Columbia’s 30th Street Studio was a pretty extraordinary place. Located just east of Third Avenue, the former Greek Orthodox Church was purchased by Columbia in 1949 and turned into one of the finest recording studios in the city. When senior engineer Harold Chapman discovered the abandoned church, he insisted that Columbia executives leave it untouched. He was afraid that any renovations, including painting or sanding, would ruin the delicate acoustics. With 10,000 square feet of floor space and enormous ceilings, it was big enough to accommodate a full orchestra, but through the strategic use of drapes, dividers, and a little reverb, Columbia’s veteran engineers could also create a more intimate sound environment.1 The pianos were in near-perfect condition. Monk had his pick of pristine seven-foot Steinways, carefully maintained and freshly tuned before each session—the cost for which, Monk would later discover, came out of his advance.2 Macero tried to make the studio as inviting as possible. He introduced the band to his engineer, the legendary Frank Laico. Having worked there since its inception, Laico shepherded some of the greats—Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Miles Davis, and now Thelonious Monk.3 Macero also had the good manners to know that an afternoon session fell around lunch time (or in some cases breakfast), and he’d hung out with Monk long enough to know that the man loved to eat. So he provided a stack of ham sandwiches to munch on between takes. Macero bragged to Down Beat magazine that the sandwiches were the “secret” to keeping him happy and productive.4 He neglected to mention that the sandwiches were also deducted from Monk’s advance.
Thelonious may have been a little anxious about his first Columbia date, but Macero was downright nervous. A year and a half had passed since Monk had come under Columbia’s aegis, and corporate expectations had only grown. The jazz press fanned the flames with stories of Monk’s reputedly lucrative contract, and Macero and Columbia executives were inundated with requests and advice. George Wein unsuccessfully tried to get the label to underwrite Monk’s next European tour in March.5 Nica lobbied to write liner notes and for Columbia to use some of her art work for Monk’s album covers.6 Critics offered unsolicited advice on how to market and record Monk. Speaking for what he called “the consensus,” Martin Williams strongly suggested Monk focus on his earliest work, and he even proposed a repertoire. “The general feeling is that Monk’s best single piece is ‘Criss Cross’, followed by ‘Misterioso’, ‘Epistrophy’, ‘Four in One’, ‘Evidence’, ‘Eronel’, ‘Gallop’s Gallop’, ‘Skippy’, ‘Trinkle Tinkle’, ‘Crepuscule with Nellie’, ‘Brilliant Corners’, and ‘Let’s Call This.’ ” He slyly hinted that a change in personnel might be in order, praising Monk’s earlier collaborations with Milt Jackson and Art Blakey.7 Macero had some ideas of his own. Like Orrin Keepnews before him, he thought that Thelonious still needed to be made palatable to a broader audience. The solution? An album of Monk tunes by other Columbia recording artists. He had already approached jazz flutist Paul Horn and classical pianist André Previn before the plan was mercifully aborted.8
Then there was Monk. His plan was simple, the same plan he always followed when he walked into a studio: make a good record for the people and collect your bread. He agreed that he needed to change up his repertoire rather than rerecord what he’d been performing. Besides, Riverside’s impending release of his live concert LP, Two Hours with Thelonious, already covered that ground. On the first day, he pulled out “Bye-Ya,” a tune he had not recorded in four years and rarely played after Rouse joined the band.9 Thelonious spent the rest of the session laboring over “Body and Soul.” He did at least four takes before leaving the studio, and returned the next day to work on a few more. All in all, Macero preserved three solo piano renditions of “Body and Soul,” each one unique. Sometimes Monk played rubato, other times he’d swing it stride style, but he never sounded tortured or frustrated. Every take is melodic, joyful, and focused—as reflected by his audible solfeggio singing and moments when his own phrases seemed to surprise him.10
The second three-hour session produced only two other tracks besides “Body and Soul.” The quartet delivered a lively, bluesy rendition of “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are” and then revisited Monk’s revision of “Sweet Georgia Brown” which he had introduced briefly in Europe a year and a half earlier. Monk had already abandoned the original melody in Europe, and since then had made further alterations, but even the day of the recording he still referred to the tune as “Sweet Georgia Brown.” A few days later, he gave it a title: “Bright Mississippi” in honor of the civil rights struggle in the South.11 On both songs, Monk never leaves the piano. His comping is humorous and his solo, especially on “Bright Mississippi,” is downright frenetic. The band returned to 30th Street Studio the very next day, November 2, and again recorded three songs— “Monk’s Dream” and two old standards, “Sweet and Lovely” and a solo version of “Just a Gigolo.” “Gigolo” he had played in Europe, “Sweet and Lovely” he last played regularly with Coltrane in 1957, but “Monk’s Dream” had just undergone a resurrection, thanks to Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Monk’s Newport performance with the Ellington Orchestra inspired him to revisit the tune. Macero preserved two takes of “Monk’s Dream,” one with Rouse accompanying Monk on the melody, the other with Monk and the rhythm section alone and Rouse coming in to solo. Thelonious wasn’t satisfied with Rouse’s handling of the melody, so he selected the latter version for the album.12
Still short of a complete album after three consecutive days of recording, Macero booked 30th Street for one more session on November 6. Depending on what time Monk arrived, he might have caught a glimpse of the great Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who had recorded earlier the same day. Monk admired Horowitz, whose Columbia recordings of Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and Liszt would become part of his own personal collection.13 I don’t know if they actually met, but it is curious that amidst intense performances of works by Schuman, Schubert, Scarlatti, and Beethoven, Horowitz threw in an incomplete version of “Tea for Two”!14 A sly tribute to the High Priest?
Thelonious came prepared to work. They finished the day with a cleaner version of “Sweet and Lovely,” fresh cuts at the familiar “Rhythm-a-ning” and “Hackensack,” and a revisiting of “Coming on the Hudson” and “Blues Five Spot” (retitled “Five Spot Blues”). With enough music in the can, Thelonious collected his first advance. Minus scale for his sidemen and other production costs, he received a check for $8,627.53—just in time for Christmas and Nellie and Toot’s birthdays.15 Gifts were plentiful, though it was Thelonious who bought himself the most extravagant present of all—a new piano. It had been almost two years since he had lost his rented Steinway in the fire, and as much as he liked hanging out at Nica’s, he needed a piano at home. Harry Colomby went to several piano companies and offered his client’s endorsement in exchange for a significant discount. Steinway snubbed Monk, but Baldwin came through with a deal, although Colomby’s negotiations brought the price down by a mere 20 percent. On January 10, Thelonious accompanied Colomby to the D. H. Baldwin showroom on East 54th Street, selected the right piano, and forked over $2,986.70 in cash.16 A couple of days later, a new Baldwin M Grand occupied part of the kitchen and living room.
