “catastrophe”),10 Davis jammed the bell of his trumpet directly into the microphone. Its full effect was clear on Thelonious Monk’s “ ’Round Midnight.”
Like everything else having to do with Monk and Miles, this rendition of “ ’Round Midnight” is shrouded in myth. Historians, critics, musicians, even Miles himself, credits this performance with launching his “comeback” from a few uneven and unproductive years under the influence of heroin addiction. Miles remembered getting “a long standing ovation. When I got off the bandstand, everybody was looking at me like I was a king or something—people were running up to me offering me record deals. All the musicians there were treating me like I was a god. . . .”11 The aural evidence paints a very different picture, however. Miles plays tentatively during the introduction and opening melody, showing more confidence with each chorus. When he ends his solo, the audience applauds, but it is neither sustained nor overly enthusiastic.12
Once again, the musical exchange between Monk and Miles was marred by tension. After “ ’Round Midnight,” Miles asked Thelonious to lay out on the third and final song: a bebop blues called “Now’s the Time” by Charlie Parker. When Miles came off the bandstand, the first thing he said to George Wein was “Monk plays the wrong changes to ’Round Midnight.”13 In the car on the way back to New York, Monk complained to Miles that he had not played “ ’Round Midnight” correctly. Miles blew up, telling Thelonious “I didn’t like what he had played behind me either, but I hadn’t told him that, so why was he telling me all this shit? So then I told him that the people liked it and that’s why they stood up and applauded like they did. Then I told him that he must be jealous.” Miles insisted afterward that he was just kidding, but the damage was done. Angry and hurt, Thelonious had the driver stop the car. He got out and walked to the ferry.14
Back in the city, Orrin Keepnews had arranged a recording session for that Wednesday afternoon, July 20. He and Grauer decided on a trio setting and thought that Monk’s first LPs would reach a wider audience if he did not record his original music. The theory was that Monk’s unorthodox style would be more palatable interpreting popular melodies.15 Once the public became familiar with Monk, then he could begin to introduce his original compositions. It wasn’t a new theory. A growing trend emerged in the 1950s to “mainstream” or canonize jazz, particularly as the raging battles between modernists and moldy figs reached a détente and jazz had begun to achieve legitimacy as high culture.16 Indeed, Riverside’s first modern LP, Randy Weston Plays Cole Porter In A Modern Mood, was in essence a mainstreaming project. In Monk’s case, Keepnews recalls that he and Grauer proposed an all-Ellington album.17 Monk agreed. He obtained some sheet music and contacted two veterans for the date—Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke.
The session did not go as planned. Keepnews asked the musicians to meet at Riverside’s office in midtown so they could all drive out together to Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack. But Clarke never showed up. Monk suggested they use Philly Joe Jones, but Keepnews was not familiar with his music and didn’t think it would be prudent. Clarke got in touch with Keepnews and explained that Thelonious had given him the wrong date. Van Gelder, possibly the busiest engineer in the jazz business, just happened to have a free slot open the next afternoon.18 As it turned out, they needed more than an afternoon. Keepnews recalls Monk spending hours “learning” the tunes, “as if he were seeing the material for the first time.”19 That is to say, he was playing everything slowly, determining the key of choice and transposing, figuring out the proper voicings, and familiarizing himself with each song so he could begin to play with them. For Keepnews, Monk’s process was strange, tedious, and time-consuming. Clarke showed his frustration by reading the Sunday comics. The loss of precious time meant that they could record only two or three songs. They had to schedule another session the following week in order to finish the album.
