In January 1972, Thelonious checked into Gracie Square Hospital, a private, exclusive facility on East 76th Street specializing in short-term psychiatric care and substance abuse. Nica made the arrangements and footed the bill. She and Nellie agreed that he needed a radically different approach and diagnosis from what he had gotten at Beth Israel. Gracie Square was a leader in orthomolecular psychiatry, the idea that schizophrenia and manic depression are manifestations of chemical imbalances in the body, and thus could be treated by correcting imbalances or deficiencies on the molecular level based on one’s individual biochemistry, by using natural substances such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, as well as lithium.1 Lithium salts were first introduced as an anti-psychotic drug in the late 1940s and took off in the early 1970s as the preferred treatment for mania and depression in bipolar disorder. By the time Monk entered Gracie Square, lithium was still relatively new in the United States—the Food and Drug Administration had approved it less than two years earlier.2 Although many scientists worried about the drug’s toxicity levels, lithium effectively alleviated the mood swings and excitability characteristic of bipolar disorder. This orthomolecular approach appealed to Nellie because of its emphasis on nutrients, diet, and supplements to restore chemical balance, and one of the attending physicians was Allan Cott, renowned for his use of fasting, diet, and vitamins to treat mood disorders.3
Gracie Square was attractive for another reason: his sister-in-law Geraldine Smith just happened to be working there on another floor. Geraldine’s presence came as a bit of a surprise to the Monks because they had not been in touch. To say they were estranged would be an exaggeration, but over the past several years they saw each other less frequently. Geraldine’s eldest daughter Jackie attributed the remoteness between them to Monk’s success and hectic schedule. “We were used to having them over for the holidays and then we didn’t see them as much. For Thelonious and Aunt Nellie, a wonderful thing was taking place; he was making money, making records, new friends. But something changed and they stopped coming around. It broke my heart.”4 Now, Monk had never been happier to see his sister-in-law. “When he came in, he was behaving very badly. In fact, for the first few days they had banned the family from coming to visit him. When he found out that I was there, he wanted me up there with him.”5 He had a private nurse, a large African-American man who sometimes had to physically subdue Thelonious, who was more belligerent than usual and had to be under constant observation the first few days, especially after he had set his bed on fire while smoking.6 When word of the incident reached Geraldine, she went to investigate. “I walked into his room while his nurse was sitting there with him and Thelonious said, ‘Don’t you believe nothing that man says to you. I didn’t set the bed on fire. But he stole my thousand-dollar bill. And he’s trying to take my ring off my finger, too.’ ”7 Over time, Geraldine became something of his second nurse and on subsequent stays she was assigned to him. She didn’t mind; on the contrary, she found something quite serendipitous about the reunion, despite its challenges. After all, Monk was assigned to Room 517, the same number Sonny had been playing for years.8
Lithium takes a while to kick in—up to two or three weeks to reach a steady state. At first, it sedated him, but a couple of weeks into his stay he showed improvement. Once he was permitted to see visitors, he had many. Nellie, Nica, and Paul Jeffrey showed up every day, and Toot and Boo Boo came whenever they could. (Boo Boo was busy working as a principal dancer with Randy Weston’s African Rhythms.9) Ellington’s violinist, Ray Nance, happened to be a patient there, so many of his guests dropped in on Monk, and vice versa. (Ironically, Thelonious refused to speak to Nance during his stay.10) The list of well-wishers included Thomas and Marion, the whole Smith clan, Doug Quackenbush, Leroy Williams, Wilbur Ware, pianist Barry Harris, and the Reverend John Gensel, pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan—better known as the “jazz church.” Monk said very little, though when he wasn’t completely withdrawn he seemed grateful for the visits. Michael James, Ellington’s nephew and a budding jazz critic, was moved by the sight of Monk sitting on the floor in front of a portable record player listening to the version of “Ruby, My Dear” he recorded with Coleman Hawkins.11 He listened to that song over and over—was he perhaps reflecting on Hawk’s death, or his own mortality, or just relishing the lush sound of Bean’s horn doing justice to one of his great compositions?
Geraldine Smith concluded that the doctors at Gracie Square got it right with the lithium treatment, and both Nellie and Nica agreed. It stabilized his moods and virtually eliminated his manic episodes, as long as he took his meds, maintained his diet, and stayed away from narcotics. But there were negative side effects: fatigue, sleepiness, nausea, and increased thirst and urination—the latter was no fun, given his ongoing prostate problems. Quality of life issues notwithstanding, the drug may have affected his playing. Besides possibly producing “a fine tremor of the hands,” lithium can cause memory impairment and cognitive slowing, and when taken at high levels can produce indifference, malaise, passivity, and decreased responsiveness to one’s environment.12 Consequently, by eliminating the cycles of hypomania, some researchers found that the drug may hamper creativity and reduce drive, although others have reported increased artistic productivity for bipolar patients on lithium.13 While the research is inconclusive on the specific impact of the drug on creative drive, Monk showed signs of every one of these side effects through the remainder of his life.
Although he would return to Gracie Square a few times over the course of the next five years, Monk left the hospital in fairly good shape. Armed with a prescription for lithium to replace the Thorazine he had been taking, and buttressed by Nellie’s all-natural concoctions, Thelonious was on the road to chemical balance and ready to play again. Those closest to him were charged with keeping him away from the junk food and the occasional line of cocaine (he wasn’t about to give up reefer). Unfortunately, this was one challenge that he did not always overcome.
• • •
A few days after his release, Monk took his quartet, including Al McKibbon, to Los Angeles for a three-week stay at the Manne-Hole to begin on February 17.14 Leonard Feather made his customary opening night pilgrimage, though he was far less sanguine than he had been in previous years. He bemoaned the fact that “for many years [Monk] has added little or nothing to his litany of songs,” or his interpretations of them. He then heaped on the ultimate insult, arguing that the “full value” of “Ruby, My Dear” would have been better realized in Oscar Peterson’s or Ben Webster’s hands than in Monk’s. Feather was unimpressed with Paul Jeffrey and thought McKibbon to be “a little stiff,” but Toot he found “promising.”15 Whether or not Toot read his press, he was surely feeling his oats on this trip. From the very first night, tensions erupted between Toot and McKibbon, and Paul Jeffrey was caught in the middle. “Al didn’t dig Toot. He said, ‘What are we on the bandstand with this kid for?’ And he would do little things to throw Toot off. . . . Later, we’re sitting up there in the hotel room and Toot says to Monk, ‘Daddy, you ought to fire Al McKibbon.’ So Monk looks at me and says, ‘What do you think?’ ”16 Jeffrey did not have to decide because McKibbon quit on his own accord and sent Larry Gales in his place.