The tiny apartment started to look like home again. Like old times, except they weren’t broke. Thelonious earned enough to be the sole breadwinner, though now he had more than his immediate family to be concerned about. Skippy wasn’t earning a living, and she had two children to care for—three-year-old Nica and twenty-three-year-old Ronnie, who still lived at home but spent much of his time in the streets in search of a fix. Like so many neighborhood kids, he fell victim to heroin. His habit became a major emotional and financial burden on the family. Skippy turned to the Monks for help; she and her children were listed as dependents on their 1963 income tax return.17 Thelonious never complained, especially since Skippy had cared for Toot and Boo Boo for so long and gave them all a place to stay after the last fire. But even the rise in income did not shield Monk from financial trouble. No sooner had he gotten his Baldwin home than his accountant, Morris Zuckerman, informed him that they owed the IRS a hefty sum of money. He had to ask Columbia for a $5,000 advance against his next album, which they granted as “long as Monk is recording his new album within the next couple of weeks.”18
Monk didn’t work at all in January, and his next gig was gratis. On Friday, February 1, he headed over to Carnegie Hall to participate in “A Salute to Southern Students,” a huge benefit concert for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The New York-based Friends of SNCC sponsored the concert to commemorate the third anniversary of the sit-in movement and to raise money for SNCC’s ongoing work in Mississippi, southwest Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and South Carolina. Over 4,000 organizers had been arrested on spurious or trumped-up charges, and a greater number of activists and community residents were beaten, intimidated, even fired from their jobs for fighting for basic constitutional rights. During the bitter winter of 1962–63, Mississippi authorities retaliated against the voter registration drive by cutting off the distribution of federal food surpluses to LeFlore and Sunflower counties.19 Lacking financial resources, hundreds of young people languished in Southern jails. The concert’s organizers hoped to acknowledge the activists’ courage while highlighting the desperate conditions under which civil rights activists worked.20
The event’s sponsors were some of the biggest names in entertainment and literary circles—notably Shelley Winters, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Theodore Bikel, writers James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, and musicians Nina Simone, Pete Seeger, and Cannonball Adderley.21 The real organizers were SNCC leader Bill Mahoney and Friends of SNCC founders Alice Wright and Joanne Grant.22 They had begun reaching out to artists in the fall of 1962, though few would commit, citing previous engagements or other conflicts.23 Charles Mingus agreed, and so did Herbie Mann, but the biggest coup was pop singer Tony Bennett.24 Monk received an invitation just weeks before the event, though he did not hesitate. “Monk was glad to participate and to be of some use,” Alice Wright recalled. “I think he was really glad to be doing it for the kids.”25
Carnegie Hall sold out that night, and at least 1,000 people were turned away.26 Ossie Davis and John Henry Faulk27 emceed the event, and Tony Bennett was billed as the main attraction. But the SNCC Freedom Singers stole the show. Besides being talented vocalists, they were SNCC field secretaries who had been active in Albany, Georgia—Bernice Johnson, Cordell Reagon, Charles Neblett, Carver Neblett, and Rutha M. Harris. They moved the crowd with freedom songs and harrowing stories of organizing in the Deep South, and they shared the stage with other activists who spoke about the violence faced by students as well as poor sharecroppers attempting to register to vote. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when they read the “Honor Roll Call”—a list of SNCC organizers currently in jail.28
Thelonious was deeply moved by the event. He and a bass player (probably John Ore) “played only one tune and he was very subdued as he performed.”29 No one expected a subdued performance, let alone a short one. “We were told to put him on at a certain point,” Wright remembered, “because once he got on and warmed up you couldn’t get him off.”30 And yet, his brevity was no indication that he was anxious to leave. He stuck around for the entire concert and afterward went to a nearby restaurant with a group of SNCC activists. Freedom Singer Bernice Johnson [Reagon] sat across from Monk that night. “I was sort of scared of him. And he said, ‘That stuff, it’s not going to work. That stuff you all are talking about—it’s not gonna [work]. I mean, it’s important and I’m here.’ And it was the nonviolence, the ‘redeeming your enemy through love’ kind of part. He was basically saying, ‘You all are gonna get yourselves killed walkin’ out here in these streets in front of these crazy white people, your local crazy white people who’ve got guns.’ He just shook his head at that.”31 Skepticism notwithstanding, he accepted an invitation to join the Friends of SNCC’s Sponsoring Artists’ Committee.32
Monk had been thinking quite a lot about death, which may explain his “subdued” mood. A couple of weeks before the concert, he lost two friends who died prematurely. On January 13, thirty-one-year-old Sonny Clark overdosed on heroin, and three days later tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec succumbed to lung cancer at the age of forty-five.33 Monk was indebted to Quebec for helping him get his first record date with Blue Note. Clark was another matter. Monk treated him like a troubled younger brother. He not only forgave Clark for stealing his music, but he and Nellie gave him money and a place to stay when he needed it.34 Nica also felt responsible for Clark. For the past few months, she had been paying Dr. Robert Freymann to treat him for drug addiction with a combination of vitamin shots and methadone. After a week in Bellevue Hospital, Clark left feeling as if he had broken his habit. The next day a friend gave him a bag of heroin that killed him.35 On February 4, Monk appeared at the Village Gate for a benefit that Nica had organized to raise money for Sonny Clark’s widow and two children.36
Monk did not realize it, but he suffered yet another loss that week. On February 7, his father died of a heart attack. He was seventy-two years old and still a resident of North Carolina’s segregated state mental institution, now called Cherry Hospital.37 He may have heard stories of his famous son and someone might have slipped him a clipping or two, but by the time his progeny began to receive significant national press, the elder Monk had become a virtual pariah. The family that cared most about him, the children of his late brother “Babe” Monk, had moved to Connecticut. He probably knew nothing about Thomas or Marion, or that his wife had been dead for over seven years. Thelonious Monk, Sr. died alone. There was no one to claim him, no one to memorialize him, no one to bury him. His remains were sent to Duke University Hospital “to be used by the anatomical board.”38
