Barbara Monk was taken to St. Clare’s Hospital on West 51st Street, weak, thin, and fairly unresponsive. Cancer had ravaged her entire body. Thomas, Trotyrine, Marion, Nellie, and the older kids were immediately at her bedside, but Thelonious was reluctant to see his mother—he couldn’t handle seeing her in such a state. His niece Charlotte recalls, “When he finally did go to see my grandmother and saw her lying there, weak and helpless, it really messed with him.”1 To make matters worse, the family was divided over Barbara’s care. Her doctor felt she needed a blood transfusion, but Barbara, a Jehovah’s Witness, opposed medical procedures that involve the use of blood. Thomas, himself a convert to the religion, reluctantly agreed with his mother, adding that even if she were to receive a transfusion, it would only prolong her suffering, not her life. This merely angered Thelonious. who believed the hospital should have overruled his mother’s wishes. “That’s why he hated the hospital, too,” Charlotte concluded. “They didn’t do anything for her. They just let her die. And that just devastated him and my father, too.”2
Barbara Monk died on Wednesday morning, December 14. She was sixty-three years old.3 Her death sent Thelonious spiraling into depression. Indeed, he missed the wake and most of the funeral, appearing just in time to see her remains interred (she was cremated). Marion found her brother’s behavior unforgivable. Thomas, Jr., who was eighteen at the time, later came to terms with his uncle’s behavior. “He never believed in funerals. When my grandmother died he was devastated. My uncle never liked to be around death. He was afraid of death.”4 Barbara’s absence left a huge void and a pall of sadness in the Monk household. Thelonious didn’t want to be in the apartment at first, especially with the holidays, so he spent time with Sonny at Lyman Place for a little while. About a week after his mother’s death, Thelonious went down to Café Bohemia to catch Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.5
That night he saw many familiar faces, including Jules Colomby’s brother, Harry. They had met briefly in the fall at Mrs. Colomby’s house when Jules was planning Gigi Gryce’s recording date for Signal Records.6 A devoted Monk fan since his teenage years, Harry was now a twenty-six-year-old teacher at Far Rockaway High School in Queens, still thoroughly in love with the music. He had just launched a Friday jazz concert series for his students, and Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were his inaugural act. He had come to the club to remind Blakey of the date and make sure he had directions.7
As the final set began winding down, Thelonious approached Harry and asked, “You’ve got your car? You’re Jules’s brother.” Fortunately for Monk, Colomby did have a car and he was happy to take him up to the Bronx. And Colomby was happy to oblige. He was a huge Monk fan and considered this an opportunity to learn more about him. But before they took off uptown, Monk posed the first question—and it was a doozy.
“Do you want to be my manager?”
Colomby was taken aback. Although he loved show business and knew he would eventually give up teaching to pursue work in the industry, he never imagined managing a jazz musician—especially someone like Thelonious Monk. But as he drove along the West Side Highway listening to Monk, he began to think things through. “I totally identified with him. I knew where he was at. No job, no nothing, no police card. I had no illusion about how much money there is in jazz. But I realized that Monk was much more than a jazz musician. He was potentially a symbol. He was symbolic of strength, stick-to-it-iveness, purity, you know, beyond music, beyond jazz.”8
For Monk’s part, his rash proposal was driven by a certain logic. He had begun to develop a reputation as a major figure in the jazz world, and now needed someone to open doors for him, to make phone calls and talk to booking agents and club owners, to read contracts, and to protect him from the industry’s wolves. Along came Harry Colomby, a hip schoolteacher and brother of an honest and committed promoter, producer, and musician. In Monk’s mind, Colomby was ideal for the job, despite his lack of experience. Indeed, it was his lack of experience that made him trustworthy—he wasn’t corrupted. As Monk said to Colomby that night, “Cool, a teacher. . . . I want you to be rich. Get rich, ’cause if you get rich I get rich.” Before they exited the West Side Highway that night, Colomby decided he wanted the job. “I turned to Thelonious and said, ‘I don’t know how much money we’re going to make, but I am going to promise you something; that in your lifetime you’re going to be recognized.’ And that was my mission.”9 Before Monk disappeared into Sonny’s building, he offered Colomby the standard ten-percent commission.10 Colomby agreed, sealed the deal with a handshake, and promptly set upon his very first task as manager: to print up some business cards.
Colomby had no clue as to what he was getting himself into, and given the trajectory of his life up to that point, a musician’s manager was not the vocation he’d expected. A precocious child, he was only nineteen when he graduated from New York University with a B.A. in English and a philosophy minor. He wanted to teach literature at the college level so he earned a master’s degree, but there were no jobs. Instead, he applied to teach high school, took a methods course at Columbia University Teachers College, and decided to take a few more postgraduate courses at Columbia’s School of International Affairs. He flirted with the idea of becoming a Russian specialist and working for the FBI or the CIA, but the field was already overcrowded with a new generation of Cold Warriors anxious to defeat the Red Menace. Colomby gave up his spy dreams and settled on the even more daunting task of teaching high school students. He subbed at the predominantly black and Puerto Rican Samuel Gompers Vocational and Technical High School in the Bronx, and taught mentally disabled girls at Bay Ridge High School before landing the job at Far Rockaway in 1954.