Gales finished out the Manne-Hole gig and played a date in San Diego, but when the quartet headed to Seattle for a one-nighter at the Fresh Air Club, he stayed behind. The club owner scoured the Pacific Northwest for a replacement and found a true jazz legend—Adolphus Alsbrook. The Kansas City–born Alsbrook was reputed to have been the only musician to quit Duke Ellington’s band (he joined Duke’s in 1939, only to be replaced by the legendary Jimmy Blanton). He was based in Minneapolis for many years, where he taught music at the university and anchored the local jazz scene there. Bassists Charles Mingus and Gene Ramey praised Alsbrook’s skills, both as a player and an arranger.17 “He had just gotten over a stroke when he worked with us, but he’s still bad!” recalled Jeffrey. Toot disagreed. His opinion of Alsbrook was no different than his opinion of McKibbon, and he had no qualms about expressing it. After the gig, a journalist asked Jeffrey what he thought about Alsbrook. “I said, ‘To me he’s a legend.’ He then tells me that he just spoke to Toot who said that the band would sound much better if Adolphus wasn’t in it.” Inevitably, Toot’s criticisms got back to Alsbrook. What Toot did not know was that the seventy-year-old bassist was a judo expert. Jeffrey witnessed what happened next: “The dressing room was underneath the club and as we were packing up Adolphus calls Toot over. ‘Man, come here. Just let me’—and he hit a pressure point and said, ‘See if you can move.’ And Toot couldn’t move.”18 Slowly, he began to learn a couple of vital lessons: Approach the music and fellow musicians with humility and don’t underestimate the elders.
When Monk finally returned in March, he never had a chance to unpack. To the great relief of their neighbors in Lincoln Towers, the Monks moved to a twelfth-floor apartment at 473 West End Avenue. The prewar building located just south of 83rd Street lacked the picturesque view of the Hudson, but its spacious rooms, high ceilings, and elegant detail more than compensated. And the move finally allowed them to retrieve furniture that had been sitting in storage or at Skippy’s apartment for the past year.19 While Thelonious may have appreciated having furnishings again, the move was painful, since it put even greater distance between him and the old neighborhood.
He did not have much time to settle into his new digs. In April the quartet played a week at Lennie Sogoloff’s new club, Lennie’s–Village Green in Danvers, Massachusetts. Formerly Lennie’s-on-the-Turnpike, the original spot burned down a year earlier.20 The band was still without a permanent bass player, so Jules Colomby called his friend Ron McClure to see if he was interested. McClure, who taught at Berklee College of Music, not only jumped at the chance, he became somewhat of a local hero on campus.21 Monk liked McClure enough to keep him for two more gigs—a week at the Village Vanguard and two weeks at the Aqua Lounge in Philadelphia. But he practically never spoke to him, and the Baroness, who came to every performance, acted as if McClure did not exist. Hardly an ideal environment for the kind of master-apprentice mentoring the jazz world was known for. One of the few times Monk spoke, it was to level a complaint. In a fit of inspiration, McClure suddenly decided to play a bowed solo. After the set Monk politely asked his bassist to “leave the bow alone.”
McClure: Is there something you don’t like about it?
Monk: Uh, the sound.22
By the end of May, McClure had moved on and the Thelonious Monk quartet went back to being a threesome with a perennial want ad for a bassist.
Filling the bass chair ceased to become an urgent matter that summer, because George Wein decided to reconstitute the Giants of Jazz for a series of festivals all across the United States, followed by a European tour. Opening with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fair, the festival circuit traveled to Oakland, Hampton Institute, Atlanta, New York City, Houston, Cincinnati, Monterey, and Philadelphia.23 Wein took a page from the “Schlitz Salute to Jazz” tours, holding huge multiday concerts in stadiums and fairgrounds headlined by pop and R&B artists such as Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, and Ike and Tina Turner, as well as Nina Simone, B. B. King, Ray Charles, among others. The Giants of Jazz fell midway on the totem pole of popularity, functioning as a nostalgic throwback to the bop era. To some concertgoers they were the real deal, for others they represented a living museum, and for still others they were a chance to go to the concession stand.