For the younger Monk, February 7 was significant for other reasons. That night he opened at Birdland, his first performance there since December 1949, when owner Oscar Goodstein screamed at him for placing his drink and lit cigarette on their new piano.39 Monk had no real desire to work at Birdland. Like many other musicians, he believed owner Oscar Goodstein was vindictive and disrespectful of musicians, and more than once he had barred Thelonious from the premises.40 But Monk needed work and Goodstein needed Monk. The club was in financial trouble and Thelonious was now a draw.41 The two-week booking turned out well. Radio station WJZ hosted a live broadcast from Birdland on Saturday nights, which gave the quartet even wider exposure.42 One of those broadcasts reveals Monk in an especially playful mood. On “Evidence,” after comping briefly behind Rouse’s solo, Thelonious hits a couple of forearm bangs and then gets up from the piano, followed by muted laughter and expressions of astonishment. The crowd is clearly digging it, and Monk is digging being dug. He might have been competing for laughs with the young comedian Flip Wilson, who shared the bill with Monk.43
Thelonious was in good spirits, partly because he stayed so busy. On Saturday, February 23, he played an evening concert at Queensboro Community College before rushing off to Birdland for another radio broadcast.44 He also returned to the studio to complete another album before heading off for his second European tour. The quartet was scheduled to fly on the 28th of February, so Macero booked 30th Street Studio for three consecutive afternoons, from February 25 to 27. The first day only yielded a trio recording of “Tea for Two.”45 He had been practicing it at home and decided to dust off the same arrangement he used for his Riverside trio version eight years earlier, right down to Oscar Pettiford’s bass introduction (which John Ore played pizzicato rather than arco). The following day the quartet recorded a virtually forgotten Monk original, “Think of One,” which had not seen the light of day in ten years. Although the song is based primarily on one note, it probably required some rehearsal time, which may explain why the session produced no other tunes. On the last day they produced four excellent tracks, none of which were part of Monk’s regular repertoire—another trio version of “Tea for Two,” “Criss Cross,” “Eronel,” and a couple of gorgeous solo piano renditions of the standard “Don’t Blame Me.” “Criss Cross” had been given new life by Gunther Schuller’s “Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss Cross),” which he had recorded and performed all across the country. Monk reclaims it here, emphasizing its minor tonalities and angular shape that had come to define “Criss Cross.” “Eronel,” with its boppish lines, was the odd song out. Once again, Monk took full composer’s credit without acknowledging Sadik Hakim and Idrees Sulieman.
Five exceptional tracks recorded over three days still fell short of a complete album, but Monk and his band had a European tour to attend to. Monk didn’t leave without taking care of one important piece of business: He and the Termini brothers finally reconciled in late February, and Monk agreed to a long engagement at the Five Spot. This time it wasn’t Colomby coming to the Terminis with hat in hand; quite the opposite. Joe and Iggy were in dire financial straits, and they knew Thelonious was an instant attraction. The Jazz Gallery had gone out of business the previous summer, and the Five Spot was forced to move after developers demolished 5 Cooper Square to make way for a new apartment building. The Terminis acquired 2 St. Mark’s Place a few blocks away (the corner of Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place) and transformed an old cafeteria and tobacco shop into the new Five Spot. When it opened in January, patrons discovered a very different club. The new Five Spot was larger (its legal capacity was 223 patrons), but the Terminis retained the older club’s character by adorning its richly painted red walls with the same posters, photos, and works of art.46 They also installed a new grand piano, selected by none other than Monk himself.47 All they needed now was their cabaret license. In fact, Joe Termini wanted to hire Monk’s group earlier, but no license meant that neither horns nor percussion instruments could be used in the club.48 Instead, all parties agreed that Monk’s quartet would open during the second week of April (pending approval of the cabaret license). The terms of the contract reveal much about their difficult finances, their strong desire to bring Monk back, and Monk’s own personal commitment to Joe and Iggy. The Terminis could not afford his regular floor of $2,000 a week, so they offered $1,000 plus half of what the house earned over and above $3,000. They also agreed to a minimum seven-month contract that could be broken “if circumstances warrant,” but Monk agreed not to accept any other club engagements in New York City. He could travel, but he had to inform the Terminis four weeks in advance.49
Monk happily signed the contract before flying to Europe. He looked forward to the day when the Five Spot would be known again as the home of Thelonious Monk.
• • •
George Wein had to miss the first leg of the tour, so Jules Colomby traveled with the group along with Joyce Wein.50 Thelonious almost missed the flight. Joyce went by the Monks’ apartment to make sure they were packed, only to find Monk in bed in an agitated state. Nellie explained that he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to cancel the trip. Joyce asked what was wrong. “My hand hurts,” Monk replied. Sensing that he needed some mothering, she offered to “kiss it and make it better.” Joyce kissed both hands and said “I think you can go to Europe now, Thelonious.” He got up, Nellie packed, and they made their plane.51
Frankfurt, Hamburg, Baden-Baden, Munich, Berlin, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Paris, and Brussels—twelve cities in seventeen days and practically every concert hall sold out.52 With very few breaks between performances, this tour was more grueling than the last, especially for Nellie, who suffered from a bad cold she could not shake. Still, she made sure her husband was well-dressed, and shopped when she was up to it. In Hamburg, she purchased a fancy new tape recorder and enough neckties to fill a small suitcase. (Regrettably, in their rush to get to the next destination—Paris—they left the neckties in their hotel room.)53 Thelonious, on the other hand, was in his glory. The Germans went wild for him and he reciprocated. Monk said of the Rhineland’s jazz fans: “These cats are with it!”54 In Baden-Baden, a bourgeois resort town in the southwest famous for its spas and gambling casinos, Monk reunited with Joachim-Ernst Berendt, the writer/critic who had interviewed him in Paris in 1954. Berendt now hosted a television show called “Jazz—Heard and Seen” (Jazz Gehört und Gesehen), and he booked Thelonious as a special guest.55 Much to everyone’s surprise, Monk departed slightly from the basic repertoire after Berendt asked him, “What would you say, Thelonious, is your favorite tune, or one of your favorite tunes?” Monk replied, “Well, there’s a favorite hymn that I like a lot. We recorded it for a French picture. ‘By and By, When the Morning Comes.’ ”56 And he proceeded to play a short yet soulful solo rendition of Charles Tindley’s classic. Following a rather pious verse, he irreverently switched to stride piano during the chorus, collapsing sacred and secular, veneration and humor. Another reminder that in an avant-garde world Thelonious was still old-school, and yet his German listeners might have thought his harmonies were akin to science fiction.