In the interim, Monk headed up to the Berkshire Mountains to perform at the Music Barn on July 24. Located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Music Barn was a new wing of the popular Music Inn founded by Stephanie and Philip Barber. In 1950, the couple established the Inn as a kind of jazz and folk alternative to neighboring Tanglewood, where the Boston Symphony performed during the summer. They turned the grounds of the once-spectacular Wheatleigh summer cottage into a resort, performance space, and, later, the Lenox School of Jazz. The Barbers were unique, not only for establishing a “jazz” resort in a community known as the playground of New England’s blue-blood elite, but for defying the neighboring resorts’ unwritten code of no “Negroes or Jews” allowed. 20
Randy Weston was responsible for Monk’s invitation. Weston had been making annual pilgrimages to the Berkshires since the early 1950s, paying his upkeep by working as a dishwasher and cook at various establishments. During one of his Berkshire retreats, he wandered into the Music Inn and discovered a “Jazz Roundtable” discussion led by a bespectacled professor named Marshall Stearns. “I walk in, sit down, and heard this guy explain that jazz has West African roots. I never heard anyone say this, let alone a white scholar, but I had been interested in Africa since I was a kid, so I said, ‘I have to know this guy.’ ”21 Stearns was, indeed, a formidable presence. A professor of English at Hunter College and a leading authority on Chaucer, he also held a law degree from Harvard and an M. A. from Yale. He had earned a reputation as the academy’s greatest champion of jazz. He founded the Institute for Jazz Studies in 1952, and the summer Monk performed there he was in the throes of completing his critically acclaimed The Story of Jazz.22 Dr. Willis James, an African-American folklorist specializing in the black field holler, also made a huge impression on Weston, as did the many dynamic performances by musicians and dancers from all parts of the African diaspora. Weston approached Stephanie Barber and offered to work at the Music Inn as a dishwasher or cook just so he could be around the music and the intellectual environment. Barber hired him, but soon discovered he was more than an expert dishwasher. “He came out after everyone had gone to bed,” she recalled, “I was there checking something in the office, and he played [piano]. And I thought, ‘Oh my dear.’ ”23 She invited Weston to perform for their guests and he put together a trio with Willie Jones and bassist Sam Gill. Soon he became a resident musician and one of professors James and Stearns’s most attentive students and interlocutors.
It didn’t take much to persuade the Barbers and Stearns to book Monk for the Music Barn’s five-week summer concert series.24 Stearns was ecumenical when it came to jazz styles and he respected Monk’s experimentalism as well as his stride roots. He also bought into the image of Thelonious as reclusive and underground, describing him in the program as “the Greta Garbo of jazz . . . his appearance at any piano is regarded as a major event by serious followers of jazz.”25 Monk brought a quartet of old friends—bassist Michael Mattos, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, with whom he had not played in several years, and Willie Jones—now a regular at the Music Inn, thanks to Randy Weston. The opening minutes did not bode well for Monk. Weston remembers it as if it were yesterday: “When the concert got ready to start, everybody’s waiting . . . Stephanie’s saying, ‘What’s happening, what’s happening?’ So finally, Willie Jones comes out on stage and says, ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Monk is in the toilet, so I’m going to play a drum solo.’ ”26 The local critic was not pleased with the performance, singling out Jones for playing too loudly and using too many clichés. While Monk had his share of great moments, he was distracted by a summer evening of moths and flies.27
Monk returned to Van Gelder’s studio on July 27. In the course of two sessions, the trio laid down seven sides, including swinging renditions of “Caravan,” “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing”; readings of “Sophisticated Lady,” “I Got it Bad (and That Ain’t Good)”; and a bluesy march in the form of “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Monk also recorded “Solitude” as a solo piano piece. Overall, it is a tribute to Duke, yet each track is unmistakably Monk. “Mood Indigo,” for example, sounds almost like a Monk original, from its medium-slow fox trot–like tempo and its rolling arpeggios to his frequent use of minor second clusters and stride piano.28