No band member, except perhaps for Art Blakey, seemed gung-ho about another reunion, but it paid well in an era when commercial opportunities for jazz were disappearing. Monk earned roughly $2,000 per concert, and on the European leg of the tour they commanded anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000 a concert, or as much as $25,000 to $30,000 for two nightly shows.24 The Giants’ first outing in New Orleans disappointed critic Tom Bethell, who believed they were more interested in creating fireworks than making music. Except for Monk, “who . . . seemed alone to be attempting to convey a feeling of lyricism.” The rest of the band “was dedicated to a cult of individualism which supposedly demonstrates itself in the attainment of great technical proficiency on one’s instrument.”25 Nevertheless, the group was warmly received despite the Municipal Auditorium’s horrible acoustics. Whatever press they may have gotten was overshadowed by Nina Simone’s searing remarks from the stage about racism and her controversial effort to replace B. B. King’s white pianist with a black one. She reminded everyone that the Sixties were not over.26
The remaining regional concerts were no different. The repertoire remained largely unchanged from the previous year, except now “ ’Round Midnight” was the only Monk tune in the book. They added a few more tunes, including the ballads “I Can’t Get Started” and “Stardust,” Juan Tizol’s “Perdido,” and more Gillespie originals such as “And Then She Stopped” and “Kush.”27 The big test was New York: Wein’s bold reinvention of the Newport Festival into a nine-day extravaganza spread all over the city. The Giants were scheduled to play twice—opening at the Philharmonic on Saturday, July 1, and nearly closing the festivities at Yankee Stadium exactly a week later, with a performance at the Houston Astrodome Jazz Festival sandwiched in between. For the opening, Max Roach and percussionist Big Black (Danny Ray) augmented the Giants’ rhythm section on “A Night in Tunisia,” setting up a drum duel between Blakey and Roach. All the fireworks produced few sparks; the Philharmonic concert received mixed and poor reviews. Don Heckman attributed what he thought was a poor performance to “the difficulties of getting highly inventive individuals to accept the discipline of an ensemble situation.”28 Leonard Feather praised Monk’s handling of “ ’Round Midnight,” while dismissing him for being “weak as a rhythm functionary,” and minced no words disparaging Max Roach’s “excessive . . . applause-milking drum duel with Art Blakey.”29 Predictably, Feather noted that it was Dizzy who “dominated the group with a torrent of fiery, witty, febrile choruses.” He was the star and, once again, the leader of the leaderless band. And yet, if audience response is any measure, then one might argue that Thelonious ultimately stole the show when he walked on stage alone and played a ninety-second, unaccompanied version of “I Love You, Sweetheart of All My Dreams.” When it was over, an awestruck George Wein stood on stage, waited for the applause to die down, and simply said, “Wow! What can you say after that?”30
Monk didn’t make it to Houston due to illness (probably fatigue), but he did join the Giants in Yankee Stadium the next day, despite pouring rain and an unexpectedly small crowd.31 Because of temporary personnel changes, the last two stops on the U.S. tour produced some variation on what had become a routine performance. For Philadelphia’s Quaker City Jazz Festival (September 22), Curtis Fuller replaced Kai Winding and Larry Ridley subbed for Al McKibbon.32 The previous week at the Monterey Jazz Festival (September 16), Dizzy couldn’t make it and Roy Eldridge and Clark Terry filled in.33 With Gillespie’s absence, Monk seemed to have taken more of the spotlight. Before the Giants played a note, the audience reserved their loudest and longest ovation for Monk—who was introduced last.34 On the opening number, “Blue ’n’ Boogie,” Sonny Stitt pays tribute to Monk by quoting “Rhythm-a-ning” in his solo, while Monk’s own solo, full of dissonant block chords, seems to pay homage to Mary Lou Williams—the originator of “Rhythm-a-ning,” who happened to be on the bill. He does wonders with “ ’Round Midnight,” including a variation on Dizzy’s famous introduction to the song. But overall, Monk seems uninspired. His solos wander a bit, lacking the structural coherence he was known for, and his accompaniment sounds mechanical. The one tune where Monk comes alive is “The Man I Love” featuring Roy Eldridge, who plays like a man possessed. His lyricism, energy, and sense of swing seem to have inspired Monk, who suddenly sounds like his old self—or rather, his young self. The crowd certainly agreed; their approval was deafening.35
The lithium treatment may have contributed to Monk’s state of malaise and boredom heard on these recordings, but it probably had more to do with the setting. When Thelonious played the Vanguard that summer with his own quartet in between the Giants tour, he was alert and engaged.36 A private tape from their June 15 gig reveals a more comfortable Monk and gives us a glimpse into the group’s overall development a year after Toot joined the band. Both Toot and Jeffrey had grown more assertive in their attack, and with the addition of British-born Dave Holland, an incredibly strong bassist who had recently ended a two-year association with Miles Davis, the band’s overall sound achieved a denser quality. Everyone plays with a level of ferocity uncharacteristic of Monk’s previous bands, and Toot’s powerful polyrthythms drive the ensemble. Monk comps continuously, never leaving the piano bench, and at times it’s as if he is fighting to be heard over the rest of the band. And yet at no point does Monk sound bored or disengaged. His solos are substantial. On “Evidence” and “Rhythm-a-ning,” he walks us through a quarter-century of Monkish phrases associated with those tunes. And on “Off Minor” and “Hackensack,” he reminds his sidemen that the best improvisations build on the melody. Indeed, Toot follows his dad with one of his only drum solos of the night by pounding out the theme of “Hackensack” using every part of his drum kit. The band is still a bit rough around the edges; Toot occasionally pushes the tempo, as he does on “Straight, No Chaser,” and Jeffrey leaves little or no space between phrases, filling every gap with trills, honks, long tones, and flurries of sixteenth notes. But Monk digs what he hears. All of Monk’s solos play off the drummer, who in turn tries his best to follow his dad’s instructions—to swing and swing some more.37
Despite Monk’s disappointing experiences on the festival circuit, he had a pretty good summer. He suffered no mood swings and by some accounts he seemed a little more talkative. Joseph Wilson, a Columbia University student who was romantically involved with Boo Boo at the time, remembers having a couple of substantial conversations with her father during the course of the summer. Wilson impressed Monk. Here was this working-class kid, raised in a gang-infested neighborhood in Chicago, with a full scholarship to an Ivy League school and a commitment to social justice. At the time, he was affiliated with the youth wing of the Communist Party USA,38 active in the W. E. B. DuBois Community Center in Harlem, and completely fearless. Indeed, he was first drawn to Boo Boo precisely because most men found her intimidating. “She had a majestic quality. That’s what really attracted me, that and her stunning beauty. She was tall, about five foot, six, and usually wore heels. She struck me as not only attractive, but she seemed to be very aloof, distant. Boo Boo was a real challenge.”39 Monk appreciated the fact that Wilson wasn’t intimidated or fawning all over him when they met. “Monk was actually pretty talkative. He asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ Then I got into the whole thing about how the masses have to take power, we have to redistribute the wealth, black people are catching hell. And he said, ‘Well, I agree with that.’ We spoke maybe for two hours, which was even more intense than the discussions I would have with Boo Boo. . . . He agreed with my analysis of the system. And he’d say things like, ‘You a radical cat, yeah.’ He was encouraging. He didn’t have anything negative to say about it. He didn’t come back and counter the arguments. He did ask me, ‘How do you think all this is going to happen? Are there other people who think like you?’ He never spoke about himself. He never revealed anything about his life or the family, but he was very interested in society and what young people were thinking.”40