Monk’s first tour introduced him to Europe; by this time, he was famous. Adoring fans greeted him at the airport, lined up for autographs, and applauded appreciatively as soon as he walked on stage. Columbia helped his promotion by releasing his first LP, Monk’s Dream, to coincide with the tour, and Thelonious made sure he played tunes from the album—“Criss Cross,” “Bye-Ya,” “Bright Mississippi,” and of course, the title track. The marketing department at Columbia enlisted major critics to contribute liner notes—Nat Hentoff, Martin Williams, Ralph Gleason, Voice of America jazz host Willis Conover, and Macero himself. Each of these men proclaimed Monk’s unparalleled genius, declared him a “virtuoso” and an “original,” and placed him alongside Duke Ellington in the pantheon of jazz legends.57 The European press produced a flood of articles and pounced on Monk for interviews, especially the Parisians.58 And the reputedly taciturn musician not only obliged but gave generously of his time. On March 9, the day of his scheduled concert at the Olympia Theatre, an uncharacteristically loquacious Thelonious sat for two long interviews.
Jazz Hot critic François Postif spent six hours with Monk in his room at the Hôtel Prince de Galles. He expected to find a difficult, “unapproachable” man but instead found Monk to be “charming,” “gentle,” “sociable,” and possessed of “great kindness.”59 Thelonious spoke openly about his childhood, his technique, the days of Minton’s Playhouse, his favorite compositions (“Blue Monk” and “ ’Round Midnight”), the titles of his songs, why he loves dancing to his own music, his ideas about accompaniment and improvisation, among other things. He was witty: when asked if he came from a family of musicians, he mused, “Of course, I come from a family of musicians, like all of us, since my family is the world.” But he also spoke frankly about issues dear to him. He suggested that history had been unkind to him, failing to give him due credit for his role in creating bebop. And when Postif asked him about his statement in Frank London Brown’s Down Beat profile, where he said his music is not a social commentary and that he “would have written the same way even if I had not been a Negro,” Monk vehemently denied “ever saying anything so insane.”60 Whether or not Monk misremembered the quote, in 1963 as civil rights dominated the world stage, he did not want to come across as uninterested or disloyal to the black freedom movement.
After the concert, he and Nellie returned to their hotel room and met with two more journalists, Jean Clouzet and Michel Delorme of Jazz Magazine. Monk’s playfulness with Postif contrasted sharply with what seemed like a more combative conversation with Clouzet and Delorme. Some of their questions annoyed Monk because they accepted the common stories about his behavior. The first thing they wanted to know, for example, was why he gave so few interviews. “I never refuse to talk with someone,” he replied. “If I don’t give more interviews, it may be because I never had the chance. . . . In fact, the real reason is that critics seem to avoid me. I don’t know why. Probably because of the nonsense that has been spread about me.”61 The “nonsense,” i.e., stories of his unreliability and eccentric behavior, he added, had made it difficult for him to find work. When asked if most people understand his music, he scoffed, arguing that the people have understood it but the critics have not, which only contributed to his marginalization since “they are the ones who decide what should be heard and what should not.”62 Indeed, he took the critics to task for giving Dizzy and Bird credit for his contributions to modern jazz, and he made the case that a lot of modern piano players copy his technique.63 When Clouzet and Delorme suggested that Duke Ellington might have influenced him, Thelonious emphatically denied it, to the point of stretching the truth. “I never listen to Ellington. As I said, I haven’t heard him for years. If there is an influence, it could have only happened the other way around.”64 He railed against Ornette Coleman and the avant-garde for creating music that is “illogical” and “incoherent.” “Even [Sonny] Rollins seems to be affected,” Monk lamented. “That’s the reason why I haven’t listened to him lately. He is such a wonderful musician that I can’t bear the idea that he might be going in the same direction.” Finally, though not surprisingly, his interviewers brought up racial issues, allowing Thelonious to give a more measured response to the frequently asked question: What role does art play in the movement for racial justice? Monk revised what he had told Postif, insisting that he doesn’t think about race but rather sees himself as an American. But being an American, he added, “doesn’t prevent me from being aware of all the progress that still needs to be made. . . . I know my music can help bring people together, and that’s what is important. I think that jazz is the thing that has contributed the most to the idea that one day the word ‘friendship’ may really mean something in the United States.”65
The quartet gave their final performance in Düsseldorf on March 17 and the next day they headed home. Anxious to complete his next album, Macero reserved 30th Street Studio for March 29, where he knocked out two more tracks—“Pannonica” and “Crepuscule with Nellie.”66 With the LP completed, Macero moved swiftly to package it and prepare for distribution. Unlike Orrin Keepnews, who kept a tight rein on everything and insisted on writing all of Monk’s liner notes, Macero agreed to let those closest to Thelonious comment on his music and significance—a decision helped along by the many letters and phone calls he received from Thelonious’s inner circle. He finally succumbed to Nica’s requests to write the notes, though he nixed her art work for the cover. Calling the second LP Criss Cross,67 Columbia’s marketing department (and perhaps Macero) substantially revised Nica’s original notes. The published notes still border on the hagiographic, and they were toned down from the original. But it is the latter, carefully crafted and adorned with a variety of colored pencils, that deserves our attention, for it is a rare and beautiful example of Nica baring her soul and expressing a deep love and admiration for the man and his work:
COLUMBIA has acquired a star of the first magnitude. . . . probably the greatest star
ever to dawn on the jazz horizon. . . .
To attempt to analyze, describe, or explain the music of THELONIOUS MONK would not only be pretentious, but superfluous. . . .
Thelonious’s greatness lies in the very fact that he transcends all accepted formulae. . . . all well-worn adjectives and cliches. . . . A new vocabulary, alone, would suffice. . . .