Some critics have described Monk’s Ellington album as “restrained,” at best.29 There is some truth to this; with the exception of, perhaps, “Caravan,” Kenny Clarke never lights a fire beneath Monk, and on most of the recordings he offers surprisingly monotonous brush work. The dynamics between the two men are a far cry from the Miles Davis Christmas Eve session or the halcyon days of Minton’s. Nevertheless, the lack of dynamism has convinced some critics and scholars that Monk made the Ellington album with great reluctance, if not resistance.30 On the contrary, Thelonious took great pride in the recording. “That record was a big deal,” Toot remembered. “It was a big deal in the house, it was a big deal for my dad. . . . In fact, my mother told me that he was very uptight until he had gotten the word that Duke had heard the record and it was cool.”31 When Ira Gitler asked Thelonious about the album, in an interview two years after recording it, Monk replied, “I wanted to do it. I felt like playing, that’s all. I know that Duke started playing some of his numbers more than he had as I recall.”32 And Thelonious admired Ellington above all other musicians. Joe Termini, owner of the Five Spot Café and Monk’s future employer, remembered that “the only time I’ve ever seen Monk act like a little boy and looking up to somebody” was in the presence of Duke Ellington. “That was his idol.”33 On another occasion in 1959, Monk got into a little exchange with drummer Frank Butler over Duke’s enduring importance. Butler, a former Ellington band member, told a reporter, “Monk grows all the time—Duke is stagnant.” Thelonious overheard him, and instead of taking in the compliment he chastised his drummer. “No, he isn’t—Duke is still distinctive. I know you must be kidding, or not listening.”34
The rest of the summer was a productive time for Monk. In August he secured two weeks at the Blue Note in Philadelphia, with the same quartet he led at the Music Barn.35 It seemed as if Monk’s fortunes were beginning to change. But then a horrifying news report shattered his newfound optimism.
On August 31, the decomposed and mutilated corpse of a fourteen-year-old boy was pulled out of the Tallahatchie River not far from Money, Mississippi. The boy’s name was Emmett Till. Two men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, beat and shot Till several times and tied a heavy industrial fan around his neck so that he would sink to the river’s bottom. His face was so badly beaten it resembled a large, bloated sponge. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, had sent him down to Mississippi for the summer to escape the hard streets of Chicago and to visit family. His crime? He was a black city boy from up North who bragged to his friends that he had a white girlfriend and, on a dare, said “Bye-bye, baby” to the wife of a white store owner. Mamie Till Bradley decided that the world needed to see what Southern terrorism looked like, so she held an open casket funeral on September 6. Photos circulated around the world, generating outrage and anger. Less than a month after Till was kidnapped, Milam and Bryant were acquitted by an all-white jury.36
The murder of Emmett Till loomed in the background as the Monks tried to celebrate Boo Boo’s second birthday. Like so many black families, Thelonious and Nellie could look in the face of their five-year-old son and see Emmett Till’s face. The dark episode was a much-needed wake-up call for America. It tarnished the hope and possibility generated by the Supreme Court’s decision on Brown v. Board of Education, and it reminded Monk that the South had been another world.
Thelonious probably talked about Till, the South, and racism with Gigi Gryce. Early that fall, Monk had agreed to do a record date with Gryce for the newly created Signal Records.37 Between rehearsals and just hanging out, they began to spend more time together. Gryce had converted to Islam, read widely in black history and politics, and expressed concern about racial issues in the United States and across the globe. He did not give speeches or proselytize; on the contrary, he was a quiet man who generally kept to himself. And he was most animated when discussing music.
