(August 1951–May 1953)
Police charged Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Powell’s two friends with violating section 422 of the New York Public Health Law—possession of narcotics. Once processed at Central Booking, it was too late to appear before a judge, so they all spent the night in the Tombs. The next morning, appearing in Felony Court, they faced a judge who transferred Powell to a psychiatric ward and released the woman on her own recognizance. Powell’s male friend was held over because he was out on bail for a prior arrest for drug dealing.1 Thelonious faced the charges by himself, insisting that the packet of heroin did not belong to him. When asked to whom it belonged, he would not say. He refused to rat out Bud Powell. (As Monk would explain years later, he did not want to go down as “a drag” or a snitch.2) The judge ordered that he be held on $1,500 bail—an astronomical figure considering Monk’s financial situation. Unable to make bail, he was sent promptly to the workhouse on Rikers Island.3
Nellie was beside herself. “Every day I would plead with him. . . . ‘Thelonious, get yourself out of this trouble. You didn’t do anything.’ But he’d just say ‘Nellie, I have to walk the streets when I get out. I can’t talk.’”4 She appealed to everyone she could think of for bail money. Alfred Lion didn’t have enough cash, but offered to help raise the money by calling his friends. Paul Bacon was on the list. “Alfred called and said, Paul, we got a problem. You got any money? I had just gotten paid so I contributed fifty dollars, which was practically all I had at the time.”5 Despite his efforts, however, Lion came up short. Nellie also turned to Maely Dufty, a talented writer for the New York Citizen-Call and wife of William Dufty, who would later become the ghost-writer for Billie Holiday’s memoir, Lady Sings the Blues. A Jewish émigré who had barely escaped German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II, Maely Dufty had a reputation in Harlem as a fighter for justice and a lover of jazz. (On her very first night in the United States, she headed straight to the Renaissance Ballroom in Harlem and sought out Duke Ellington!6) Nellie was in terrible shape when she walked into Dufty’s apartment. Still recovering from intestinal surgery, she was visibly underweight and completely spent. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she explained that they hardly had enough money to care for an eighteen-month-old baby, let alone enough for bail or an attorney. Dufty was quick to act, first contacting someone in the Narcotics Division of the U. S. Treasury Department to intervene on Monk’s behalf. She wanted Monk transferred to a hospital and held there for seventy-two hours in order to prove he was not an addict. She argued that the absence of withdrawal symptoms would provide sufficient evidence of his innocence. In addition, she argued, the amount of heroin involved was so minuscule that it should have been clear to any judge that Monk was not dealing. The agent promised to look into it, but could not interfere in the case. Dufty then turned to the NAACP legal defense department. “Sorry, but we don’t touch anything involving narcotics,” she was told. But Dufty believed what happened to Monk was an obvious miscarriage of justice, and could not understand the NAACP’s response. “This involves a man being prejudiced against and robbed of his civil liberties . . . He is being prevented from being able to prove his innocence in the ONLY manner it can be proven—isolation.”7 The NAACP could not be persuaded, but the staffer she spoke with suggested they turn to attorney Andrew Weinberger, who was eager to take on the case. But they still needed money.
Raising the money to pay Weinberger proved difficult, especially in the jazz world. No one seemed to believe Monk was innocent. “I went to a disk jockey,” Dufty later recalled. “He laughed at me. I went to the owner of a hip jazz joint. He laughed harder. Everywhere I went for help, people would burst into gales of laughter as soon as I said: ‘Thelonious Monk.’”8 Only Alfred Lion and his circle of friends stepped up, donating the money they raised in their unsuccessful effort to make bail to pay the attorney’s fees. By the time his case came to trial, he had already spent two months at Rikers. The judge elected to release him with time served.
Those sixty days were perhaps as hard on Nellie as they were on Thelonious. She continued to work every day at Marvel Cleaners, but had to supplement her income by taking on additional work as a seamstress. (Mary Lou Williams paid her the princely sum of twenty-five dollars to alter five gowns.9) The Department of Correction had just permitted weekend visits, making it easier for Nellie to see her husband. Monk depended on Nellie’s visits to restore his spirits. He had no piano, was granted very little free time to write, and as an inmate in the workhouse he had to work. Like the other prisoners, Monk either worked in the bakery or the wrapping and shipping room.10 These were the longest sixty days of his life.
Monk was released two days before his thirty-fourth birthday. The occasion provided an opportunity to thank all those who had supported him, especially Alfred Lion, who not only raised money for his attorney but paid his ten-dollar union fees while he was in jail.11 But Monk had much to celebrate besides his freedom. Blue Note announced that it would reissue seven Monk recordings on one ten-inch LP titled The Genius of Modern Music.12 The move certainly pleased Monk, who, like everyone, recognized that the days of 78s were numbered. He hoped it would provide a boost to his finances. These developments were tempered by the fact that the police had revoked his cabaret card—indefinitely. Monk was neither surprised nor devastated by the loss of his cabaret card. After all, it had been three years since he’d had steady work. On the other hand, he needed anything he could get, and his options were significantly limited without a cabaret card. Now that his first LP was about to hit record stores, he had to consider the possibility that club owners might begin to take an interest in him.