• • •
The quartet spent the first week of October at the Vanguard, with Reggie Workman holding down the bass chair, and then disbanded for a month while Monk took off for Europe with the Giants of Jazz. The schedule called for sixteen cities in twenty-two days, usually two concerts a night.41 The road manager, a young Swiss man named Willie Leiser, did his best to hold everything together, but the trip was marred with problems from the beginning. In Paris, they were scheduled to play two shows six hours apart (6:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m.); on the way to London, Blakey’s cymbals were stolen; in Budapest half the entourage came down with a terrible virus.42 (And Nellie tried her best to heal the sick with carrot juice.) American jazz critic Harriet Choice, traveling with the group, saw the effects of their grueling schedule and unfortunate luck on their performance: “They are tired and hungry, and their shows are hardly impressive.”43
Sometimes problems became opportunities. When Dizzy Gillespie missed his flight to Vienna, tour mates Clark Terry and trumpeter Cat Anderson filled in. The next night in Cologne, Roy Haynes took over for Blakey, thus generating a different yet no less exciting rhythmic dynamic.44 But much like the U.S. tour, critics and some fans grumbled that the thrill had gone. Reflecting on what many others were feeling, British writer Pete Gamble wrote, “Those of us who were lucky enough to catch the Giants last year must have left their recent performance . . . feeling a trifle disappointed. It was patently obvious that the important spark was missing, and that the rapport between musicians and audience engendered last year had waned.”45 There was, however, one patently obvious change: The band added more Monk tunes to the book, namely “Straight, No Chaser” and “Epistrophy.” This seemed to stir Monk to greater heights, and reviewers took notice, since he was often singled out for praise.46 The tour ultimately evolved into a celebration of Monk’s work, culminating in a studio session Wein arranged in Berne, Switzerland, a few days before they were due back in the States. It would be the last time Monk would set foot in a recording studio, and yet what they laid down that afternoon could have been called the story of Thelonious. Starting things off with a fifteen-minute version of “Straight, No Chaser,” the band launched into an arrangement of “Thelonious” based on his 1947 Blue Note recording. Apparently arranged just for this session, the horns only play on the “head,” leaving Monk free to noodle around with the descending chord changes he loved so much. The long whole-tone runs are absent, as are the sudden flights into stride piano, but what he might have lost in dexterity he made up for in sheer musicality. The standards selected were also Monk favorites—“Don’t Blame Me,” featuring Sonny Stitt, and an unusually fleet version of “Sweet and Lovely” featuring Kai Winding. Even Dizzy’s feature, “I Waited for You,” had a Monk connection—it was among the last songs they recorded together when Monk was a member of Gillespie’s big band in 1946. Finally, the Giants sign off in Monk style with “Epistrophy,” which Blakey accents in a bouncy, funky beat resembling Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder.”47 The entire LP is a loving tribute to Monk, and whatever tensions may have lingered between him and Dizzy evaporated that afternoon. The band is in sync, and the displays of virtuosity and individual prowess seem to give way to playfulness, humor, and deep listening.
The Giants played their last two concerts in Tel Aviv and Barcelona before returning on November 16. Monk flew directly to Chicago, where his quartet played two nights at the Brown Shoe, and then rushed back home for a gig at the Vanguard during Thanksgiving week. He opened to a full house of appreciative fans and critics, among them Tom Piazza, who described Monk’s group (with Dave Holland on bass) as “his best in some time.” He also noted that while his repertoire hasn’t changed in years, he still delights audiences with his fresh interpretations, backed by a gang of younger players whose style can only be described as contemporary.48 In other words, the old man wasn’t dead just yet.
But death felt awfully close. On the fifth day of this run at the Vanguard, Thelonious got word that Hall Overton succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver. He was only fifty-two.49 Monk knew he had been ill for some time, but Overton’s death caught him off guard, since he had just seen him play at Bradley’s piano bar two months earlier.50 Either the night of his passing or the next night, Monk chose to play only standards. Barry Harris bore witness to this astonishing evening. “He didn’t play like the sparing Monk . . . the spacious Monk. He played it more like the ‘fluent’ Monk, like Bud Powell would play.”51
Exhausted from work and travel, Thelonious took December and part of January off. Nellie did not. As more and more friends and musicians sought her out for health advice and healing juices, she kept her machines running full pitch, sometimes through the wee hours of the morning. The apartment began to resemble a health food store. According to their niece Jackie, “The neighbors would complain because they had so much trash, since it would leave lots of pulp. And in the middle of the night, she would run two machines grinding up carrots and celery. It was so loud, it drove the neighbors crazy. One person, an attorney, threatened to sue.”52 Monk complained, too. He desired peace and quiet and he wanted all the health-seekers to go home. But there were other sources of tension between him and Nellie. They continued to struggle financially, but increasingly the burden of attending to Monk’s business affairs fell on Nellie’s shoulders. She was already his de facto personal manager and assistant road manager, administered his publishing, organized his tax records, and had assumed most of the duties for which Harry and later Jules Colomby were responsible. She was in way over her head. Their accountant, Morris Zuckerman, wrote many frustrating letters to Nellie pleading with her to sign a document, provide information—in short, take care of business. Their tax returns were perennially late, and in 1972 they were assessed an extra $1,000 for failing to file a New York State withholding tax statement.53 A few months later, she almost lost some family belongings when a storage bill went unpaid for several months.54 Furthermore, Nellie was bombarded with contracts as well as queries from record companies about reissues, royalties, permissions, among other things. The additional royalties were minuscule and came sporadically—when they came at all (some companies could not keep up with the Monks’ recent moves).55 Nellie worked to keep abreast of the paperwork, but she also needed time to make her juices and nurse others. Monk had become so dependent on Nellie that now he felt neglected.