For those who have already heard him, no words are necessary. . . . and for those who are as yet ignorant the message is very simple. . . .
LISTEN. . . . 68
In an addendum she titled “some thoughts about Thelonious,” she likened him to Bartók, compared his stability and consistency to that of the Rock of Gibraltar, described him as a “one-man renaissance,” insisted on the inevitability of his newfound success, and proclaimed that he “cannot HELP being original! . . . any more than he can help sounding right, whatever he does. . . . and swinging with every breath he takes. . . . !” And he’s a philosopher extraordinaire and a true legend in his own time, whom she placed on par with “Professor Einstein, Charlie Parker, [and] General de Gaulle.”69
Nica may have been Monk’s most passionate champion, but she was not alone. Praise came from all corners of the European and American press. Down Beat critic Peter Welding practically fawned over Monk’s Dream, and Martin Williams published a major essay in the Saturday Review celebrating Monk’s work and long-overdue recognition. Thelonious appreciated Williams’s piece because he put the question of Monk’s technique to rest. He writes, “far from being an inept technician, Monk is a virtuoso—a virtuoso of the specific techniques of jazz, in challengingly original uses of accent, rhythm, meter, time and of musically expressive space, rest, and silence.”70
Monk did not let all the press go to his head. His commitments to his community remained a high priority, even if it meant performing in the House of the Lord. On April 7, Monk and his quartet performed at the Presbyterian Church of the Master in Harlem as the featured artist in their Sunday evening jazz workshop series.71 The Reverend Eugene Callender, a relatively young and dynamic minister, community activist, and consummate jazz lover, had just inaugurated the series in hopes of reaching a younger, hipper generation. Monk had enormous respect for Reverend Callender because of his leadership in the Harlem Neighborhood Associations and the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), but especially for his ongoing work with the Morningside Community Center.72
Three Sundays later, on April 28, Monk played another benefit—a fundraiser for his son’s school, Cherry Lawn. Held at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, the concert drew a full house, attracting students, faculty, parents, as well as jazz fans in the area.73 For Toot, who went by “T.J.” among his classmates, seeing his peers hold his father in such esteem impressed him. The quartet played two outstanding forty-minute sets and an encore. But more than the concert itself, Toot remembered what his father said to him on the way to Westport that afternoon. “I remember getting in the limo with my father to go and during the ride over he said, ‘You’ll be straight after this. . . . Once I do this concert you’re untouchable.’ And I realize now that he knew how this private school thing worked and it was really about who you are. I knew how the white kids operated, the students whose parents donated a few dollars and all of a sudden they didn’t get thrown out, they only got suspended.”74 In other words, Monk believed the concert and his name would put his son in the school’s good graces. At least he hoped it would.
Monk planned to open at the Five Spot on April 14, but the Termini brothers still had no cabaret license and it became clear that the issue would not be resolved before the band left for Japan on May 9. In the interim, Colomby went back to Birdland owner Oscar Goodstein, who offered the quartet another two-week engagement. Neither Monk nor his bandmates were happy about it, least of all John Ore. Several days into the gig he and Goodstein had a heated exchange, which led Ore to quit, leaving Monk without a bass player just days before their tour.75 Sam Jones stepped in temporarily, and then suggested a more permanent replacement: twenty-three-year-old Edward “Butch” Warren, Jr. Thelonious didn’t need convincing. He had heard Warren play before, most recently at the memorial benefit for Sonny Clark where they met. For the past two years, the Washington, D.C., native functioned as the unofficial house bassist at Blue Note, having recorded with Donald Byrd, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Clark, and Jackie McLean.76
Warren’s relative youth belied his experience. Monk liked the big sound Warren got from the lower register and his inventive choice of notes—characteristics he appreciated in Wilbur Ware’s playing. Like so many other Monk sidemen, joining the band was like baptism by fire for Warren. “Working with Monk was pretty hard. . . . I had heard Thelonious Monk so many times at home, you know, it wasn’t hard to learn his songs. We had one rehearsal, we went over the songs one time, but we did our rehearsing right there on the job.” He never told Warren how to play; he simply told him to “make my music sound better.”77 Just to make sure Warren gelled with the band, Thelonious had Nellie bring the tape recorder they had bought in Hamburg down to Birdland. The tape reveals a surprisingly comfortable Warren, playing confidently on tunes like “Evidence,” “Blue Monk,” “Rhythm-a-ning,” and “Epistrophy.” Thelonious gives Warren plenty of solo space, which he uses to great effect. Unlike Ore, who rarely strayed from walking bass lines, Warren breaks up the rhythm and creates more interpretive and thematic lines. On “Light Blue,” whose slow and plodding tempo tested all musicians, Warren delivers a compelling solo building on the theme—a difficult act following Monk’s own stunning solo. Judging from the applause, Warren won the crowd over.78 Thelonious hired Warren the next day. He was going to Japan.79
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Monk had a longstanding interest in Japan. In 1955, he told David Amram that a time would come in the near future when we will have “Japanese jazz,” so long as people around the world find their own path. “They shouldn’t copy us,” he warned. “They should have their own.”80 Art Blakey’s visit to Japan in January of 1961 further piqued his interest. Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ tour marked the first wave in what would become a veritable tsunami of American jazz artists to cross the Pacific. Indeed, the locals dubbed the period from 1961 to 1964 as the “rainichi” rush, which literally means “come to Japan.”81 But even before the rainichi rush, Monk had become a giant among Japan’s many jazz aficionados. In 1958, Swing Journal, Japan’s leading jazz publication, selected Brilliant Corners as the number-one album in the country.82 Critic Jiro Kubota deemed it a genuine “masterpiece,” and Yui Shoichi called it a “perfect group expression.” “Monk’s music is like a moving canvas,” Yui continues, “on which he paints wonderful sketches and provides brilliant color to the sketch in a flowing manner.”83 Jinichi Uekusa contributed a few pieces on Monk, praising his music as “a treat for the senses” and “mind-broadening,” but wondering aloud if he would ever enjoy mainstream acceptance.84 Interestingly, the Japanese jazz press, unlike the American press, focused almost exclusively on music and avoided speculations about his eccentricity or behavior.