Lack of money did not dampen the Monks’ holiday season. Christmas was always a special day for the family, and it had become tradition to extend festivities to the twenty-seventh, when Nellie and Thelonious, Jr., celebrated their birthdays. By this time, Junior answered to the nickname “Toot,” the name of the main character in Hardie Gramatky’s 1939 book, Little Toot the Tugboat, which Walt Disney turned into an animated film in 1948. “Toot” loved the book, but earned the nickname because he learned to whistle before he could talk.13 Gifts were meager, but the family was together. During the remaining winter months, Nellie continued to work every day while Monk stayed home with Toot, keeping house, writing music, and working with the parade of musicians who would drop by the apartment. “When he wasn’t working regularly,” Nellie explained, “he’d be working at home, writing and rehearsing bands that didn’t have the prospects of a dog. . . . In the ‘un’ years, as I call them, as far as he was concerned, he felt just as confident as he does now that what he was doing musically could appeal to other people if they only took the opportunity to listen.”14
Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff still believed in Monk, and wanted to give the world one more opportunity to listen. Soon after releasing Monk’s second ten-inch LP, The Genius of Modern Music, vol. 2, they invited him back for what would prove to be his last studio session as a leader for Blue Note. Monk led a sextet of talented musicians, most of whom were old friends: Max Roach, bassist Nelson Boyd, trumpeter Kenny Dorham, and tenor player Lucky Thompson, his old pal from the Norman Granz tour days.15 Rounding out the ensemble on alto was a relative newcomer named Lou Donaldson. Having just recorded for Blue Note with Milt Jackson’s quintet in April, Donaldson was the label’s latest discovery.16
The group met at WOR Studios on Saturday, May 30, and laid down six usable sides—four of which were new compositions. “Skippy,” based on the chord changes for “Tea for Two,” was a treacherous uptempo melody named after Nellie’s sister.17 The song’s dynamic and unpredictable melodic line seemed to suit Skippy, whom the family frequently described as a “live-wire.”18 “Hornin’ In” and “Sixteen” (a reference to the song’s 16-bar AABA structure19) are studies in dissonance and whole-tone harmony. Over medium tempos, the trio of horns play phrases that still cause many uninitiated listeners to wince.
After ten takes to record these three songs, Monk’s “Let’s Cool One” was a walk in the park. A simple melody line played over a smooth rhythm and calming tempo, it lacked the angularity of most Monk tunes but retained its Monkish characteristics. On the other hand, Monk transformed Joe Burke and Benny Davis’s 1929 “Carolina Moon” into a frenetic romp in 6/4 time, producing one of the earliest successful examples of a jazz waltz. The arrangement is notable for its inventiveness and is further evidence that he was still seeking that elusive hit. Tommy Dorsey’s 1938 recording of “Carolina Moon” was wildly popular and RCA-Victor released Perry Como’s rendition with the Lloyd Schaffer Orchestra in 1948.20 For Lou Donaldson, however, their recording was a family reunion of sorts, since he, Max, and Monk all hailed from North Carolina.21 Finally, Monk rounded out the session with a very pretty version of “I’ll Follow You” without the horns, rarely straying from the melody.22
Two weeks later, Monk participated in a concert at Town Hall honoring his longtime friend Mary Lou Williams. Organized by the Committee for the Negro in the Arts to raise funds for its various projects, Monk’s band, which included Kenny Dorham and drummer Art Taylor, appeared briefly on an overcrowded program that included Eartha Kitt, the Clarence Williams trio, and Mary Lou herself.23 Monk had not seen much of Mary Lou earlier in the year—she and Nellie had had a falling out over work Nellie had done for her. According to Nellie, Mary Lou had refused to pay her for more alterations she had done because Mary Lou claimed the clothes did not fit properly. Nellie never forgave her, and harbored an intense dislike for Williams for the rest of her life.24 In any event, Monk’s brief reunion with Mary Lou turned out to be an unexpected farewell party—she would relocate to Europe a few weeks later and remain for two years.25
Monk needed more than occasional concert appearances and short-term or out-of-town gigs. When Bob Weinstock approached Thelonious about signing an exclusive contract with his Prestige label, he jumped at the chance. Both Monk and Alfred Lion had realized their recording relationship had reached a dead end—it was time to move on. And Monk was familiar with Prestige since Weinstock had already recorded Sonny Rollins, Kenny Dorham, and J. J. Johnson.26 Weinstock could afford to pay a small—but decent—advance and seemed to have a gift for selling records. Like so many entrepreneurs in the business, Weinstock started out as an avid jazz record collector, providing hard-to-find 78s for Leonard Feather’s radio show, “Jazz at Its Best” on New York’s WMGM. In 1948, he rented a counter at Jazzman Joe’s on 47th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and sold modern records.27 As business grew, he expanded his staff, hiring an acquaintance named Ira Gitler, who worked summers while attending the University of Missouri. He eventually moved his operations to a midtown storefront on Tenth Avenue, and in 1949, launched two labels—New Jazz and Prestige. Gitler was barely out of his teens when he decided to stay put in New York City, take classes at the New School, and devote much of his free time to Prestige.28
Weinstock had developed an interest in Monk when he’d heard him play with Coleman Hawkins, but his budget was limited. Then in 1952, he struck gold with King Pleasure’s “Moody’s Mood for Love” and the profits enabled him to sign more artists. Monk signed a three-year recording contract on August 21, 1952, which the union approved three weeks later.29 On October 15, five days after his thirty-fifth birthday, Monk walked into Beltone Studios in Manhattan, ready to work. Intent on highlighting Monk’s pianistic talents, Weinstock chose a trio setting for the first sessions. Monk hired Art Blakey and Gary Mapp, a bass player renowned in Brooklyn but unknown elsewhere. Randy Weston put Mapp and Monk together. “Gary was from Barbados and he was part of a whole group of Brooklyn bass players—Sam Gill, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, etc. We had many gigs together. We played everything from Polish weddings to Italian weddings to dances, you name it. To do a jazz concert at that time was quite rare.”30 By day Mapp worked as a police officer for the New York City Transit Authority (he earned the moniker “the Hip Cop”31), and the sessions he recorded with Monk represent the only evidence of his playing.