The situation came to a head after the quartet returned to the Vanguard at the end of January. One night, Nica drove Thelonious and Paul Jeffrey home. When they arrived in front of Monk’s apartment, he refused to leave. “He sat in the car,” Paul Jeffrey explained. “I remember it was cold as a bitch. She kept turning the heat on and off because she couldn’t keep the car running the whole time. So about six o’clock in the morning, I left. I got on the train and went to Coney Island.”56 She eventually persuaded Monk to go inside, but he didn’t stay long. The next afternoon, Thelonious called Nica to come pick him up. There were no harsh words exchanged, no apparent anger—just a desire to move out. “I was there the day Nica came and got him,” Jackie recalled. “She said, ‘Come on Thelonious. Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ in her clipped British accent. I could still see her holding out her hand. They got on the elevator and that was it. He moved in with Nica and never came back.”57
At first, Nellie was distraught. Despite all the stress she endured caring for Thelonious, she couldn’t imagine living apart from her husband. They were best friends and she still adored him. She recruited Bertha Hope to help out: “Nellie sent me to Weehawken and said, ‘Somebody’s got to go over there and tell Thelonious to come back. See, I can even help him with the juices. I’m saving people. He doesn’t understand. I’m helping people.’ But Thelonious’s position was, ‘I’m not coming back until the juicer goes. When Nellie gets rid of the juicer and all those people she has that she’s helping, I’ll come back.’ ”58 Once the initial panic faded, all parties came to agree that the move to Weehawken was a good idea. Nica had the space and resources Monk needed to become healthy again; not to mention it was an ideal location. Nellie, Toot, and Boo Boo thought moving him out of the city would make him less accessible, to the annoying fans and fellow musicians who wanted to get high with him.59 And the move gave Nellie a much-needed respite. It freed her to advance her own knowledge of minerals, vitamins, and enzymes, eventually leading her to start a short-lived retail business.60
To call Monk’s move a separation, however, would be a misnomer. Nica and Nellie’s relationship was not harmed by the change; on the contrary, they teamed up rather well to provide the best care possible. Nica gave Monk the second floor, where he had a small bedroom, his own bathroom, and a large room with a panoramic view of the Hudson and a Steinway grand placed not far from his door. For the first couple of years, 63 Kingswood practically became Nellie’s second home. Toot: “My mother used to come into New York and go back to New Jersey every night on the bus. She’d come into New York, take care of the banking business, whatever things she had to do, look out for her daughter and then get on the bus. She did that for a year.”61 Nica wasn’t much of a cook, but she did have hired help, an older Englishwoman known affectionately as Miss D. Pianist Barry Harris also lived there, and although Harris and Monk rarely interacted, the family took comfort in knowing that Thelonious wouldn’t be left alone. All in all, Nica provided a quiet, comfortable setting. If Monk had one grievance, it was the overwhelming feline presence—over sixty cats, by most accounts. Marion reported that when she came out to see her brother, Nica “had to keep them out of his room, he wouldn’t allow them in his room. He didn’t like them.”62
Above all, the Weehawken house became a place for Monk to convalesce. Not long after the move, he confessed to Nica that he genuinely worried about his health. “We were driving home from New York, and he suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I am very seriously ill.’ This is the only thing Thelonious has ever been heard to say about being ill, at all. He never said it again.”63 Numerous physical ailments slowed him down considerably, from lung congestion and chronic fatigue to his ongoing prostate issues. He woke up every morning and got fully dressed, sometimes jacket and tie, and spent most of the day lying on his bed, watching television, or taking long walks around the neighborhood. Ironically, as the lithium brought his mood swings under control, he lost his desire to play. The medication certainly may have contributed to his feelings of listlessness, but his ongoing problems with incontinence made him reluctant to leave the house, let alone play in public.64 He hardly worked in 1973. Besides a couple of nights at the Top of the Gate in February, and a week at the Half Note in June, he cancelled all of his club dates that year. He pulled out of performances with the Giants of Jazz in California and turned down the Newport in New York Jazz Festival. The people who showed up to hear Monk at Carnegie Hall on July 7 for the “So-Lo Piano Evening,” dedicated to the music of Art Tatum, were disappointed when he did not show. Had they read the billing more closely, however, they would have realized that Monk was never included in the program. Rather, Thelonious Monk, Jr., was scheduled to play that very night, but next door at the Carnegie Recital Hall with the jazz/funk band, Natural Essence.65
The elder Monk stopped working, for the most part, in 1973. Over the next three years he would come out occasionally for a concert, but he stopped playing clubs and would not leave New York. He paid an enormous financial cost for his inactivity. While Nellie struggled to turn her juice passion into a business, she continued to manage Monk’s affairs and eke out a living on royalties and licensing fees. A flurry of reissues by Blue Note and Milestone (a division of Fantasy headed by Orrin Keepnews) helped out a little, but in the period from 1972 to the end of 1976, income from sales, fees, and BMI earnings amounted to less than $15,000 total.66 But even in the world of reissues, record companies continued to deduct production costs. Milestone, for example, deducted $3,080 from Monk’s royalties to pay for remastering.67 Meanwhile, in 1974, Columbia Records tried to cash in by reissuing a two-LP set combining his big band concert recordings, supplemented with long, effusive notes by Leonard Feather. Titled Who’s Afraid of the Big Band Monk? it is adorned with a horrible caricature of Monk as a grinning wolf, and if that wasn’t insulting enough his name was frequently misspelled in their promotional materials.68 Still, the LP sold fairly well and was selected as one of the top picks by Billboard Magazine; but it did not do much to put a dent in Monk’s debt to the label. At the end of 1976, Monk owed Columbia $16,594.71.69 Meanwhile, Nica continued to pay for Thelonious’s upkeep and his mounting medical expenses. He spent much of his time in and out of hospitals—sometimes to run tests or adjust his medication, other times for prostate issues.