Signal Records founder Jules Colomby put together the band (Gryce, Monk, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey), organized rehearsals, and produced the session. Musicians respected Colomby—he had a good ear and was in the business but not of it. A German-Jewish émigré whose family barely escaped the Holocaust, he was eleven when his family arrived in New York in 1939. He fell in love with jazz, and eventually became a promoter, impresario, producer, musician, jack-of-all-trades jazz guy.38 Although Gryce was officially the leader, Monk emerged as the dominant voice during the session, and of the four sides recorded, three were new Monk originals. Still, Gryce was excited to work with and learn from one of his heroes. He told Ira Gitler that it was “one of the most relaxed recording sessions” he had ever experienced.39 Bassist Julian Euell remembers attending one rehearsal at the behest of Colomby. Gryce and Monk were going over some of Monk’s difficult tunes and “Gigi never looked at a note of music.” Thelonious would demonstrate something on the piano and expect Gryce to play it back. Then they would discuss it and move on to the next segment. When the rehearsal was over, “Thelonious complimented him and turned in his usual way and said: ‘Now, there’s a musician. . . . Now, dig it, didn’t need no music, nothing. You dig? That’s a musician, man.’ ”40 Gryce did have trouble with some of the tunes, particularly “Gallop’s Gallop,” perhaps Monk’s most intricate melody. “He wrote a part for me that was impossible,” Gryce later explained. “I was playing melody and at the same time was playing harmony to his part. In addition, the intervals between the notes were very wide. I told him I couldn’t do it. ‘You have an instrument, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Either play it or throw it away.’ And he left me. Finally, I was able to play it.”41
The session took place at Van Gelder’s studio on October 15, five days after Monk’s thirty-eighth birthday. They started out with the relatively easy “Brake’s Sake,” then jumped right into “Gallop’s Gallop.” It is a fine recording, despite Gigi’s valiant yet failed efforts to master the melody. “Shuffle Boil,” with its strong rhythmic accents and stop-time phrases, was Monk’s tribute to the black hoofer tradition. The title is a corruption of “shuffle ball,” a component of a tap dance combination used in certain breaks—most famously in the old vaudeville routine known as the “Shim-Sham Shimmy.” The basic move—“shuffle-step, shuffle-stop, shuffle ball-change, shuffle step”—came out of African-American vernacular dance and parallels the music because it incorporates the “break,” or stop-time, and the basic “time step” used a shuffled rhythm rather than lifting of the feet.42 Monk, an old hoofer himself who loved to watch Baby Laurence dance at Minton’s, knew these moves and the accompanying music. Blakey’s shuffling gestures and clean breaks are essential to the song’s success, along with Monk’s counter bass line. Finally, they closed the session with Gryce’s only contribution to the date, “Nica’s Tempo.” His tribute to Nica de Koenigswarter, it is an uptempo, swinging romp in a minor key.43
Monk’s respect for Gigi Gryce extended beyond his skills as a musician and composer. Gryce pioneered jazz musicians’ efforts to take control of their publishing. He could not understand why record companies were taking half of an artist’s publishing royalties just to fill out paperwork. Earlier that summer, Gryce established Melotone Music, Inc., and affiliated with BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) in order to handle publishing rights and royalties for his own work as well as for others. (The attorney who helped him set up his corporation was future radical lawyer William M. Kunstler, who was better known at the time for writing short books on legal topics for lay audiences.44) Monk agreed to have Melotone Music publish the three songs he had contributed to the date. Grauer and Keepnews were not happy that Monk had just recorded and published three original songs—songs that they felt should have been released on the Riverside label. Legally, there was nothing they could do; Monk did not break his contract by recording as a sideman. More importantly, Gryce’s example stuck with Monk, who, years later, would take control of his own publishing.