Monk’s experience with Weinstock contrasted sharply from that of Blue Note. Whereas Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff not only encouraged rehearsals but paid musicians for rehearsal time, Weinstock wanted his artists to show up and blow, and if one take produced sufficient results, one take was all that was needed. “We’d record it and go on to the next one. That was my style of recording. . . . Ninety percent of the time we didn’t even listen to playbacks. Don’t forget, these were world-class players. They knew when they were good or not.”32 The trio recorded four sides altogether, each one limited by the 78’s three-minute time constraint. “Monk’s Dream,” a highly danceable 32-bar romp, was technically the only new composition on the date. Despite the studio’s beatup and slightly out-of-tune piano, Monk employs open chord voicings and impressive fingering technique to great effect, dancing all over the keyboard. The two other original compositions, “Little Rootie Tootie” and “Bye-ya,” were pieces he had written several years earlier but never recorded. “Tootie,” now a playful dedication to his son, was originally “The Pump” (see Chapter 9). Teddy McRae had quite literally stolen it from Monk in 1944 by taking co-composer’s credit, and it was now Monk’s turn to “steal” it back.33 He did alter the original melody: in the introduction and the A-section, he would hit a high-register chord three times in order to mimic the sound of the train whistle. Thelonious also dusted off his composition “Playhouse,” another danceable, upbeat tune but with an even stronger Latin flavor.34 Weinstock wanted to call it “Go.” Hearing the Latin/Caribbean influence, he asked George Rivera, Prestige’s accountant who was in the studio that day, for the Spanish translation. Somehow “Vaya” became “Bye-ya.”35 Finally, Monk explored the ever-popular Harry Tobias standard, “Sweet and Lovely,” opening with an introduction paraphrasing his own “Ask Me Now.”
Monk felt alive again. All four songs were recorded in one take, and his solfeggio singing at times threatened to overwhelm the music. Monk expresses pure joy as he sings out his ideas. Buoyed by the session, Monk took his trio to Philadelphia a week later where he played a week at the Blue Note,36 returning in time to see the Sunday edition of The New York Times. In the Arts section on October 26, Monk read something he had never seen before in the mainstream press: his name. John S. Wilson, a young critic who had joined the Times staff that year,37 published an essay reviewing recent recordings by modern pianists. The piece featured Eddie Heywood, Erroll Garner, and Ralph Sutton, but it led off with Thelonious Monk. Concentrating on the Blue Note release of The Genius of Modern Music, Wilson’s review was mixed. “His piano work is revealed as being neither particularly mysterious nor especially boppish,” he mused. But not being “boppish” in Wilson’s opinion was not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, he called Monk a “single note man, in direct descent from Count Basie.” He described him as playing in a relaxed and “unmannered” fashion, but on at least two ballads he found Monk uninspired. Part of the problem, the critic acknowledged, was that some of the recordings were made four or five years earlier, and given the advancement of the music they sounded dated. Nevertheless, he concluded: “Considering the cult worship surrounding both bop and Monk when these sides were made, they hold up surprisingly well now that the furor has passed.”38 I’m not sure what Monk thought about Wilson’s opinions, but a New York Times review was significant. Wilson was the first critic in the mainstream press to take Thelonious seriously. And while his future reviews would vary from dismissal to praise, Wilson’s persistent efforts to write about Monk ultimately contributed to broadening Monk’s audience and generating opportunities.