The precious few times Monk came out in public, it was always big, always memorable. He appeared only once in 1974, at Carnegie Hall—and he wasn’t supposed to be there. George Wein had organized a tribute to Monk’s music on April 6 to be performed by his latest creation: the New York Jazz Repertory Company. Wein had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Monk to perform again, so he had Paul Jeffrey put together a fifteen-piece band with strings and hired Barry Harris on piano. The concert reunited several Monk alumni—old and new. Budd Johnson, Julius Watkins, Eddie Bert, and Charlie Rouse were among the front line, while Toot occupied the drum chair. Nica practically had to drag Monk there; he had no desire to leave the house and no interest in hearing his music—especially played wrong. But when he walked into Carnegie Hall and saw the crowds and the stage and his old friends, something happened. Trumpeter Jimmy Owens, one of the musical directors of the Jazz Repertory Company, saw what transpired from the mezzanine. “I was able to look at the backstage door, and Barry was out on stage getting ready to play. Paul Jeffrey was about to count the song off, and who should walk out of the door but Monk. Everybody just went crazy. Monk sat down at the piano, just started to play. He didn’t know the arrangements or anything.”70 The stunned crowd rose to their feet and gave Monk a long, thunderous, and, for some, tearful ovation before he played a single note.71 The entire evening was electric. Critic Peter Keepnews (Orrin’s son), who sensed that Monk’s presence really did lift the bandstand, singled out Rouse for special praise, writing that he “may never have sounded more in tune with [Monk’s] music than he did this night.”72 But Thelonious outshone everyone with his beautifully restrained solos and imaginative accompaniment. For Toot “it was an absolutely magical, magical evening.”73 For Martin Williams, seeing Monk that evening “provided one of the great moments in American music of my lifetime.”74 Afterward, Wein asked Monk if he would consider going back on the road. When Thelonious asked why, Wein replied, “The whole world wants you, Thelonious.” He just smiled.75
In many ways, Wein was right. The serious jazz aficionados hungered for Monk’s music, and the wave of reissues moved critics to call for his return to the stage and studio.76 In the fall of 1975, his longtime friend Ran Blake organized a tribute concert for Monk at the New England Conservatory in hopes of drawing him out.77 But the world to which Wein referred was becoming smaller with each passing year. His own festival was proof; pop, R&B, rock, and even funk artists headlined the “jazz” festival circuit. In order to stay relevant, jazz musicians increasingly turned to electronic instruments, incorporated popular dance rhythms, fused jazz with rock and R&B. Willie “The Lion” died in 1973 with little fanfare. Duke left the following year. And Thelonious Monk ceased to be a household name.
Monk made his only 1975 appearance at Newport in New York in July. Philharmonic Hall was packed with young people, not to see Monk but to catch the Keith Jarrett Quartet and a popular group called Oregon—known for what later would be labeled “New Age” music. But the kids apparently dug him. The Wall Street Journal critic knew that half the room had never heard of Thelonious Monk, but once his quartet took off they “drew the loudest and most sustained applause.”78 John S. Wilson got a little nostalgic for the younger Monk when he noted the pianist’s bare head, his polite stage manner, and the fact that “his craggy, angular style on the piano has smoothed out to more freely flowing lines.”79 Whitney Balliett echoed Wilson, lamenting how “his style, with its crabbed single note lines, crazy chords, and high, wicked humor, had inexplicably vanished. His playing resembled a gingerbread house stripped of it ornamentation.”80 Times had certainly changed. “Monk, once considered a radical innovator,” Wilson declared, was now “the traditionalist centerpiece.”81
In 1975, Nica and friends tried to motivate Monk by applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship on his behalf. Orrin Keepnews and Martin Williams wrote loving appraisals of Monk’s importance to American culture. Williams minced no words, declaring Monk “the greatest living jazz composer. And that means, from my own point of view, that he is one of the great American composers of whatever category.” Keepnews concurred: “As a performer, as an influence on countless younger artists during the past three decades, and as a composer he has been and continues to be of towering significance.” But he also added that Monk needed money and that his recent illness had hindered his ability to work. A fellowship, he argued, could make it possible for him to begin composing again.82 It worked; Thelonious Monk was among the 300 distinguished recipients.83 The cash grant came in handy, helping to offset his mounting expenses, but it did not inspire him to write or play. Ironically, 1976, the year he was awarded the Guggenheim, was also the last year he performed in public.
On March 26, he played Carnegie Hall with a quintet consisting of Toot, Paul Jeffrey, Larry Ridley, and trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer. Monk had a lot to say that evening, pulling out tunes, such as “In Walked Bud” and “Reflections,” that had gone unplayed for years. Audiences and critics cheered. Gary Giddins called Monk’s solos “the pearls of the evening. . . . Monk plays the piano as purposefully as anyone ever has, and there is much emotion and beauty in his work.”84 Ira Gitler thought the band “did not really do his music justice,” but Monk himself played with “crisp authority.” He was especially taken with Monk’s solo piano pieces, which Gitler found “redolent of his special, wistful, unsticky brand of what I like to call sentiment without sentimentality.”85
Monk returned to Carnegie Hall three months later—Wednesday, June 30, to be exact—for what would be his final concert.86 This time he appeared with his regular quartet and shared the bill with Dizzy Gillespie. It was as if the whole room knew this was Monk’s last hurrah, for the hall was filled with old friends and family. Marion was there; so was Thomas and virtually all the nieces and nephews on the Monk side. The Smiths were out in force, including Skippy, who had recently been slowed down by illness. Just about every jazz musician who didn’t work that night showed up to catch a glimpse of the High Priest. Monk received a standing ovation as soon as he walked on the stage, and every tune was met with enthusiastic shouts and applause. Monk tried valiantly to give the people a great show, but on this night he struggled. While he showed exuberance, he spent most of the set sounding as if he were fighting the piano. His left hand seemed to be pounding the keys rather than playing, and his right hand fumbled more than usual. He managed to produce fine solos on “We See” and “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” but every note was hard fought. Whitney Balliett in The New Yorker found the whole thing painful. “His playing was mechanical and uncertain, and, astonishingly, his great Gothic style had fallen away.”87
Later that week, he and Nica spent the Fourth of July at Bradley’s, a popular piano bar in Greenwich Village, to hear Barry Harris. Monk felt like playing, so he commandeered the piano bench for several minutes and worked out on a few tunes, to the audience’s delight.88 Little did anyone know that when he ambled out the door in the wee hours of the morning, the humid air still thick with the smell and haze of fireworks, he was never coming back.