Students had never experienced anyone like him before. As one of his former students, Barry Zaret, recalled, “Harry was this quintessentially cool guy, always dressed well, teaching English and social studies. A bunch of us fell in love with the guy. And he just started talking about jazz. It was far-out stuff.”11 Colomby’s concerts and informal talks about the music inspired Arthur Lebowitz and his classmates to form the “Gaynotes,” a jazz quartet that was good enough to secure gigs in the Catskills.12 Colomby was also fascinated with theater. Not long after joining the faculty at Far Rockaway, he formed an off-Broadway theater group called “the Arena Players” that put on a few local productions.13
Colomby was more dreamer than capitalist, more fan than front man. He wanted to spend time with Monk, to get to know his client. A couple of days into the job, Harry began calling Thelonious at West 63rd Street to invite him to hang out. But Nellie usually answered, and invariably her husband was asleep, or claiming to be asleep. Sometimes Colomby got through: “And Thelonious was very sweet. He would say, ‘No, not today, maybe some other time.’ He was being polite. He didn’t want to hang out. . . . Right away I got to understand. Even when he invited me over because there was something we needed to talk about in person, sometimes I’d bang on the door and he wasn’t there. . . . Eventually, I stopped showing up.”14
It would be quite a while before Colomby would stop showing up. During the early days of their relationship, he was quick to respond to Monk’s every wish. They were still getting to know one another when Monk asked if he could borrow Colomby’s car to go up to the Bronx. He had just gotten his precious black-on-black two-door Ford Custom (Thelonious teasingly told Colomby that his neighbors thought he was “the Man” because he drove an undercover cop car), but he was willing to take a chance on Thelonious. Little did he know that driving—at least safe driving—wasn’t Monk’s strong suit. “So I stay behind with Nellie while Thelonious and Toot go off to the Bronx. Two hours go by, no Thelonious. He finally shows up and the rear bumper, which extends around to the sides of the car, is hanging off the side by several inches. It was as if he caught something. Thelonious immediately goes on the defensive. ‘I didn’t do that. That was there before.’ Then, on the metal dashboard above the glove compartment, I see this dent, and there is Toot with a sizable lump on his forehead. That was too much for him. It was the only time in our whole relationship that he lied to me.”15
While they did become friends, Colomby soon figured out that this was a business arrangement. He had no intention of giving up his day job—he remained a full-time teacher for the next eleven years—nor had he intended to work for free. Colomby needed to supplement his meager salary, which in 1955 was a little over $7,000. While he could foresee a bright and lucrative future, the current prospects looked bleak, especially with the cabaret card issue hanging over Monk’s head. The first thing Colomby did was book Monk for a weekend in February at the Comedy Club in Baltimore. He went as a single musician, and the gig paid only $300—$100 advance and $200 at the end of the date, minus the bar tab or any other additional expenses. Monk graciously peeled off $60 of his advance—twice the agreed-upon commission—and gave it to his new manager. Colomby then set up a meeting with Jack Whittemore, the booking agent for the Shaw Agency who had booked some of Monk’s earlier engagements. He wanted to know why Shaw refused to sign Thelonious as a regular client. Whittemore quipped that Monk was unreliable—he didn’t always show or was chronically late to gigs, and when he did make it he was unpredictable. Colomby countered that these problems would be attended to now that Monk had a manager. Although Whittemore ended the meeting without a firm commitment to Monk, he was impressed with Colomby’s chutzpah. Before he left, he told Colomby, “if you have nerve enough to manage Thelonious Monk, I guess I could have nerve to try to book him.” And he did, “once in a blue moon.”16
Meanwhile, the bookings were few and far between. He might have inherited a little bit of money from his mother, who may have stashed away some of her settlement from the bus accident. Nellie probably made just enough to cover most of the basic expenses, which included a reasonable rent of about $30 or $35 a month.17 And when money was really tight, he could always depend on Nica. In fact, following Barbara’s death, Nica offered Thelonious the most generous gift he had ever received from anyone: She bought him a car. Monk wasn’t the first musician upon whom she bestowed such a gift. A year or two earlier, she bought Art Blakey a Cadillac, which stunned some in the jazz world and elicited some lighthearted teasing from Thelonious. But now it was his turn, and like a boy in a toy store he picked his favorite: a brand-new black and white 1956 Buick Special.18 Listing for a little over $2,700, Buick promoted the Special series as “the best Buick yet” in terms of performance, power, and affordability.19 Monk adored the car. He used to argue with Baron Bennerson, the bartender at Green Gables, over the merits of his Special versus Bennerson’s Buick Roadmaster. “When Monk saw my car, he tried to tell me that his Buick Special was a better car than my Roadmaster. In fact, he said his car is the best in the world!”20 Monk took great pleasure in driving and often recruited family and friends to ride with him. His niece Judith Smith (“Muffin”) remembered how he “used to come up to the Bronx and he’d have leather driving gloves in the summer time. He would whistle up to the window and say ‘Who’s going south?’ ”21 The kids found driving with Uncle Thelonious to be a thrilling experience. Evelyn Smith: “He was reckless! He had that Buick Special and he would take us for a ride down Third Avenue, and he would drive around each pole. Once, on the Grand Central Parkway, he crossed the island and there was oncoming traffic.”22