Two months later, on December 18, Monk was back in Beltone Studios again to record four more sides. Gary Mapp returned, Max Roach occupied the drum chair, and Ira Gitler, who turned twenty-four that day, produced the date.39 Once again, the piano had not been tuned and no one seemed to notice, except Monk, who decided to milk the bad notes rather than avoid them. The repertoire was similar to that of the last session: one standard and three originals—each recorded in one take. “Trinkle Tinkle” is a magnificent display of piano technique, yet there is nothing Tatum-esque here. It is pure Monk in sound, rhythm, and fury. There are mixed stories behind the title; producer Ira Gitler believes he might have misunderstood Monk who may have said “Twinkle, Twinkle,” because when Gitler asked Monk for the title he heard “Trinkle, Tinkle, like a star.”40 On the other hand, all the great stride pianists with whom Monk identified called themselves “ticklers,” so it might have been a playful corruption of that word. Either way, Monk continued to use “Trinkle Tinkle” long after the 1952 recording.
Monk went back to the Caribbean with “Bemsha Swing,” another danceable number with Max Roach producing counter-rhythms with brushes. Co-written with Denzil Best, the song was a tribute to Barbados, his native land. When Best and Monk submitted the copyright request form three days before the session, the paperwork included the correct title, “Bimsha Swing.” Although critics have been baffled by the title ever since, both Best and fellow Barbadian Gary Mapp understood the meaning—Bimsha was the phonetic pronunciation of “Bimshire,” and Barbados’s nickname was “Little Bimshire.”41 Weinstock wasn’t moved by the song at first, but Ira Gitler persuaded his reluctant boss of its musical value.42
“Reflections” (the title provided by Ira Gitler) would evolve into one of Monk’s most intriguing and romantic ballads, but he debuted it here in a tempo much closer to a fox trot than a ballad—it might be described as medium slow. It possesses a strong drive, allowing the band to swing continuously, yet it is slow enough for Monk to fill the space with complex little phrases, while never leaving the melody. Last is Monk’s hilarious rendition of “These Foolish Things.” After opening with a quote from “Please, Mr. Sun,” a syrupy pop tune recorded by both Johnny Ray and Perry Como that year,43 Monk is all over the keyboard, making surprising harmonic choices and deliberately seeking out the “bad” notes for comic effect.
The last weeks of 1952 passed quickly. The holidays rolled around again, which meant Toot and Nellie had another birthday to celebrate. Toot turned three and was talking up a storm. But this year his daddy couldn’t stick around for the evening festivities: He had go to work. Thelonious had a week-long gig backing Sarah Vaughan at the Paramount Theater.44 Vaughan had become a sensation that year, headlining a major tour advertised as “The Biggest Show of ’52.”45 Jobs were still scarce, but Monk’s fortunes seemed to be improving. By the first of the year, Monk had secured a few gigs in Washington, D.C. He performed at the Howard on January 10, returned nearly two weeks later to do a five-night stint at Club Bengasi, a one-nighter at Club Kavakos, and in March he was back at the Howard Theater for a night.46
Meanwhile, Barbara Monk had become progressively weaker and less mobile. She occasionally found the strength to get out of bed to feed Toot and play little games with him. “Grandma always seemed to be in front of me trying to feed me,” Toot recalled. “Every time I see my grandmother she’s in front of me smiling with this huge smile trying to feed me. I’m in a high chair, the window’s at my back, and I just remember she was crazy about me.”47 She couldn’t get enough of Little Toot and prayed Thelonious and Nellie might give her one more grandchild. Her prayers were answered; by February Nellie knew she was pregnant.
At some point during the spring or summer, Nellie’s sister Skippy and her son Ronnie moved in with the Monks for a few weeks. With six people living there now, their tiny apartment suddenly felt smaller than ever. Monk’s niece Charlotte recalls, “It got to be so crowded, Uncle Bubba [Thelonious] wouldn’t be home. He’d be on the corner every morning.”48 Skippy tried not to be a burden; she helped around the house, made sure Nellie rested, and cared for Toot. Monk enjoyed talking to his thirteen-year-old nephew, who was a smart, sweet kid and a talented artist.49
And Monk had time to talk. The summer months were slow and his newly released Prestige LP was not flying off the shelves.50 Barry Ulanov’s mostly negative review in the July issue of Metronome didn’t help matters. While hearing “some progress toward pianistic proficiency,” Ulanov nevertheless dismissed Thelonious “as monotonous a composer as ever . . . rooting, tooting, trinkling, tinkling and rarely emerging from a boppist Impressionist morass.”51
As Nellie’s delivery date approached, Thelonious turned down out-of-town engagements; he was not going to miss the birth of his second child. Instead, he played concerts where alcohol was not served and one-nighters in the outer boroughs. The black-owned clubs and bars in Brooklyn not only ignored the cabaret laws but genuinely embraced Monk, introducing him to the expansive world of jazz across the river. “We had more clubs in Brooklyn than they had in Harlem,” Randy Weston explained. “So every night we were hanging out.”52 The more popular spots included the Putnam Central, the Baby Grand, the Wagon Wheel, or the smaller bars like Pleasant Lounge, Club 78, Kingston Lounge, and the Club Continental. For the big events, Brooklynites might head to the Paramount Theater or to the dances held at the Elks or Sonia ballrooms. As long-time Brooklyn resident and former musician Freddie Robinson told me, “The music was everywhere. Every little corner bar had jazz.”53