• • •
The second floor of Nica’s home became Monk’s permanent retreat. His daily routine rarely varied. He would wake up, shower, don some of his finest threads only to lie back in bed to nap, stare at the ceiling, or watch TV—he developed a fondness for game shows like The Price Is Right. He emerged from his lair to eat or take a walk in the neighborhood, but he ignored the Ping-Pong table and avoided the piano. Once in a blue moon, Nica and Nellie dragged him to the city to hear some music in Central Park89 or to catch a performance by one of his kids, but he preferred the quiet comfort of 63 Kingswood Road and the convenience of having a bathroom just a few steps away.90 “He’s not unhappy, and his mind works very well,” Nica told writer Whitney Balliett not long before he died. “He knows what is going on in the world, and I don’t know how, because he doesn’t read the newspapers and he only watches a little telly. He’s withdrawn, that’s all. It’s as though he had gone into retreat. He takes walks several times a week, and Nellie comes over from New York almost every day to cook for him. . . . Monk isn’t really interested in seeing anyone. The strange thing is he looks beautiful. He has never said that he won’t play the piano again. He suddenly went into this, so maybe he’ll suddenly come out.”91
Nica and all of his closest friends and family did what they could to jolt him out of his state, and the consensus was that the piano was the key. Barry Harris practiced just outside his door, as did Joel Forrester and any other pianist who dropped by to pay respects.92 Nica encouraged it, hoping it might draw Monk out of his room and back to the keyboard. If Thelonious dug it, he’d keep the door open; if he didn’t, he would slam the door shut. Leroy Williams’s recollections of Monk during the period are pretty typical. Because the piano was outside his room, he and Barry Harris would rehearse upstairs and he would have to pass by Monk’s bed to get to the bathroom. “When I walked in the room there was Monk laying on the bed all dressed up, suit, tie and everything. He was just lying there, almost like he was in a casket or something. So I said, ‘Damn, Monk, you looking pretty sharp lying there. Where you going?’ Monk said, ‘Man, I’m not going anywhere.’ So he’s still lying there and when I come back out I go to close the door and he said, ‘Leave the door open, man. I want to hear what you all doing.’ ”93
Monk received stacks of letters and cards from around the world (which he stashed under his bed94), and a steady stream of visitors and well-wishers—Steve Lacy, Doug Quackenbush, Dizzy, Blakey, Rouse, Randy Weston, Eddie Locke, Ben Riley, John Ore, to name but a fraction. George Wein called frequently, offering Monk an obscene amount of money to come out and play.95 Orrin Keepnews asked if he wanted some company to “talk about the old days.” Monk replied unequivocaly, “No, I wouldn’t.” It was almost like old times, except that this time Thelonious answered the phone.96 He usually accepted visitors graciously, but said very little. He gave one- or two-word replies and often grew impatient when the question of him playing again came up. Paul Jeffrey, who had begun teaching at Columbia University and Rutgers after 1976, tried to inspire Monk by organizing a student ensemble to play his songs outside his window. “It was cold that day! We played all the Overton charts and we were outside freezing. Finally, the Baroness let us in and we continued in the room next to his. We played a whole concert for Monk. . . . He never came out, but he had to have heard it.”97
Monk’s refusal to play and his reluctance to leave his room were regarded by virtually everyone close to him as symptomatic of his mental illness. But as Nica said, his mind worked; he was alert, alive, and still incredibly witty. In March of 1976, Thelonious happened to be listening to a special broadcast by Columbia University’s radio station, WKCR, dedicated to his music. A guest expert began droning on about how Monk created extraordinary music, in spite of “playing the wrong notes on the piano.” Perturbed, Monk dialed the Columbia switchboard and left a message to “tell the guy on the air, ‘The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.’ ”98
So to label Monk’s reclusive behavior as evidence of deep depression is a little too simple, especially since his mental and physical health improved during this period. By late 1977, Nica discovered a new physician—Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, the founder and director of the Brain Bio Center in Princeton, New Jersey.99 A pioneer in the development of orthomolecular psychiatry, Pfeiffer and his staff offered a more effective treatment to rectify Monk’s chemical imbalances, combining lithium salts, diet, vitamin and mineral supplements, and weekly shiatsu massage. Within two years he improved dramatically. As Nica reported to Mary Lou Williams, “T. is being as good as gold, keeping strictly to his diet, & taking all the pills prescribed for him every day. . . . (He is much stronger, & can do all kinds of exercises he couldn’t before.) His doctor (who is in Princeton) is the greatest expert there IS on this ‘biochemical imbalance’ business, & T. is steadily getting better, though he still has a LONG way to go.”100
If his health improved and his manic-depressive cycles were under control, why did he stop playing? Having spent the better part of fourteen years tracing Monk’s every step, I was not surprised by his decision. In fact, I wondered why he did not retire earlier. Consider the final years of his working career: his record label dropped him, he could barely sustain a working band, the money was inadequate, he was practically reduced to opening for rock and R&B bands, he endured unremitting criticism for playing the same music, he lost all inspiration to compose, the lithium treatments deadened his senses and slowed his creative drive, and his ongoing battle with incontinence made performing an ordeal. And his old friends kept dying. Wilbur Ware split in 1979 at the age of 56, and Mary Lou Williams passed on two years later.101 So why should he feel like playing? His siblings were among the few loved ones who understood and accepted his decision. During one of his many visits, Thomas asked, “ ‘Brother, what should I tell everybody? They want to know why you don’t want to play anymore? You want me to tell them you retired?’ And he said, ‘Yes, tell them I retired.’ ”102 Marion would come over every so often and take walks with Thelonious. He made it clear to her that “he didn’t feel like playing or appearing in front of the public.”103
Nellie also accepted Monk’s decision, and did what she could to comfort him during those final years. But she was also trying to start a life of her own in which her precious husband was not at the center. It wasn’t easy. Her juice business failed as a retail venture, and with Monk’s royalties her primary source of revenue, Nellie struggled to make ends meet. And the business of handling Monk’s business overwhelmed her. She couldn’t keep up with all the licensing requests, contracts, and inquiries from record companies. Desperate for help, she turned to Don Sickler, a trumpeter and arranger who ran Second Floor Music, a music publishing company, with his wife, Maureen. Don Sickler recalls, “Nellie came in, literally, with shopping bags of unissued licenses and everything else, and just dumped it all on the floor—this unbelievable mess. She hadn’t signed anything, and she had no money to pay us. Essentially Maureen and I worked for them for free for several years, just trying to organize. It was just unbelievable. She was way over her head and was doing nothing. Issuing no licenses, issuing nothing. They had no money. They would make whatever comes to Thelonious from BMI and that was about it. And a lot of the songs were not even registered. Of the 70 songs of Monk there were probably 30 of them registered.” Sickler immediately contracted Harry Fox, a mechanical collection agency, to begin collecting fees on behalf of the Monk estate.104
As Nellie struggled to put her finances together, in May of 1977, tragedy struck: her baby sister Skippy succumbed to cancer just days after her fifty-fourth birthday.105 It was a devastating loss. Besides Thelonious, Skippy was Nellie’s best friend. She had always been there for the Monks—she gave them shelter when they were burned out of their house, and she saved Thelonious’s life once. And when she lost her residence, her job, even her son, Monk and Nellie were there for her. At this point, Nellie threw much of her energy into her children and taking care of her husband’s business.