Besides the car, Nica treated Thelonious to another wonderful gift. A couple of weeks into 1956, Monk accompanied her to the Steinway showroom to pick out a brand new, five-foot, seven-inch Grand M Ebony with a shimmering lacquer finish. She wanted a new piano for her apartment at the Bolivar Hotel, but she also wanted to make sure Monk always had access to a good instrument and a place away from home where he could compose. On January 30, Steinway delivered the instrument directly from the factory in Queens to her place on Central Park West and 83rd.23 Anxious to christen the piano, Thelonious showed up that same night and jammed for hours while Nica and friends talked and drank the night away. The usually festive atmosphere was subdued by news that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the twenty-seven-year-old minister who had been leading a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama to end mistreatment and segregation on the city’s buses, had survived an assassination attempt. King had just come to the world’s attention two months earlier, after activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. On the day Nica’s piano arrived, white terrorists tossed a dynamite bomb onto Dr. King’s front porch. No one was hurt, but it made clear to many observers, Monk included, that the price for social justice was high and the struggle for basic human rights in the South was little short of war. Although Monk never openly embraced nonviolence, he did admire Dr. King and the Montgomery movement’s unwavering determination. Minutes after the bombing, King stood courageously upon his own porch, glass strewn everywhere, and told an agitated crowd, “I want it to be known through the length and breadth of this land that if I am stopped this movement will not stop. If I am stopped our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. And God is with us.”24
• • •
Monk had plenty of time to drive around in his Buick—neither Harry Colomby nor Jack Whittemore had had much luck rustling up work. Besides the Comedy Club gig in Baltimore, Monk’s only other job that spring was the Easter Jazz Festival at Town Hall on March 30.25 The concert was entirely Ken Karpe’s doing, conceived as the culmination of the last five or six months of jam sessions and an opportunity to feature Monk’s music. Meanwhile, Orrin Keepnews booked Van Gelder’s studio for March 17 and April 3 to record Monk’s next trio album—the second part of Riverside’s two-pronged approach to mainstreaming Monk’s music. Monk had agreed to an all-standards album using the same rhythm section he had for the Ellington sessions (Pettiford on bass and Clarke drumming). But with Kenny Clarke now living in Europe, Art Blakey sat in on drums, which proved to be an auspicious development. Blakey provided the spark, the dynamism missing from the Ellington LP. Furthermore, Monk chose several tunes that had been part of his repertoire since the 1940s—namely “Liza” and “Just You, Just Me.” The uptempo “Liza” is essentially a playful, exciting conversation between Blakey and Monk, whereas the medium-tempo “Just You, Just Me” is a conversation between Monk’s left and right hands.26
For all the humor in those two tracks, there are expressions of tenderness and introspection in two other songs. His unaccompanied rendering of Andy Razaf and Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You” should be heard as his tribute to Alberta Simmons, the neighborhood piano player who took Thelonious under her wing, helped him with his stride technique, and taught him songs by the old black composers. She had befriended Blake, met Razaf, and played “Memories of You” so often it was as if it were her own composition. Thelonious thought of Miss Simmons often, and his memories of her grew in prominence as he grappled with his mother’s absence. Monk also selected a tune with which he was not familiar: Rodgers and Hart’s “You Are Too Beautiful,” from the 1933 romantic comedy, “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.” He found it in Orrin Keepnews’s copy of The Rodgers and Hart Song Book, which he had loaned Thelonious just prior to the recording date.27 Monk didn’t soften his dissonant sonorities, yet it contained not a hint of irony and never lost its romantic lyricism.
After the session, Keepnews rode back to Manhattan in Monk’s new Buick Special. Still a relatively new driver, Monk tailed Pettiford and Blakey so he wouldn’t get lost. The road was covered with snow and ice. “I was with Monk who, unsure of the route, was following them closely. Another car suddenly turned out of a side road into the space between us. Thelonious, alarmed at the thought of losing the others, swerved sharply across the highway, stopping mere inches short of smashing into a telephone pole, and then calmly informed me: ‘It’s a good thing I was driving. If it had been someone else, we might be dead now.’ ”28 That evening, Keepnews figured out what Monk’s family already knew: Ride with Thelonious at your own risk.
While Monk and Keepnews were able to find humor in their near-tragedy, the tragic events that followed a few days later were no laughing matter. A fire ravaged the Monks’ tiny apartment, destroying many of their prized possessions—furniture, clothes, books, records, a large proportion of Thelonious’s original music manuscripts, as well as Keepnews’s copy of The Rodgers and Hart Song Book. Worst of all, he lost his precious Klein upright piano. The instrument had been singed badly and may have been salvageable, but the worst damage was caused by water. 29 The culprit turned out to be faulty wiring. Fortunately, no one was inside the house when the fire broke out. Thelonious, Toot, and Boo Boo happened to be visiting Geraldine and Sonny in the Bronx while Nellie was at work. Jackie, the eldest Smith child, received the call that the Monks’ house was on fire.30 Without knowing the details, he bounded down five flights of stairs, jumped in his Buick, and sped to West 63rd Street.
When Thomas Monk returned home from work and learned of the fire, he was seized with panic. Thomas Monk, Jr., witnessed the events: “My father he jumped up and I never forgot what he said. He said, ‘Oh, God, don’t take my brother.’ He started crying, my father. My mother said, ‘He’s all right.’ My father ran over to him.”31 By the time Thomas got there, the firemen had extinguished the blaze but were now dealing with an irate and unstable Thelonious. Having broken through the cordon of firefighters, he leaped up on the water-logged sofa and began challenging anyone who tried to enter the apartment. Again, Thomas Monk, Jr.:
Uncle Bubba was jumping on the couch, right? The fireman says, “We can’t do nothing with this guy.” So my father came in there, pulled out his badge (he was still an officer, though he worked for the Transit Authority). So they let him through and he asks, “Bubba, what’s wrong?”