During the summer of 1953, Max Roach and Charles Mingus, the brilliant yet temperamental bassist and composer, also helped shift the weight of modern jazz across the bridge by organizing a series of Friday night concerts at the Putnam Central. Determined to become more independent of the industry, Mingus and Roach had recently started their own independent label, Debut Records, and decided to launch a series of “Jazz Workshops” that would feature significant innovators and enable artists to share more of the proceeds. They both regarded Thelonious as one of their generation’s most important composers and brought him as a featured artist on the third Friday in August. That night Monk teamed up with Art Blakey, Mingus, probably Miles Davis, among others.54
Sunday nights Monk began attending jam sessions at the Open Door in Greenwich Village. Initiated by Robert Reisner, an art history professor and avid jazz fan, these “Sunday jazz bashes” had been going on since late April. Reisner had convinced the owner of the Open Door, Sol Jaffe, to let him invite featured artists, charge admission, and pay the musicians “scale plus.” At virtually every session, Charlie Parker was the featured artist. But he was joined by many of his contemporaries, including Monk, who could play these Sunday night sessions because alcohol was not served during them.55 It is not clear when Thelonious started showing up, but we know from a photograph by Robert Parent he was there in September. And in some cases he was paid—not much, but a gig is a gig and every dollar counted.
On Saturday, September 5, just a half-hour before midnight, Thelonious and Nellie met their one and only daughter, Barbara Evelyn Monk. Unlike her brother, she was born in Woman’s Hospital, a division of St. Luke’s hospital, on 110th and Amsterdam.56 They named her after her grandmother and her Aunt Skippy, but almost immediately her family began calling her “Boo Boo.” And from the beginning she looked like her daddy.
Ironically, when Barbara was born, Thelonious and Nellie were in better shape financially than they had been in the months following Toot’s birth, before he lost his cabaret card. Whereas Toot was swaddled in clothes from Goodwill, Boo Boo slept in style. “I remember very clearly my Dad and Mom went and got a crib,” Toot remembered. “It was a fancy crib. I mean, you know, of course, they had middle-class aspirations from day one. So they got the baddest crib. And I’ll never forget this crib. I remember it was a crib that had this cabinet on one end of it and something that folded over the baby. . . . I remember my sister coming home from the hospital. I can see my mother doting over the crib. And I can see my sister in the crib. My memories really begin, really begin, with my father and me and my sister being home.”57 Home is where Thelonious spent most of his time since Nellie had to return to work soon after she gave birth. Now he had a newborn daughter, an active toddler son, and a sick mother to care for. He would wake up in the morning, head to the kitchen, and fortify himself with his own energy drink—one raw egg in a glass of milk. Again, Toot recalls “Dad running around the house in a white, sleeveless t-shirt. Always seemed like it was summer time, he was always sweating, and he was changing the diapers, and he was sweeping the floors, and he was washing the dishes and we were doing this dance all day.”58
Sometimes Thelonious had help. When his nieces could baby-sit, or Nellie was home, Monk often headed to Pat’s bar on West 64th or Green Gables on West 62nd for a drink or to shoot the breeze with his neighborhood pals.59 But it was family that kept him sane and provided an anchor. Nellie later mused, “[D]uring the worst years we didn’t feel the struggle as much as other people might have because we were very close, we felt each of us was doing the best he could, and we didn’t suffer for things we couldn’t have. In fact, nobody talked about them.”60
Monk still played all the time at home, and musicians came by the house to learn his tunes. But it wasn’t the same as a gig. He thrived on the dynamic exchange between musicians and audiences; he needed to get paid; and he did not want to disappear. “It was torture for him not to be able to play,” Nellie explained years later. “But you’d never know it from looking at him, and he didn’t get bitter. Anybody with less strength would have snapped. And he was continually omitted from things—records, concerts, and the like. We’d listen to the all-night Birdland radio show, and maybe once in two months they’d play a record of his. There was no money; no place to go. A complete blank. He wasn’t even included in benefits.”61
He did have a recording contract and a label seemingly interested in his work. In November, Weinstock invited Monk back to the studio—this time under better conditions. Rather than return to Beltone and its inferior piano, they moved to the familiar surroundings of WOR Studios, where Monk had recorded for Blue Note. Realizing that the 78 was dead, Weinstock set out to make an LP, freeing Monk from the three-minute format. Monk wanted to use Sonny Rollins and trumpeter Ray Copeland on the date, but things did not work out as planned. Indeed, many things did not work out as planned, which was not altogether surprising given the date of the session: Friday November 13. Superstitions notwithstanding, the tone was set when Monk and Rollins arrived over an hour late because, they claimed, their taxi had collided with a police vehicle. Ira Gitler, who produced the session, didn’t quite buy the story, but absent any other explanation he had to accept it. Losing an hour proved costly; Gitler had to generate enough music for an entire album with limited studio time. Then Copeland came down with a severe case of the flu62 and French horn player Julius Watkins was asked to sub. The Detroit-born Watkins was an outstanding classically trained musician who, despite three years at the Manhattan School of Music, could not get an orchestra job because of his race.63 He had spent a few years on the road playing trumpet with Ernie Fields and Milt Buckner, but his dream was to play French horn in a jazz setting. By the time Monk hired him, he had just formed his own sextet with Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke.64 Having never worked with Monk, however, Watkins faced the unenviable task of learning the music on the job.