Monk’s greatest champion in Japan was not a critic but a pianist named Yagi Masao.85 In 1959, the twenty-six-year-old pianist formed his own group featuring several Monk tunes in their repertoire, culminating in his debut LP, Masao Yagi Plays Thelonious Monk, recorded in the summer of 1960.86 It was the first all-Monk LP outside the United States. Yagi brings his own boppish style to the music, but occasionally incorporates Monk licks and voicings. He is most original on “ ’Round Midnight,” which he does as a duet with bassist Harada Masanaga, and “Off Minor.” Yagi avoided songs that were too difficult; three of the eight cuts are blues and they included the ever-popular “Rhythm-a-ning.”87 Overall, the LP is fairly derivative, with Yagi’s sidemen copying licks verbatim from popular American jazz musicians, and their arrangement of “Evidence” is based entirely on Blakey’s Atlantic recording from 1957. Yagi made sure his hero received a copy of the album, either by post or in person during the tour, though one wonders what Monk thought about it, especially given his injunction that “they shouldn’t copy us.”88
On May 9, Thelonious and his quartet, Nellie, and Nica boarded a Japan Air Lines flight, first to Honolulu for a couple of days and then on to Tokyo. George and Joyce Wein accompanied them, along with singer Jimmy Rushing—the opening act.89 They arrived May 12, in time to give a brief press conference at the Akasaka Prince Hotel, catch a little shut-eye, and perform the next night before a sell-out crowd at Tokyo’s Sankei Hall. The remainder of the tour was much the same: they played full houses in Sendai City, Nagoya, Kokura, Sapporo, Osaka, Kyoto, and two more concerts in Tokyo—all cities with an established jazz culture.90 During part of the tour, the Monks were accompanied by Reiko Hoshino, owner of a “kissu” or jazz café in Kyoto. She introduced them to the culture, welcomed them into her home, and became their closest friend and liaison in Japan.
Their grueling schedule left only two free days out of two weeks, but the fans made it worthwhile. Japanese audiences were among the most appreciative and enthusiastic Monk had ever encountered. They tended to applaud as soon as they recognized the opening bars of a song, the overwhelming crowd favorite being “Blue Monk.” The band rarely strayed from its usual repertoire, but they played well and Monk infused even his well-worn songs with new life. For the majority of Japanese who had never seen Monk live or on film, his performance was immensely entertaining. He danced, he lurched, he sucked in his jaws and at times looked like he was in a trance, and yet he never lost his place. He knew exactly when to come back in, responded musically to his sidemen’s phrases, and always directed the band—sometimes with comical results. When Monk thought Warren’s solo on “Blue Monk” had gone on long enough, he signaled him by slamming his forearm on the keys, generating chuckles from the crowd.91
On the 23rd, the day before their departure, the quartet taped a television program for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), giving Japanese fans a chance to see Monk at work. He came on stage wearing a hat and a long overcoat draped over what appeared to be a silk suit and a light-colored thin tie with vertical stripes. He had lost a considerable amount of weight, so nothing fit him well; even his precious ring could not stay up on his finger, so every few bars or so he can be seen adjusting it. He appeared slightly inebriated but in control, attacking the keyboard like a boxer and leaping from the piano bench during Rouse’s solos to dance. Monk’s movements were so compelling that during Rouse’s solo on “Blue Monk,” the camera cuts the saxophonist out of the frame to pursue Thelonious. Even when he performed “Just a Gigolo” unaccompanied, his entire body was electric.92
Off stage, he met several local musicians, including Yagi Masao and a talented saxophonist named Hidehiko “Sleepy” Matsumoto, visited a couple of “kissu” or jazz cafes, and went shopping with his two best friends—Nellie and Nica. He picked up a hip silk skullcap in Tokyo, a couple of miniature Japanese Geisha dolls for Boo Boo, and his prize possession—a stunning silk smoking jacket with gold embroidery.93 But wherever he went, someone invariably asked him or Nellie about the racial situation in the states. Days before the tour’s arrival, the Japanese were bombarded with television and newspaper accounts of Birmingham, Alabama, where the nonviolent demonstrations involving black school children were met by savage force under the direction of police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor. They witnessed shocking scenes of black people kneeling in prayer dragged and beaten by police, teenagers sliding across the pavement from the force of fire hoses capable of taking bark off trees, children packed into paddywagons on their way to the city jail. On May 11, full-scale rioting broke out, causing President John F. Kennedy to dispatch federal troops to Birmingham to keep the peace.94 A new civil war was breaking out in the United States, and the Monks were on the other side of the globe.
They arrived home on May 26, giving Monk and his band just two days to rest before opening at the Five Spot. With the cabaret license settled, the Terminis got the club together while Ivan Black put out a flurry of press releases announcing Monk’s historic homecoming to the “new Five Spot Café.” Playing opposite guitarist Kenny Burrell (and later pianist Mose Allison), Monk’s quartet opened to a packed house, and it remained packed the entire week.95 As the Third Avenue space was considerably bigger than the old Five Spot, this certainly pleased the Terminis, who did everything to accommodate Thelonious. Indeed, they even revised his contract making his start time 10:15 rather than 9:30, knowing that he would probably arrive at the club closer to 11:00.96 Hardcore fans made their pilgrimage alongside curiosity-seekers, Beat generation stragglers, tourists, and a variety of downtown celebs. The Daily News took note of the fact that Leonard Bernstein showed up on occasion. When asked what he thought about Monk, he replied, “He’s a crude pianist . . . but he’s so creative, so individual that he’s a genius.”97 Playwright Brendan Behan actually climbed on stage with the resident genius after he had had a little too much to drink. As Down Beat reported, “While Behan sang some Welsh airs, one hand holding his pants up because of unhooked suspenders, the other draped around Monk’s shoulder, Monk never gave any indication that he was aware of Behan’s presence. Finally, Behan was escorted to his ringside table and dug Monk for an hour.”98
But for an emerging avant-garde experimenting in conceptual and performance art, Monk’s spontaneous dance, combined with his drinking during and between sets, embodied the perfect expression of pleasure and excess. Dance historian Sally Banes traces what she calls the rise of avant-garde performance and the “effervescent body” to Greenwich Village in 1963.99 I suspect that Monk’s own “effervescent body” spinning and lurching nightly at the Five Spot contributed to downtown artists’ search for bodily freedom. The club’s culture and reputation contributed as well, for at the Five Spot performance could just as easily erupt from the audience as on stage. For example, one night Monk was so late getting to the gig that a young man in the audience got up on stage, “whipped out a cordless electric shaver and gave himself a full barbering.”100
A trip to the Five Spot to see Monk was mandatory for any self-respecting young, hip New York intellectual back then. For those who couldn’t make it that summer of 1963, Monk came to them, courtesy of Jules Colomby and the New School for Social Research. Jules produced the series of Saturday evening concerts/lectures and Hall Overton served as host and interlocutor. Overton’s job was to explain the music, place it in some context, and interview the musicians on stage. Held outdoors in the school’s elegant gardens, the first hour of the program was broadcast on public television. The program was well-publicized and the first few concerts featuring Art Farmer, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, and the Horace Silver Quintet, drew good crowds.101 When Monk’s quartet appeared on June 22, students, fans, and critics filled the garden.102 To everyone’s surprise—everyone close enough to the stage to hear him—Monk not only talked but was gracious, funny, and charming. Following Overton’s warm introduction and a tight performance of “Criss Cross,” the interview began. Monk spoke briefly but rather eloquently about his childhood, piano lessons, and how he learned harmony on his own. Then in response to a question about the origins of bebop, he took the opportunity to repeat his revision of popular jazz history. Although he explained the genesis of the name, the main point of the story is that he was bebop’s true originator. He spoke about how he had originally titled his very popular tune “52nd Street Theme,” “Bip Bop.” “And I told the cats the name so probably that’s where the name ‘Bebop’ came from.”103
The staid, professorial Overton played straight man to Monk, whose humor was disarming but never naïve:
Hall: Now, I know you have some very strong convictions about your music, about what it should be and who you want to reach with your music. Could you say something about that?