“Man, I’m not gonna let these guys in the house and chop up my piano, chop up my furniture.”32
Thelonious’s fears were not unfounded. A few years earlier, his sister Marion had a small fire in their apartment at 235 West 63rd Street. The firemen “came and messed up the whole house,” recalls Monk’s nephew Alonzo. Between the heavy water damage and the axes, their place looked like it had been destroyed by a hurricane.33
When Nellie arrived she tried her best to calm Monk down, but to no avail. Worried, she called Harry Colomby. Thelonious was desperate to leave the scene, but she feared what might happen if he left alone. As soon as Colomby showed up, the two men took off in Monk’s Buick. “I was thinking, we ain’t going to come out of this one,” Colomby recalled. “I don’t know where he was going, but he was in a dark mood. He stopped at a bar. He ordered Wild Turkey, and then we left. We drove around for a while and then he went to the Bronx, and I went home.”34
Monk, Nellie, and the children ended up staying with Geraldine and Sonny and their seven kids—besides Jackie, Judith, Clifton, Evelyn, and Benetta, they now had four-year-old James Riley, Jr., and eighteen-month-old Gerald Pierre (born a day before Thelonious’s birthday). Skippy and her son Ronnie also lived there, bringing the grand total of occupants in the Smiths’ three-bedroom apartment to fifteen. Monk and Nellie slept in the living room while Skippy and the kids were distributed between two bedrooms and the den. 35
In the fire’s aftermath, where to sleep wasn’t Monk’s more pressing concern. He only had a few days to get ready for a concert at Town Hall scheduled for March 30—Good Friday. David Amram, who was also performing at the same event with Oscar Pettiford’s band, remembers visiting Monk in the Bronx days before the concert. “His biggest concern was finding something to wear. All of his clothes got messed up in the fire, so he asked me to help him figure out something to wear to look nice.”36 Monk had a reputation for looking sharp and the loss of his hippest suits, jackets, and ties left him feeling particularly vulnerable. But when it was time to “hit it” Friday night, Monk was ready. The concert was set up as if it were one big band with interchangeable parts. Oscar Pettiford’s big band opened the concert. Coincidentally, it was made up almost entirely of past and future Monk sidemen—Julius Watkins (who shared French horn duties with David Amram), Gigi Gryce, Sahib Shihab on baritone, trumpeter Ray Copeland, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, Jerome Richardson on flute and saxophone, drummer Osie Johnson, among others. After their set, Monk came on stage and performed in a trio setting with Pettiford and Shadow Wilson, while the rest of the band stayed on stage and listened. A few numbers later, Ray Copeland and Sahib Shihab joined the group to make it a quintet. For David Amram, Monk’s performance proved to be one of the more important musical experiences of his life. “As Monk played, all the musicians looked at him with so much love it just about heated up the stage. The audience could feel it too, seeing all these musicians listening and looking intently and they began to pay even more attention.”37
Although the house was small, the performers were pleased. Monk “brought down the house,” according to David Amram.38 New York Times critic John Wilson almost agreed. He praised all of the performances except for one: To his ears, Thelonious played “with a graceless force that occasionally was blighted by some pixyish conceptions.”39 Monk had come to expect these kinds of reviews, and if he had picked up the Times, he may have noticed with pleasure Riverside’s ad for Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington LP, available for $3.97.
Four days after the concert, Monk reunited with Pettiford and Blakey at Van Gelder’s studio in order to complete the LP of standards that would become The Unique Thelonious Monk. He produced an utterly humorous rendition of “Tea for Two,” and “Honeysuckle Rose,” a Razaf and Fats Waller composition, was also rich with humor and old “tickler” techniques he had mastered back in the days of hanging out with Clarence Profit and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Finally, he romanced the piano with Jimmy Van Heusen’s lovely “Darn That Dream.” Like his rendering of “You Are So Beautiful,” Thelonious retains his uniquely dissonant voice without undermining the song’s romantic quality.
Spring came and Thelonious was still waiting for Colomby to work his magic. It was tough; teaching full-time meant Colomby only had evenings and weekends to hustle gigs. He quickly discovered that there wasn’t much work for any jazz artist. In 1956, most venues wanted rock and roll, with Elvis Presley dominating the airwaves with “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel.” The one modern jazz group that seemed to work all the time was the phenomenal Clifford Brown–Max Roach Quintet. With Sonny Rollins, pianist Richie Powell, and bassist George Morrow rounding out the group, they were the hottest ticket in jazz at the moment. Brown, all of twenty-six years old, was hailed as the new Gabriel, the second coming on trumpet. Colomby decided to call Max Roach, a long-time friend of Thelonious, and ask for the names and numbers of club owners around the country so that he might reach out to them. Roach replied coldly, “You could find that in Down Beat,” and hung up the phone. Colomby was taken aback. He concluded from their brief exchange that “there was no camaraderie in jazz . . . it was all very selfish, very self-involved.”40 A couple of months later, the remarkably talented Clifford Brown, along with Richie Powell and his wife Nancy Powell, were tragically killed in a car accident while driving from Philadelphia to Chicago. They were driving a Buick.41
Colomby knew Monk could not survive on out-of-town jobs alone. He needed his cabaret card. The first thing Colomby did that spring was apply to the New York State Liquor Authority requesting the reinstatement of Monk’s cabaret card. The application required supporting letters attesting to his character. Colomby had to solicit several letters and then submit his own. “In that letter, I said I was a school teacher and I could declare that Thelonious Monk was no longer using drugs. . . . My argument was that, as a school teacher, I could not be involved with anyone who was using drugs.”42 Several others wrote on Monk’s behalf, including his former producer Alfred Lion. His letter was short but direct: “Our relationship with Mr. Monk has been pleasant and satisfactory and we believe Mr. Monk to be a person of good character.”43 The request was denied.