Toot and Boo Boo’s musical careers began taking off in 1976. Tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan recognized Boo Boo’s talents and recruited her for a recording session in May for his LP Remembering Me-Me. She and Hank Diamond Smith were featured on “Powerful Paul Robeson,” a beautiful, inspiring tone poem sung to an unbelievably intricate melody. She acquitted herself brilliantly with the kind of deep emotion that could have only been personal. In many ways, it was. Robeson, who had died four months earlier, was one of Thelonious’s heroes. And like her dad, he spent his sunset years withdrawn and silent.106 The lyrics could have described Monk: “His life was more than just a song . . . he sang true as he stood/beautiful.”107 When few people were paying attention to Boo Boo, Jordan stepped in and became something of a mentor, encouraging her to develop her voice.108 Even her brother was initially unaware of her vocal work. He first heard her sing with Jordan’s band in September at a free outdoor concert at Rockefeller Center. “One night in 1976 my mother said, ‘Oh, I’m going to hear Boo Boo sing.’ I said, ‘Going to hear her sing? Sing what? With who?’ I didn’t know she sang. My mother said, ‘Oh, well, I’m going down to hear her sing with Clifford Jordan.’ I’m like, ‘Singing! With Clifford Jordan?! What the hell? What the hell is going on?’ But I was, at that point, twenty-six, deep into my young musician thing, she was twenty-three, just really getting to the age where maybe an older brother really starts paying attention to his younger sister again, because we’re sort of moving into the peer zone. . . . I mean, she was completely off of my radar until my mother said that night, ‘I’m going to hear Boo Boo.’ ”109 She stole the show, singing Paul Robeson “with great feeling” and delighting the audience with her rendition of “Summertime” and “ ’Round Midnight.”110
The person she most impressed, however, was her brother, who promptly drafted her into his own band, Cycles, which he had formed with former schoolmate Azzedin Weston. He had also been a percussionist for Natural Essence since 1973, a large R&B- and funk-influenced jazz ensemble organized by the Adderleys (Cannonball, Nat, and Nat, Jr.). Toot appreciated the band for its deep talent, heavy rhythmic drive, wide musical palette, and its lead female vocalist—the gifted Yvonne Fletcher. Fletcher, who was the same age as Boo Boo, was also an accomplished pianist and songwriter whose résumé included stints with Roberta Flack and jazz saxophonist Gene Ammons.111 She was smart (at the time she was pursuing a degree in composition) . . . and she was gorgeous. Smitten, Toot eventually pursued Fletcher and eventually proposed marriage—though it wasn’t his first proposal. Recognizing her enormous talent, Toot asked her to join Cycles and then, in 1977, formed the T. S. Monk Band with Fletcher and Boo Boo as the lead vocalists. Four years later, T. S. Monk rose to the top of the charts with their debut album House of Music, featuring their popular single, “Bon Bon Vie.”112 With “Bon Bon Vie,” Toot and Boo Boo had finally fulfilled their father’s elusive dream—to get a “hit.”
The success of her children’s musical careers, not to mention the prospect of a daughter-in-law, kept Nellie incredibly busy. So busy, in fact, that her trips to Weehawken grew less frequent. By 1979, Nellie’s absence became a source of frustration for Nica. When Mary Lou Williams asked Nica to track down some publicity photos of Monk, she promised to get some from Nellie, “When (or *IF?) I see Nellie again (she has no telephone) . . . her visits are few and far between. . . .”113 The time between visits certainly took its toll on Monk. For over four decades, Nellie had been his rock, his foundation, his sounding board. She picked up after him, dressed him, nursed him, and created the kind of environment that allowed him to work whenever he felt like it. Nica was there for him, but she was no substitute for Nellie. One day, about 1980 or ’81, perhaps feeling a little romantic or nostalgic, he emerged from his room and sat down at the piano with Barry Harris. “He said, ‘Let’s play “My Ideal.” ’ So he started playing ‘My Ideal.’ He played a chorus; I played a chorus . . . I wish somebody had had a tape recorder because he made me play maybe a hundred choruses of ‘My Ideal’ and he played a hundred back and forth—non stop. . . . Well it could have been—I know it was over an hour but he made me just play that.”114 Monk knew the lyrics to every song he played, thus the simple words of hopeful, elusive love rang through his mind as he explored every dimension of J. Newell Chase’s lovely ballad. And I bet Nellie was on his mind, too. After the final chorus, he got up from the piano and quietly retired to his room.
On Friday, February 5,1982, Barry Harris found Thelonious in his room unconscious and called an ambulance. The sixty-four-year old Monk had suffered a stroke, complicated by a bout of hepatitis. He was taken to Englewood Hospital, where he lay in a coma for twelve days. On February 17, at 8:10 a.m., Monk finally checked out. Nellie was there, holding him gently in her arms.115