For better or worse, Monk went with a different rhythm section. Weinstock suggested bassist Percy Heath, a relatively young but experienced player who was now part of the Prestige stable as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet.65 Thelonious insisted on hiring a twenty-four-year-old left-handed drummer named Willie Jones. Jones had never made a record before and critics later questioned Monk’s choice. But Thelonious had a penchant for hiring young, unknown players who brought enthusiasm and drive to the music. Jones was part of the Brooklyn circle, and Randy Weston, Kenny Dorham, even Max Roach, had begun to sing his praises.66 Monk took a chance and the result is quite good. In the remaining studio time left, they recorded three new originals. “Think of One,” similar to his composition “Thelonious,” draws on the ostinato form; its one-note phrase is repeated over a stop-time rhythm that releases into a swinging bridge. It served the band well as a vehicle for improvisation—though on both takes the group is hesitant in its treatment of the theme. “Let’s Call This” is yet another example of Monk’s unique tempos. Despite strong solos, it plods along partly because the young drummer hasn’t figured out how to sustain drive in a medium-slow tempo. It’s not an easy thing to do. Even the great Roy Haynes noted, “Monk played the oddest tempos.”67 “Friday the Thirteenth” was written on the spot. Its simple four-bar phrase is repeated relentlessly, although the harmonic movement is so dominant it practically overpowers the melodic line. Because it was the last song of the day and Gitler needed more material to fill out an LP, he kept gesturing to the band to keep going. “There I was in the control booth, giving signs, holding up a cardboard sign telling them not to stop. It got to be pretty comical.”68 The song exceeds ten minutes. Still, both Rollins and Watkins turn in wonderful explorations on their instruments, but ultimately it is Willie Jones who saves the day. The dynamic interchange between Jones and the rest of the band, especially toward the end, confirmed Monk’s choice.
Near the end of 1953, Monk finally secured a steady gig at Tony’s, a black-owned Brooklyn neighborhood joint on the corner of Grand Avenue and Dean Street. Randy Weston remembers it as “a funky, dirty bar, with a funky little kitchen.” In the fall of 1953, the management sought to raise the club’s profile a bit by changing its name from Tony’s Bar and Grill to Tony’s Club Grandean, and christening its performance space the “Fiesta Room.” With the dapper Jimmy Morton as Tony’s “fabulous MC,” it had already become a mainstay for musicians like Gary Mapp (who led his own band), Max Roach, and Kenny Dorham, and Milt Jackson had led his own group there the same night Monk played at the Putnam Central.69 In December, Freddie Brathwaite, a wellknown local activist and promoter, and an emerging sculptor named Jimmy Gittens, organized a concert of Monk’s music at Tony’s. Brathwaite and Gittens were part of a circle of black Brooklyn intellectuals known as “the chessmen,” because they played the game so relentlessly. In addition to using mostly Brooklyn musicians—Kenny Dorham, bassist Sam Gill, and Willie Jones—Monk brought Sonny Rollins with him. The music was swinging enough to get people on the dance floor—a rarity when Monk performed in Manhattan.70 It proved to be a memorable event, though for most of the folks who packed into Tony’s that night it wasn’t the music they remembered. Randy Weston reminisced: “That evening, some gang members from Gate’s End showed up and tried to break up the concert. They came in and all of a sudden they wanted to take over. Words were exchanged, fights broke out. So the cats, they were really rumbling, and the beer bottles were flying everywhere. People were trying to get to the men’s room, the ladies’ room, and Monk and Sonny were still playing! They didn’t miss a note.”71 In spite of the ensuing chaos, the management gave Thelonious a regular weekend slot that lasted from late December 1953 to May of 1954. Monk spent every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday leading a band made up of the usual suspects: Sonny Rollins, occasionally Kenny Dorham or Ray Copeland on trumpet, Willie Jones, Michael Mattos, Sam Gill or Gary Mapp on bass, and a slew of guests.72
The third weekend in March, for example, Monk shared the bandstand with Miles Davis, Gigi Gryce, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach.73 They had come together under the auspices of the Jazz Workshops that Roach and Mingus had initiated the previous summer at the Putnam Central.74 Earlier in the week, Davis and Roach met at Thelonious’s apartment to go over the music. Monk’s nephew, Theolonious (“Peanut”), who just happened to come in from playing basketball, witnessed Miles, Monk, and Max crammed into the tiny front room with the upright piano. The session turned sour when Miles made disparaging remarks about Monk’s playing. Monk just glared at first, but Miles would not relent and soon the dispute escalated into a shouting match. “Max didn’t say nothing,” recalled Theolonious, who was fourteen at the time. “Uncle Bubba stood up and towered over Miles and they were about to go to blows. And I remember thinking, ‘Who is this little guy? I’ll whip him myself.’ Then my father [Thomas] came in the house and said, ‘Miles, man, you got a problem?’ And Monk said, ‘This is my band, my music.’ Miles said, ‘But you’re not playing it right, Monk.’ Miles looked up at Monk and I thought he was going to hit him with the trumpet. Then Monk finally said, ‘I think you better leave. This is my mother’s house and I don’t want no violence in here.’ Then my father went over to Miles and said, ‘Man, I think you better go.’”75