Part of the problem was that too many powerful people in the jazz world did not believe Thelonious was of “good character.” The old stories of his strangeness and unreliability continued to dog him, despite the positive reports about his professionalism and the growing respect for his music in high art circles. The April 1956 issue of the British Jazz Monthly carried a substantial article by Raymond Horricks recounting Monk’s 1954 Paris Jazz Festival experience. Besides making him out to be a bit of a clown, Horricks claimed with an air of authority that “He has never been known to hold a job for very long because of his unreliable nature.” He placed much of the blame for Monk’s alleged irresponsibility on his mother, suggesting that his mother’s choice to support him into adulthood meant that he could work whenever he felt like it. “Other musicians have to work unless they want to find their baggage dumped on the pavement. At least Monk has always been certain of a bed and a meal, allowing him to play the fool when he feels so inclined.”44 Horricks’ words were hostile and inaccurate, but they carried weight and echoed what many club owners and booking agents believed. Colomby’s strategy was to change the discourse; to “mainstream” Monk by showing the world that he was a hard-working genius. He arranged to have Nat Hentoff interview Monk for a feature article for Down Beat. Titled “Just Call Him Thelonious,” the piece ran in the July 25 issue, alongside Hentoff’s glowing review of the recently released The Unique Thelonious Monk. It was Monk’s chance to set the record straight . . . and he did. On the strangeness and inaccessibility of his music, Monk responded, “Do I think I’m difficult to understand? Well, like what? Tell me a particular number. Some of my pieces have melodies a nitwit can understand. Like I’ve written one number staying on one note. A tone-deaf person could hum it.”45 Speaking to folks new to his music, Monk suggested they should “just listen to the music in the order that I’ve recorded it. Get the records, sit down and dig.”46 On the current state of jazz, he had little good to say. “[T]here’s been nothing really original in the last six or seven years. What is an original? If it sounds original. The construction; the melody. It has to have its own sound.”47
Not surprisingly, he devoted a good part of his commentary to responding to the kinds of claims Horricks and others continued to circulate:
I’d like to talk about the lies that have been told about me that I’m undependable on jobs and the like. I don’t know how that kind of legend got around. Some fools talk a big lie, that’s all. Those lies get started, and you just can’t stop them. Without even investigating, people go for them, and the lies get to the booking agencies. They believe it, too, so fast and condemn you before investigating. I think the booking agents and the public should investigate if rumors are true about people before they believe them.
I have never messed up; I have never goofed a job in my life. Sometimes my name has been used in places that I knew nothing about, and the promoters never tried to get in touch with me. So when the public comes and I haven’t shown up, the promoter blames me when he explains it to them. But I do have a sense of responsibility about work.48
He also had a consistent position on what constituted a just and fair arrangement, evident from his early grievances filed with Local 802 back in the early 1940s. Colomby understood this over time. “A lot of Monk’s problems arise from the fact that he has a sharp business eye. He hates matinees, calls that an extra day. He has an uncanny ability to tell how much a club is making. Booking agencies didn’t like this about him, and so a lot of strange rumors about Monk’s undependability began to come out of nowhere and scare off the club owners. No one has a greater sense of business responsibility than Monk.”49
By the end of the summer, Colomby chalked up a few successes. He got Monk two weeks at the Blue Note in Philadelphia in November with the promise of more dates in the future. But he knew all too well that trying to overturn a decade of opinion about his client required time and patience, and without a cabaret card Monk’s options remained severely limited. Meanwhile, every time he visited Monk and Nellie in the Bronx, living in an overcrowded apartment with virtually nothing but a fancy sedan parked on the street, he was reminded of their struggle and his responsibility. “Nobody had a dime,” he mused. “I would occasionally leave, literally, five dollars under an ashtray in the house. I had no money. I didn’t want to say it to him. I just left it there. ‘How does he eat?’ I think Nellie was making something, you know, and gave him some money.”50
Colomby’s help was always appreciated, but the Monks’ greatest fount of support continued to be family. Thomas and Trotyrine shared whatever they had with Thelonious and Nellie—clothes, money if they had it—and they kept an eye on the apartment as it was undergoing repair and renovation. The Monks even relied on “family” to renovate the apartment, hiring Helen Graham’s two uncles. Graham lived on Lyman Place and was so close to the Smiths that she was considered family. The Graham brothers were expert builders, but the racism of the building trades unions limited their job opportunities. The Grahams offered Monk a considerable discount because of their longstanding friendship.51
For at least six months, the Smiths provided the Monks with shelter and a loving, supportive environment. Despite extremely tight quarters, the household ran efficiently and with little friction. The older children cared for the younger ones, and the adults divided the household duties.52 The kids loved the arrangement. Toot and Barbara had become close to their cousins, and Thelonious became better acquainted with his nieces and nephews. Evelyn Smith was about twelve when the Monks moved in, and from her vantage point, “Thelonious was like a second father to all of us. He imparted certain lessons, mostly about being yourself and being truthful.”53 Monk grew especially close to sixteen-year-old Jackie because she was serious about music and she possessed a wonderful, wry sense of humor.54 She studied violin privately, played piano, and took classes at the Bronx House School of Music. Before the fire, she loved hanging out at Monk’s place and listening to her uncle play. “I sang back to Thelonious everything he played. Whatever kind of a riff it was. I don’t care how complicated, I studied it myself and knew the music. . . . He would laugh.” One day he asked Jackie to ride with him to Manhattan to pick up Sonny Rollins. “Before he had a chance to sit down, Thelonious said to him, ‘You know, my niece can sing anything you can play? . . . Go on, sing something.’ ” Slightly embarrassed, she proceeded to sing “The Way You Look Tonight” the way they recorded for Prestige in 1953. A little stunned, Rollins listened respectfully; Monk beamed with pride. “See, told ya! The girl can sing anything!” Although Thelonious never gave Jackie formal lessons, his encouragement proved critical in her decision to pursue a career in music. When he finally had a chance to hear her play something she wrote on piano, he laughed. “He didn’t say cut it out, so I knew that was a good sign.”55