Monk: Say it again please. [LAUGHTER]
Overton repeats the question.
Monk: I’d like to reach everybody, the public plus the musicians. And that’s the standard that I’ve set for my songs. Something that will get to the people’s ear, plus no criticisms from the musicians. [LAUGHTER]104
The band performed “Nutty,” followed by Overton’s musicological analysis, accompanied by projections of lead sheets he transcribed himself. One can imagine the collective yawn as Overton droned on about Monk’s use of the second and sixth intervals and the way he creates an “interesting formal effect out of 32 bars.” Several minutes passed before Overton turned to Monk and asked him to play “Trinkle Tinkle” unaccompanied. Having not played the tune in years, he made a mistake in the last measure. “I missed that,” he declared, as he played the passage over, at which the audience laughed and applauded. This gesture of humility both endeared him to the crowd and conveyed just how precise and difficult his compositions are. Hall broke character when he replied, “That’s all right, Monk. I’ve been trying for years to play it. I can’t come anywhere near it.”105
Monk had a way of undercutting the academic tenor of the lecture while maintaining his innocence. Following performances of “ ’Round Midnight” and “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” Overton delivered a gracious summary: “Monk’s sense of time and his rhythmic virtuosity, his use of space are the product of a completely original and powerful musical mind. As I mentioned earlier, the truly original geniuses are rare in music, and are often unappreciated during their lifetime. I think it’s a hopeful sign that Thelonious Monk is now getting the kind of acceptance he deserves, and this is happening without compromise through the music itself.” But before Overton arrived at the final word, Thelonious interrupted, reminding everyone “And we’re working at the Five Spot!”106 He broke up the room. Critic John S. Wilson was there, and while he complained that he couldn’t hear much of what Monk actually said from where he sat, “he did speak, and that in itself was an event.”107
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Thelonious spent the Fourth of July at Newport. It was the tenth anniversary of the venerable festival and George Wein invited just about everyone to join the party. The roster was impressive: Miles, Coltrane, Hawk, Dizzy, Duke, Cannonball, Rollins, Mulligan, Brubeck, Jimmy Smith, Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson—a veritable history of the music.108 Wein also wanted to disrupt the performance-as-usual by putting together artists who didn’t usually play together. One idea was to have clarinetist Pee Wee Russell join up with Monk’s quartet. Wein thought it would be a successful pairing because they had the “same feeling for intervals” and they “both play what to many people are dischords, they are both always looking for that note—that note that is right yet different.”109 When Wein proposed the meeting a week before the festival, Russell agreed. He was already moving away from the old Chicago-style jazz. The year before he had formed a modern band with trombonist Marshall Brown, whose repertoire included Monk, Tadd Dameron, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. He had also played duets with Jimmy Giuffre, whose experimental music he admired. He even went to the Five Spot to hear Monk’s band a few days before Newport and chose two songs he thought were appropriate for the range and sound of the clarinet—“Blue Monk” and “Nutty.”110 Monk liked the idea, too, but he wasn’t willing to rehearse, and it showed. On “Nutty,” Russell goes out of his way to sound abstract, to play deliberately dissonant phrases that have no relation to the melody. For Monk, abandoning the melody was a no-no, which is why he continuously returned to the melodic line while comping behind Russell. After a while, Monk gave up and strolled, leaving Butch Warren and Frankie Dunlop to support him. On “Blue Monk,” Thelonious hardly played at all behind Russell. He later complained that Monk strolled too much, leaving him hanging. When Russell heard the recording played during a blindfold test a year later, he turned cold: “No rehearsal, just pushed onto the stage, and I didn’t fit into that group. Anyway, I don’t like that kind of music.”111
Judging from the applause, the fans seemed to enjoy the meeting, but critics and keen observers came away with differing opinions. Ira Gitler and Dan Morgenstern thought both artists exhibited great rapport and mutual respect.112 John S. Wilson begged to differ. “Mr. Monk did not play while Mr. Russell was playing and Mr. Russell did not play while Mr. Monk was playing, so that the meeting amounted to little more than their presence on the same platform at the same time. If the purpose of such an arrangement is to see what sort of fire can be struck when two disparate jazz musicians are rubbed together, this meeting failed because they never got close enough to make contact.”113 Wein was ambivalent. He observed some interesting moments but blamed Monk’s “strolling” for squandering what might have been an exciting musical exchange.114 The only truly satisfied party was Columbia Records; they recorded the concert and got half an LP out of it. They pressed Miles Davis’s 1958 Newport performance on the other half and released it the following year as Miles and Monk at Newport.115 Originally conceived as Monk and Miles and Newport, Mr. Davis and some company execs would have none of it. It taught Thelonious a valuable lesson about his place in the Columbia hierarchy.116
Outside the Columbia matrix, Monk’s star status was rising. During the summer, Harry Colomby received a call from a Time magazine writer named Barry Farrell. “We’re interested in doing a cover story on Monk for Time,” he announced nonchalantly. Colomby’s emotions ricocheted between shock, glee, and finally dread. “I thought . . . How is he going to act? What condition is he in? From that moment on, my stomach was in knots.”117 Colomby found out soon enough. During their first meeting, Monk paced around Farrell’s office in the Time-Life building, staring out the window the whole time.118 He may have been on the verge of an episode, but he also may have been expressing his general impatience with journalists. But Farrell was indifferent to his behavior. A long-time Monk follower, he described himself as “a jazz fan in a way I am not a fan of anything else,” and he took the music seriously.119