Whatever ill feelings they might have harbored did not affect the music; according to all reports, the combination of such astounding talent produced a magical night of music. The evening moved Gigi Gryce to sketch out a tune he would later call “A Night at Tony’s.” “I sat at the piano during intermission,” Gryce later recalled, “and picked out this melody. At first I was going to call it ‘The Four M’s” [for Miles, Max, Mingus, and Monk].76 Two of the “M’s” appeared to have agreed to a détente, but there was one moment when Thelonious thought he might test Miles’s patience. In an act of playful comeuppance, Monk left the piano, snuck up behind Miles during his solo, reached into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and dug into his jacket pocket for matches. After he lit up, he put everything back into Davis’s pockets. “It was like a vaudeville act,” recalled Celia Mingus. “And Miles—Miles wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of missing a note. God, that was funny.”77 It was funny, but at Miles’s expense. The bad blood between Monk and Miles would have a lasting effect.
Amid the sea of black faces at Tony’s was a white couple from France named Henri and Ny Renaud. Henri was a fine jazz pianist, composer, and producer who had come to America to produce several recording sessions for the Vogue label. They had arrived in December 1953, and were staying with pianist George Wallington.78 Wallington wasn’t close to Monk, but he sang his praises and urged Henri and Ny to seek him out. He was easy to find; Monk was listed in the city directory, so the Renauds simply dropped by his apartment. The visits became fairly regular, and when Monk started playing at Tony’s the Renauds followed dutifully. Indeed, they survived the infamous night of the brawl, awed by the realization that “there must have only been two pale faces [in the club] (my wife’s and mine).”79 Once peace was restored, he remembered, “Monk swore having noticed nothing, so caught up by his piano. Monk was a being who lived on another planet.”80 Renaud was deeply impressed with Monk’s fertile musical imagination and his integrity as a human being, and Monk in turn grew fond of the French pianist. They spent good part of the winter and early spring in each other’s company. One night Renaud accompanied Monk to Birdland to hear Ike Quebec and Art Blakey. Manager Oscar Goodstein, still angry over Monk using the piano as an ashtray and a coaster four years ago, tried to bar Thelonious from the club, but Renaud rose up in his defense. Goodstein, who by now was notorious for banning musicians from the club, made an exception.81 It would be nearly a decade before Monk set foot in Birdland again.
Meanwhile, Monk’s star seemed to be rising ever so slowly. On the twenty-sixth of February, the Music Division of the New York Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions invited him to participate in a tribute to the “Music of Negro Composers.” The event, held at the Pythian Temple on West 70th, focused on twentieth-century concert music, notably works by Nathaniel Dett, Ulysses S. Kay, William Grant Still, John Wesley Work, W. C. Handy, Harry T. Burleigh, William L. Dawson, “and others.” The others were presumably Monk as well as Charles Mingus, whose compositions were also recognized. Thelonious shared the stage with jazz and classical artists alike, including pianist Alonzo Levister, vocalist Janet Thurlow, and Gloria Davy, a talented young soprano who would go on to become the first black artist to perform in Aida at the Metropolitan Opera House.82
While the world of black composers considered Thelonious a worthy voice in the musical arts, the jazz press continued to ridicule Monk’s music. Down Beat dismissed Thelonious Monk Blows for LP, the “Friday the thirteenth” date Prestige released in March. The reviewer wrote, “On the seemingly endless Thirteenth almost everybody plays as if he were on the brink of tears.” The reviewer blamed the producer and said Monk had “a great deal to say but needs direction. That’s what a recording director is for.”83 The review didn’t faze Weinstock, however, who still hoped the LP format would generate better sales. He asked Monk to come back to the studio on May 11 to record another. The studio in question was not in New York, however. It was in Hackensack, New Jersey, and it was unlike any studio Monk had seen. It was the living room of a house owned by the parents of Rudy Van Gelder, a brilliant technician. An optometrist who loved jazz, Van Gelder figured out how mic placement, acoustics, and proper levels can generate a warmer, richer sound, and it was that sound Alfred Lion loved when he first “discovered” Van Gelder in 1953. Weinstock followed suit, and soon Rudy’s place in Hackensack became the first and only choice for Prestige.84
This time Ray Copeland made the date, but instead of Sonny Rollins, Monk hired Frank Foster, an unknown but talented 25-year-old tenor player from Cincinnati. With two young horn players on the front line, Monk made sure they were backed by seasoned rhythm musicians—bassist Curley Russell and Art Blakey on drums. In what was becoming a familiar pattern, Monk offered up three originals and a standard—the latter a humorous reading of Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Much like his recording of “Especially to You,” he arranged the horns to play dissonant, descending chromatic obligato phrases beneath his playful and even more dissonant statement of the melody.85 In another familiar pattern, the title “We See” was the product of another error in translation. Monk initially called it “Weetee,” his niece Evelyn’s nickname, but “We See” is what stuck. Like his happy, precocious, nearly ten-year-old niece, the song is joyous, boppish, and upbeat. “Locomotive,” on the other hand, takes us back to the plodding tempos. For Monk it was quite deliberate; in the tradition of Count Basie and Duke Ellington and the train-whistle guitar blues of the early century, Thelonious set out to reproduce the sound of the train. Built on an odd 20-bar chorus, it rhythmically and melodically captures the motion of the old steam engines steadily chugging, except that the slow tempo reflects what Thelonious would have heard having grown up so close to train depots in San Juan Hill and Rocky Mount. He reproduced what he knew best: the slow-moving train coming into the station.