As much as he enjoyed his family, the Smiths’ apartment sometimes felt claustrophobic. Without privacy and lacking a piano, Monk began spending more time at Nica’s place, where he practiced and composed on her Steinway. Nellie often accompanied him, but sometimes he went by himself. Monk and Nica also hit the clubs together or were seen riding around in her Rolls-Royce convertible (she had yet to purchase her infamous Bentley), which generated rumors of a romantic relationship. Those close to Thelonious knew such rumors were untrue. Monk also ran with Elmo Hope, who lived with his mother near the Smiths on Lyman Place. On any given night, they might show up at a local club in the Bronx, head into Manhattan, or jam the night away at Al Walker’s television repair shop.56
But Elmo would disappear for short periods of time. Monk had seen enough shooting galleries to know why: Elmo had a habit. Heroin use in the jazz world had reached epidemic proportions by the mid-1950s, due in part to the spectacular influx of the drug into black communities in Harlem, Brooklyn, and his own Morrisania neighborhood in the southwest Bronx. Throughout the spring and summer of 1956, it seemed as if every other musician Monk met or knew was addicted to “horse.” One night in late April or May, Monk and Nica dropped in at the Embers, an exclusive supper club on East 54th Street, to check out a hot new pianist from Los Angeles named Hampton Hawes.57 Monk dug his playing so much that he stayed until the last set and offered to take Hawes to Nica’s pad for a bite to eat. Hawes recounted, “I said, okay, but first I’ve got to drop by this cat’s house nearby to get some music. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, ‘I’ll wait.’ I’m sure he saw through my game. I went into the alley and copped.”58 Soon thereafter, Hawes moved to New York permanently and grew close to Monk, Nellie, and Nica. Thelonious became a kind of father-figure to him, though he “never interfered in my life or put me down for being strung. . . . If he was using himself, I didn’t know it, and he didn’t show it, and that’s what being cool is all about.”59 Monk wasn’t using then, but he had in the past and knew the toll it was taking on Hawes. And he wasn’t too cool to care. A few months later, when Hawes’s habit left him completely broke, jobless, and virtually homeless, Monk rescued him from a bench in Central Park and brought him home. Nellie fed him, cleaned him up, and gave him a fresh change of clothes. Sonny Rollins came over that night and they had what in today’s parlance is called “an intervention.” Monk, Nellie, and Sonny got on his case, reminding him that he was “an important figure in jazz” and “you need to straighten yourself out before you die or something.” “We’re all in it together and you’re too important to fuck up like this.” And then Monk gave him some money to help him start over.60
This wasn’t the first time Thelonious helped an addicted musician in need, nor would it be the last time. Just weeks after he first encountered Hawes at the Embers, Thelonious reached out to his old friend Ernie Henry. The promising alto player had all but disappeared from the jazz scene, having spent the previous few years gigging with various R&B groups and losing the battle with heroin.61 Randy Weston, his childhood friend and army buddy, encouraged Henry to come out to the jam sessions in Brooklyn and get his chops together.62 Monk encouraged him as well. He promised to use Henry for his next record date and began rehearsing with him that summer.63 To make sure Henry showed up for rehearsals, Thelonious often drove out to Brooklyn to find him. Colomby remembers accompanying Monk on one of his quests to find Henry: “I remember it was a rainy day, and we were driving around Brooklyn, not sure of his address. I said, ‘Where does he live? Who is this guy?’ Monk just said, ‘He’s a good player,’ and he wanted me to find him. I remember he lived in a kind of basement apartment with his father, I think.”64 Monk did what he could to help Henry get his life back together. When Randy Weston lobbied Keepnews and Grauer to sign Henry as a Riverside recording artist, Monk concurred, stating simply, “He can play.”65 They were persuaded; Henry recorded his first album as a leader in late August 1956.66
For the date Henry hired Wilbur Ware, the outstanding young bassist Monk had met in Chicago. He had come to New York with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that summer and settled in Brooklyn. Henry, Willie Jones, and Kenny Dorham introduced him to the local scene, and Thelonious lobbied Grauer and Keepnews to give him work.67 Monk himself began using Ware for the few jobs he had that fall. In early September, Ware joined Monk, Gigi Gryce, and drummer Ron Jefferson, for a free concert at St. John’s Recreation Center in Brooklyn sponsored by Jazz Unlimited.68 Keepnews and Grauer infrequently used Ware for other recording sessions, but they did grant Thelonious’s request to give Ware a job: They had him sleeving records and sweeping the floor at the Riverside warehouse on West 51st Street. Sometimes he slept there.69
Meanwhile, as Monk prepared Henry for his next Riverside record date, he and Nica went down to Café Bohemia to hear Bud Powell’s trio and Miles Davis’s highly touted quintet, which consisted of pianist Red Garland, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, drummer Philly Joe Jones, and a phenomenal twenty-one-year-old bassist, Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers, Jr.70 Once again, the specter of the junkie arose. Sadly, this excellent band was known as much for being “a group of unreliable drinkers and junkies” as for its musicianship.71 Ironically, the only heroin-free band member was its leader, and he was growing wary of seeing his sidemen nodding off on stage. It was a strange and sad thing for Thelonious to witness. He knew Philly Joe and had even considered him for a record date, and he recognized Chambers’s and Coltrane’s immense talents. He especially had his eye on Coltrane, who had been on the scene for several years, playing with Dizzy, Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, and a number of R&B groups before settling in with Miles.72 Monk developed a soft spot for the quiet and self-deprecating saxophonist. A fellow homeboy born in Hamlet and raised in High Point, North Carolina, ’Trane in turn had long admired Monk’s music ever since he recorded “ ’Round Midnight” with Dizzy Gillespie back in 1949. And he had recently recorded it again with Miles.73 ’Trane sounded great most of the time, but he looked terrible. In his effort to go cold turkey, he dealt with withdrawal symptoms the way most junkies do—by drinking more. He lived on a cocktail of beer and wine and disappeared between sets. Thelonious did his best to encourage him, but Coltrane was in no shape to engage Monk—at least not yet.74
• • •
The Graham brothers completed the renovations on the Monks’ apartment by early fall—just in time for Toot to start school. Nellie and Thelonious enrolled him in P.S. 191 on 61st and Amsterdam, where the “very old” but likable Mrs. Jampole taught his first grade class. They were all happy to be back in their new and improved home. The Graham brothers not only restored the apartment; they reconfigured it, moving closets and walls to make the space more manageable. And before closing up the walls, they had the good sense to add soundproofing material so that Monk could play without disturbing the neighbors.75 Now all he needed was a piano.