The Monk story came about entirely through Farrell’s initiative. Recently hired as the magazine’s music writer, the editors wanted him to write a cover story featuring George Szell of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, which Farrell wasn’t keen to do. He negotiated: he would write it in exchange for a major cover story on a jazz musician.120 The editors initially proposed Ray Charles and then Miles Davis, but nixed Charles because of his drug problems and Miles Davis was just too incorrigible.121 To Farrell’s great pleasure, they settled on Thelonious Monk—always his first choice. Farrell was one of the regulars at the Five Spot, and had just penned a piece in Time casting a critical eye on the folks who populated the “Home of Thelonious Monk.” He noted rather disdainfully how Monk “will spend a whole night horsing around on his piano while his sidemen accompany him with all the enthusiasm of cops frisking drunks. On other nights he plays brilliantly and the sidemen follow with insight and devotion—but the applause is just the same, Monk’s audience is far too devoted to him to worry about his music.”122 Once his managing editor gave him the green light, Farrell approached Monk every chance he got, “mostly walking around outside the Five Spot . . . or sitting in some dark bar at 2 a.m.”123 In time, Thelonious and Nellie came to trust Farrell. He visited the Monks’ home a couple of times and learned that he and Thelonious shared some things in common besides a sense of style and a devotion to the music. Farrell loved basketball, had visited Japan, and enjoyed a hit of reefer every so often.124 And the man was hip—twenty-eight, tall, handsome, strawberry-blond hair, he smoked Gauloise cigarettes and, like his subject, dressed stylishly. “Women loved him,” proclaimed writer John Gregory Dunne. “He was that rare writer who looked the way a writer should look.”125 For the next two or three months, he would become Monk’s shadow.
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On August 23, Monk appeared at the Apollo for another midnight benefit concert sponsored by the Negro American Labor Council. The purpose was to honor A. Philip Randolph and raise money in support of a massive “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” scheduled to take place the following week. The proceeds were earmarked to pay transportation costs for thousands of unemployed workers, black and white, who wanted to attend the march. Many stars turned out: Tony Bennett, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee. Even the sensational “Little Stevie Wonder” was flown out from Detroit for the event.126 Thelonious was proud of his contribution, though a little ambivalent about not participating in the March on Washington. He did watch the march on television as he lay in bed. Harry Colomby visited that day and remembers Thelonious suddenly announcing, “I think I made a contribution to the movement without having to be there to march.”127
Whatever guilt Thelonious may have carried for not being on the frontlines of the movement evaporated a week later when his nephew Ronnie, Skippy’s son, was found dead of a heroin overdose.128 Ronnie’s death sent shockwaves through both the Monk and Smith families. For Toot and Boo Boo (who just turned ten three days earlier), Ronnie had been like a big brother. Toot recalled that when they lived together on Bristow Street and briefly on West 63rd, “Ronnie was the one that was sort of looking after me, you know?”129 Clifton Smith felt the same way. “He was like my big brother and he taught me all kinds of stuff. Taught me how to talk to girls. Then when he got involved with drugs, I couldn’t follow him around. He used to tell me, ‘Don’t do what I’m doing.’ ”130 Ronnie’s death dealt a huge blow to the family because he was so promising, talented, and beloved. Skippy suffered something of a nervous breakdown and for months could not function. She went into seclusion.
Thelonious took Ronnie’s death especially hard; most family members say it had a greater emotional impact on him than the loss of his mother. He was overcome more by anger than grief. “I’ll never forget the funeral,” his nephew Theolonious recalled, “because Uncle Bubba was mad. Services were held at a church in Harlem and the minister kept saying that Ronnie was the nephew of Thelonious Monk and all that. It made him angry. He said, “They’re mentioning my name more than they’re mentioning his.’ ”131 He stayed silent, seething through much of the service. When it was time to observe the body and pay respects, Thelonious leaned over the casket and began to trace crosses on Ronnie’s forehead with his finger.132 During the interment, he could no longer hold back his emotions. For all of Monk’s nieces and nephews, it was one of the most unforgettable moments of their lives. Benetta recounts the story: “We were all standing around crying our eyes out. And Thelonious walked up to the grave and turned around and looked at us and he said, ‘All of you! You better not be so stupid as this!’ And he pointed to the grave and stormed away. I don’t know how anyone else felt, but I was really, really angry. He knew that we were hurting and I didn’t like him calling Ronnie stupid. He just died. It was the cruelest, hardest way to do it, but I tell you, it left an impression.”133
Ronnie’s death sent Monk into a deep depression. He eventually came out of it, but Nellie said he wasn’t the same after that. Never one to mince words, Toot put it this way: “Thelonious didn’t handle death very well. He got nutty when his mom died. He got nutty when Ronnie died.”134 And as if he needed another sign of how unjust the world suddenly seemed, just days after Toot and Boo Boo returned to their exclusive boarding schools, white terrorists bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on a quiet Sunday morning, killing eleven-year-old Denise McNair and fourteen-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. They were attending Sunday school. Several hours later, Birmingham’s finest fatally wounded sixteen-year-old Johnny Robinson for throwing rocks at a passing car full of white teens yelling racial epithets and celebrating the church bombing. “negroes go back to africa” was scrawled on one side of the car in shoe polish, and a Confederate flag draped the other side.135 It was enough to make anyone go nutty.