The final song of the day, “Hackensack,” was a tribute to Van Gelder and his gadgets. It has also been a source of ongoing controversy. The melody in the A-section was first recorded ten years earlier by Coleman Hawkins on a date led by Mary Lou Williams.86 As indicated previously, the arrangement had been written by Williams, though it’s not clear if the melody was hers. Either way, Hawkins added it to his repertoire and recorded it as “Rifftide,” listing himself as composer.87 Monk’s version is really a variation on “Rifftide,” not the same song. The A-section was significantly revised, and he wrote an entirely different bridge. Thelonious took composer’s credit and Hawkins apparently never challenged him on it. And it swings, thanks in large part to Art Blakey.
With another record in the can and his weekends filled with lively performances at Tony’s, Monk was ready to take on more challenges. One afternoon, while strolling along the Hudson River waterfront with Henri Renaud, he peered downriver and began to wonder aloud: “What could there be on the other side of the ocean?” he told Renaud. “How I would love to see that!’” Suddenly the wheels started spinning. Renaud recounts what happened next: “I heard that Charles Delaunay and Jacques Souplet were preparing the [third Paris] Jazz festival. . . . I immediately phoned Charles, one of the rare admirers of Monk at that time.”88 It all happened so quickly, Delaunay and Souplet did not have time to include Monk’s name on the roster. For Monk, it wasn’t such an easy decision. He had never been out of the country. His daughter was less than a year old. Money was still incredibly tight, and since Nellie had to work, her nieces and sister-in-law had to step in and provide childcare during the day. His mother had not gotten any better and he feared she might die while he was away. Nellie reassured him that everything would be fine. She knew how badly he wanted to travel, and they both had heard that Europeans showed greater appreciation for jazz than Americans did. Perhaps he might get a few lucrative gigs? Make a record or two? Maybe the critical acclaim might help record sales, or help him get his cabaret card reinstated?
Ironically, Monk’s final gig before departing happened to be a benefit sponsored by the Committee to Restore Paul Robeson’s Passport. The State Department had revoked Robeson’s passport in 1950 in response to his vocal opposition to U. S. foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and anti-colonial movements, and his vociferous defense of the Communist Party’s right to exist. The Truman administration and the FBI deemed him a threat to national security, following a speech he delivered at the World Peace Congress in Paris in 1949, in which he opposed war against the Soviet Union.89 The event, billed as a “Cultural Salute to Paul Robeson,” was held at Harlem’s Renaissance Casino on the evening of May 26.90 The roster included some eminent figures, including the actor and poet Beah Richards, novelist Alice Childress, Charlie Parker, Pete Seeger, Julian Mayfield, Lorraine Hansberry, and the composer Earl Robinson.91 Monk took great pride in his participation. For one thing, the event occurred soon after the historic Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education. Thelonious could not help but notice the headline on May 17 announcing that the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. Moreover, Monk was a great admirer of Paul Robeson, not only for his courageous voice for freedom and justice, but as a musician, actor, and athlete. Several years later, when critic Stanley Dance asked Thelonious, “Whom do you most admire in sports?” he answered “Paul Robeson.”92 And Robeson admired Monk: he once wrote after seeing the pianist perform, “Thelonious Monk really floored me.”93
On Sunday, May 30, Monk made his way to Idlewild Airport in Queens, toting an old suitcase Nellie had packed with two suits, two new shirts, two ties, socks, and underwear, all wrapped neatly in cellophane, and shoes, sheet music, and his latest Prestige LP.94 The kid from San Juan Hill was going to Paris.