Thelonious was as anxious as Keepnews to work on the much-anticipated third album featuring his original compositions. His first two Riverside LPs had fared relatively well with the first wave of critics; in fact, they reserved the harshest criticisms for his record label for allegedly denying Monk the opportunity to record his own music. By late summer, he began putting his band together. He knew he wanted to use Ernie Henry and Sonny Rollins, and Oscar Pettiford played well on his earlier Riverside sessions. Monk always liked Max Roach, who was now leading a quintet with Rollins dedicated to the memory of his good friend Clifford Brown. And Grauer and Keepnews knew that snagging the high-profile drummer for the date also made good commercial sense.
With no piano at home, Thelonious held informal rehearsals at the Baroness’s place. Sometimes he and Sonny Rollins would work all night on one or two tunes. David Amram was on hand for some of these impromptu sessions. “That was one of the most amazing things I ever heard in my life. . . . They just kept going back and forth, stopping and starting, until they finally got to the end of the tune. Of course, Monk knew it already but he was teaching it to Sonny just very slowly, and repeating it over and over and over again.”76 Of the three new songs he had written for the album, two were tributes to Nica, who provided the space and the instrument to enable Monk to work during this difficult period. “Pannonica” is one of those strangely head-bopping ballads that swings even at the slowest tempos. Nica recorded it on her portable Wollensack reel-to-reel tape recorder some time in the summer of 1956, soon after Monk completed it. It is his spoken preamble that interests us: “It was named after this beautiful lady here. I think her father gave her that name after a butterfly that he tried to catch. I don’t think he caught the butterfly.”77 He also wrote a blues referencing Nica’s incessant troubles with the management at the Bolivar Hotel with the treacherous title “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are.” They were constantly trying to get rid of her, complaining about her late-night parties and musician friends—Thelonious included.78 His third contribution, considered an authentic masterpiece, was called “Brilliant Corners.” Full of huge intervallic leaps, the first sixteen bars of the melody and the harmonic movement are quite literally shaped like a circle while the bridge retains Monk’s more characteristic descending chromatic chord progressions. In terms of tempo and rhythm, the entire first chorus is played as a slow dirge and then repeated in double-time. The solos follow the same pattern. But the biggest rhythmic challenge was the song’s thirty-bar structure: He wrote a seven-bar bridge and he removed a measure from the last A-section, making it seven bars as well. For musicians used to the standard thirty-two-bar song form, “Brilliant Corners” threw them for a loop.
The Brilliant Corners album took three sessions and two months to complete. The first session took place the day before Monk’s thirty-ninth birthday in the lavish Reeves Sound Studios in Manhattan. Grauer bid farewell to Hackensack and moved Riverside’s sessions east of the Hudson. While Reeves lacked the homey feel of Rudy Van Gelder’s living room, its high-end technology and massive stock of orchestral instruments made many musicians feel like kids in a candy store. Soon after Thelonious walked in he spotted a celeste, a keyboard producing bell-like sounds, and thought it would be hip to use it on the opening of “Pannonica.”79 He positioned it perpendicular to the piano, which allowed him to play it with his right hand while playing chords with his left, resulting in a strange and jarring juxtaposition of sound. The recording of “Pannonica” was not without problems, however. Despite the rehearsals at Nica’s house, neither Rollins nor Henry had actually mastered the song by the time they went into the studio. There were several instances in which the band flubbed the final two-bar cadence. On one of those takes, Monk stopped the band and said, “Hold up, hold up. You messed up on that . . . tag. When you play it, keep in mind there’s a tag on the song, you know?” The released version succeeds, as does their rendering of “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” which may be Ernie Henry’s finest moment on record.80 There is a crying, human quality in his sound; his solo, with its slurred, loping notes, tells a story in the best tradition of the blues. Monk and Sonny Rollins build on Henry’s sound. Rollins picks up the last few notes of Monk’s solo and takes off, once again demonstrating his mastery of Monkian blues.