• • •
Thelonious was feeling pretty good. He was working and gaining more respect from fellow musicians and fans. He now walked into clubs with an air of celebrity. People stopped their conversations to stare and point, and he was sometimes approached for autographs. Throughout the fall, he began to frequent a West Village bar-turned-jazz club called Café Bohemia. Located on Barrow Street near the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street, the club used to be a strip joint called the Pied Piper.45 Owner Jimmy Giarofolo opened Café Bohemia in the early spring of 1955 and hired Oscar Pettiford to lead the house band. All the major modern jazz musicians started hanging out there that summer, especially after a young, unknown alto player from Florida named Julian “Cannonball” Adderley sat in with Pettiford’s band and turned the jazz world upside down.46 Monk joined the parade of famous patrons and sat in occasionally, but he was there to listen, drink, and hang out with friends. He always ran into friends. For a brief period in November, Herbie Nichols played intermission piano at the Bohemia opposite Charles Mingus and the Jazz Composers’ Workshop.47 One night Monk noticed a young French horn player with Mingus whom he hadn’t seen before. He liked his sound, his intonation, and he especially liked the way he swung with the driving rhythms of Willie Jones and Mingus. After the set, Monk asked Jones to introduce him to the cat, whose name was David Amram. “Willie said [Monk] really liked my French horn playing and I almost fainted,” Amram remembered. “I said I would have been afraid to even say hello to him. So we went down and Monk said, ‘I want to hang out with you, give me your number.’ So he took his little address book and it had all of these papers like in all different directions, and each paper had like five different angles of stuff and I thought, ‘Gosh, he’s never gonna find that or remember my name.’ So he wrote it down and then he called me up and came over to my place, a six-floor walk-up on East Eighth Street in the East Village. He climbed all those stairs.”48 Amram was a month shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, grew up in Washington, D. C. but had been living in Paris, playing and composing. He had returned to the States in September to study at the Manhattan School of Music and had been swept into the fold of the Jazz Composers’ Workshop by Mingus himself.49 And like Hall Overton and other emerging composers in the 1950s, he had long admired Monk’s compositions. “I told him about trying to play ‘Off Minor’ in Paris, so he sat down and he wrote out all of the chord changes for me. Every single chord change had indications of which were altered notes. So I saw that he had figured out exactly what he wanted, and then from there he would go off into all those amazing, endless variations. And we tried to play this and I said, ‘You know, everybody seems to have a different version but none of them sound right.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s because they didn’t ask.’ ” Monk taught Amram the same way he taught Gigi Gryce—to learn a song by hearing it. “When we played ‘Off Minor’ he would show it to me and then he would just start playing. Then he just started playing some other stuff. I didn’t even know what it was. I just started playing along with him. And he really liked that. Then I found out later of course that he would do that very often anyway, and just assume that you were going to hear it and play or you’d be quiet and then play after you could hear it. He figured rather than talking about it, it would just evolve and then you could ask him later on.”50
Monk spent the better part of the day and evening hanging out at Amram’s tiny railroad flat. About a week or two later, Amram dropped by the Monks’. A bit homesick, Amram felt a sense of home with his new friends. “I met Nellie for the first time. There was this wonderful sensitivity and lovingness and these beautiful eyes that just had so much knowledge and wisdom and feeling that just when she looked at me I just felt right at home. And there I was in their place and suddenly I just felt this real warmth. And then there was this wonderful little boy, Toot, and he was already so lively and so smart and energetic and Thelonious introduced me to him and I shook his hand and he was this great little kid.”51 In the course of his visit, which lasted four or five hours, Monk also entertained a couple of unexpected guests—a young musician seeking guidance and a friend from the neighborhood. “Thelonious had a lot of people that loved him that were neighbors and friends of his family. And I just got this tremendous family sense, right in this small place in New York City of somebody that really had a home.”52
Amram’s encounter with Monk resembles Randy Weston’s in 1944, or Herbie Nichols’ in the early 1940s, or any number of musicians who passed through the “Monk School.” Here is Monk as the mentor, father-figure, friend, and philosopher. Amram remembers:
I was listening one time with Monk, at his house, and he had on the radio, I don’t know what station it was, but for some reason they were playing some kind of country music, and it kept going on and on. . . . Finally I said, “Thelonious, do you like this kind of music too?” He paused for about a minute or so and then he said, “Listen to the drummer.” So I was quiet for about another ten minutes while they played two or three songs and then he turned and he said, “Check out his brush work.” So, I listened as hard as I could on that little radio with a little bit of static and somehow I could hear something so I realized, of course, what he was trying to tell me was first of all, don’t be judgmental of anybody else, just listen and pay attention and look for the beauty. And then when you find the beauty, study that and don’t bother with the rest of it.53
Amram’s discussions with Monk were not limited to music. Thelonious talked philosophically about the mysteries of the world. He reflected on how pyramids were built, or how the moai on Easter Island came to be. He was fascinated with how animals communicated, specifically birds. “We used to talk about how the birds can do these extraordinary maneuvers where they’ll all change the formation, something that even airline pilots couldn’t do. . . . They just somehow knew how to do that. And it would be a mystery to us, but it was at a higher level and a lot of cultures still operate on that level, so it was almost that here we are with our wonderful mechanized U.S.A. we’ve lost that. And in a certain sense some of the music was trying to recapture, I guess you say, that ethos.”54
Monk and Amram began meeting a little more frequently at a loft space on East 28th Street owned by jazz enthusiast Ken Karpe. Throughout the winter of 1955 well into spring of ’56, Karpe’s loft became the site for some of the city’s most exciting after-hours jam sessions. The initial core of musicians included Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Art Farmer, and Amram, who persuaded Monk to join them. Other participants included Zoot Sims, guitarist Jim Hall, Willie Jones, Art Taylor, trumpeter Thad Jones, pianist Tommy Flanagan, Chico Hamilton, and bassist Paul Chambers. At one point, the entire Max Roach–Clifford Brown quintet showed up for the jam sessions.55 For Thelonious, who loved the jam session atmosphere, the gatherings at Karpe’s place proved to be a wellspring of talented musicians, many of whom he later called on for gigs.
A few days after Thanksgiving, Thelonious left for Chicago. Sol Tannenbaum, the venerable owner of the Bee Hive Lounge, one of the larger and most popular Hyde Park jazz venues, booked Monk for a one-week engagement.56 It was supposed to be a trio gig with the house rhythm section—bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Wilbur Campbell—but Ware persuaded the owner to add tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin. “I was sitting at home, watching television, and they called me and said they needed a saxophone player. I didn’t even know Monk was in town. I went over to the club and joined the guys on the bandstand.”57 Griffin had been working around his hometown Chicago for the past couple of years after he got out of the army. He and Monk had played together in jam sessions, but this was their first actual gig. He was equally impressed with the bassist, Wilbur Ware, whose unusual harmonic sensibilities matched his own. And he could swing like nobody’s business. Six years Monk’s junior, the Chicago native was raised by a minister in the Sanctified church, his foster father, who happened to have a passion and gift for music. Reverend Turner played saxophone, drums, banjo, and some piano, and Wilbur picked up all these instruments and performed in the church. Then, when Wilbur was about ten years old, Reverend Turner built him a bass from veneer and real bass violin strings.58 Ware developed quickly; he had his first professional gigs at age eleven and his first record date at fifteen. But as he drifted further away from the church and deeper into the entertainment world, he got caught up in drugs. Monk saw right away that Ware had a bad heroin habit, but he also recognized his immense talent and made sure he added Ware’s name to his insanely overstuffed address book.
Thelonious had a ball in Chicago. The band played comfortably together and were able to grasp Monk’s music rather quickly. “I didn’t know Monk’s music,” Griffin recalled. “He just started playing and I had to figure out what he was doing.”59 He had no trouble. In an interview a few months later, Monk told Nat Hentoff how much he liked “the tenor I worked with in Chicago, John Griffin. He’s one of the best. Also the bass player I worked with there, Wilbur Ware.”60 Joe Segal, owner of Chicago’s Jazz Showcase, described the gig as “one of the Hive’s all-time musical highlights in its ten-year history of presenting jazz.”61 Monk was so popular that Tannenbaum held him over, hoping he could stay through the third week of December. And according to one observer, Monk “wasn’t elusive or uncooperative,” contrary to his reputation.62 On his nights off, he ventured out beyond the Bee Hive, playing in a benefit concert for patients at Vaughan Veterans Hospital hosted by the popular African-American D.J. Daddy-O-Daylie, and participating in a jam session at Roosevelt University.63
But the fun came to an abrupt end into the second week of December, days before he was scheduled to close.64 Monk received a call from home. His mother was in the hospital.