Compared to the subsequent sessions, the October 9 date went smoothly. Six days later, they were back at Reeves Sound Studios intent on completing the album. Four hours later, Keepnews had twenty-five incomplete takes of “Brilliant Corners” and five very frustrated and tired men—six if you include the producer.81 The problems began when Monk would not share the music with the band. Like Duke Ellington, he genuinely believed that the best way to master a song is to learn it by ear. Despite several days of rehearsals, only Rollins had been able to master the unusual twenty-two bar structure, the difficult intervals, and the shifting tempos by the time they went into the studios. (Of course, Rollins also spent a lot more time rehearsing with Thelonious at Nica’s house.) Roach and Pettiford, in particular, had trouble with the song, leading Pettiford to criticize Monk’s composing. “You don’t have enough bars,” he said at one point. Harry Colomby, who dropped by the session, remembers that Pettiford’s constant needling about the song’s limitations frustrated and hurt Monk. “He said to himself, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ That’s the only time he ever uttered anything like that.”82 Keepnews concurs: “I don’t remember that Sonny had any problems, but Max and Oscar Pettiford did. It almost caused a fistfight between Pettiford and Monk. Monk was a forgiving guy, but after that session he never mentioned Pettiford’s name.”83 Pettiford became so angry that, on one take, he only pretended to play, strumming his fingers over the strings without producing a sound.84
Keepnews took the twenty-five incomplete takes and knitted together a full version. The results are stunning. Upon listening, it becomes clear that the band had more difficulty playing the theme correctly and in unison than improvising. Sonny Rollins delivers as near-perfect a solo as one can imagine; he takes seriously Monk’s insistence on using melody as the basis for improvisation, and he is equally comfortable on the faster tempo. Monk, not surprisingly, produces a brilliant solo that might be best described as a variation on the theme. Ernie Henry’s whining long-tones work beautifully against the changes, and for all of Max Roach’s complaints, his judicious choices prove why he was a virtuoso of the drum solo. If the recording is marred by anything, it is the noticeable splice between the end of Roach’s unaccompanied solo and the return of the ensemble playing the closing theme. For someone who had never edited multiple takes together, it wasn’t bad for a first try. But Keepnews clearly recognized the problem. As he confessed thirty years later, he would have liked “to improve the editing in a couple of places.”85
Rollins and Roach’s road schedule delayed the album’s completion by nearly two months. Meanwhile, Monk played a two-week engagement at the Blue Note in Philadelphia. He led a quartet with Ernie Henry, Willie Jones, and Miles’s regular bassist, Paul Chambers, who had most of November off while his boss left for Europe as part of the “Birdland ’56 All-Stars.”86 Chambers was jazz’s golden child. He had already recorded as a leader, was the subject of feature articles, and Down Beat critics were about to anoint him “New Star” on bass.87 But with both he and Ernie Henry fighting their addiction and drinking heavily, Monk left for Philly feeling a little nervous. Fortunately, there were no major mishaps. Indeed, it was a good run, and Monk was unusually upbeat. According to Nellie, who accompanied Thelonious a couple of times from New York, he really engaged the audience, told “corny jokes” and made “remarks that were so timely you would have to laugh.”88
During their engagement, he probably saw John Coltrane, who used his respite from Davis’s band to move back to Philadelphia with his first wife, Naima, and their daughter Saeeda.89 Paul Chambers was close to Coltrane, so it is conceivable that ’Trane either came out to the Blue Note to hear the band or Chambers accompanied Monk to Coltrane’s house on Thirty-third Street. Whatever the case, the timing of Monk’s Philadelphia gig allowed the two men to get to know each other a little better outside of New York. Here, in the City of Brotherly Love, the seeds of a longstanding friendship were sown.
Monk was back home before Thanksgiving and ready to complete Brilliant Corners. That Keepnews scheduled Reeves Sound Studios for December 7—the fifteenth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—must have been a sign of things to come. Just days before the session, Ernie Henry decided to quit Monk’s group and go on the road with Dizzy Gillespie.90 This hurt Thelonious, though he really couldn’t blame Henry: He needed regular work, and Monk had none. Henry’s departure wasn’t a total disaster. Trumpeter Clark Terry stepped in. On the other hand, there was no love lost between Monk and Oscar Pettiford, who decided not to come back . . . ever. Fortunately, Paul Chambers was available for the session and the Philly gig had prepared him well.
Anxious to finish the album, Keepnews booked the studio for 10:00—a.m. Not the best time for nocturnal jazz musicians, but it allowed Thelonious to bring his seven-year-old son along—though he did have to play hooky from school.91 Only Terry and Chambers were punctual; the rest straggled in at their leisure, leaving little time to lay down two good tracks of music. And when Max Roach walked in and saw a gleaming timpani drum in the corner, he pulled a Thelonious Monk and insisted on adding it to his drum kit.92 It was worth the time spent—on their recording of “Bemsha Swing,” Roach uses the timpani to great effect, creating sudden bursts of rolling thunder. After completing “Bemsha Swing” they had about twenty minutes to vacate the studio and were still five minutes short of a completed album. Monk saved the session, filling the void with a “flawless five and a half minutes of ‘I Surrender Dear.’ ”93
The session had perhaps the greatest effect on the youngest one in the recording booth. “I remember looking out into the studio at Max Roach’s drums,” Toot remembered, “and beautiful timpanis, kettle drums with beautiful copper bottoms. Max looked like an executive at a big desk taking care of business.” When the session was over, Roach walked over to little Toot and handed him his drum sticks. From that point on, he knew exactly what he wanted to do when he grew up. He never lost those drum sticks.94
With Brilliant Corners finally in the can, Thelonious was ready for a break. Three days after the session, he was back at the Bolivar Hotel playing Nica’s piano.95 As much as he enjoyed hanging out at Nica’s, he realized he desperately needed a good piano of his own. Short of cash, he and Nellie decided to rent a Steinway baby grand, not unlike Nica’s. He had it delivered in time for Christmas.96
It had been quite a year. The fire, the dislocation, the hostile press and booking agents, the Buick, bearing witness to the ravages of heroin, bearing witness to enduring strength of family and friends, the utter frustration he felt finding musicians able to master his music, the satisfaction of composing. Monk lived in a strange limbo: feeling honored and respected, knowing his fortunes were finally rising, but also facing moments of disrespect and disappointment. He still had no cabaret card, no steady work, two children to feed, a wife dogged with health problems who had to work to pay the rent, and a guy who now took ten percent to make something happen. And suddenly, December 14—the one-year anniversary of Barbara’s death—came upon Monk like a dark shadow. He had a lot to process.
Just after Christmas, Monk was driving by himself in Manhattan when he skidded on a patch of ice and careened into another vehicle. The damage was minimal, but enough for the other driver to request Monk’s information. Monk got out of the car and just stood there, uncommunicative, staring into space. The frustrated driver called the police. A patrolman arrived, but Monk remained unresponsive. A fender bender is not a crime, but the officer felt compelled to take him into custody, or at least out of the freezing cold. He left a note on Monk’s Buick Special: “Psycho taken to Bellevue.”97