Thelonious Monk

Anyone close to Monk could have seen it coming, and yet Rouse’s departure was still something of a shock. For eleven years he was the group’s loyal anchor. He knew the music, served as the band’s unofficial musical director, remained a devoted friend, and rarely made demands on his boss. Monk never performed or recorded any of Rouse’s compositions, though he granted him plenty of space to make his own LPs. Rouse’s decision to leave wasn’t impetuous; he had wanted to lead his own band and even pondered an acting career. He took acting classes with Uta Hagen at her renowned HB Studios on Bank Street, and in his spare time he took up fencing.¹ But music was his bread and butter. Six months after leaving Monk, he headed to Chicago for a long engagement at the North Park Apartment Hotel with fellow tenor player Booker Ervin, but when the latter died a few weeks later from kidney failure, Rouse joined Don Patterson’s organ trio and remained in the Windy City a few weeks longer.² He subsequently returned to New York and formed his own quartet.

Although they parted ways professionally, the two men managed to salvage their friendship. Paul Jeffrey, who would later replace Rouse on tenor, tells a story that speaks volumes to the integrity of their bond. “Nellie and them, they didn’t like Charlie Rouse towards the end after he left. So one day I was over Monk’s house and they were talking about Rouse like a dog. Monk’s not saying a word the whole time. Then suddenly Rouse knocks on the door and they let him in. Nellie asks, ‘Oh, Rouse, do you want some tea?’ And Monk waited until everybody greeted him. And do you know what Monk did? He tells Rouse, ‘This one said you couldn’t play shit. This one said that,’ and so forth. He ran down everything they were saying, and then when he got done he said, ‘But there are two things I don’t do. I don’t underpay nobody and I don’t fire nobody.’ So he made all of them look bad.”³

Yet, no sooner had he filled the saxophone slot than he lost his drummer. Monk replaced Ed Blackwell with William “Beaver” Harris, another avant-garde figure known for his work with Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp.⁷ For a “free” drummer, he could swing with the best of them. And Monk liked that Harris had been a professional baseball player in the Negro Leagues. With Patrick and Harris, two emerging figures of the avant-garde, joining Monk’s quartet, free-jazz devotees were abuzz with predictions that the High Priest might be moving in a radically different direction.⁸ Instead, it was Monk who influenced his two younger sidemen. Patrick echoed the sentiments of virtually every musician who had worked with Monk when he described “how educational it was for me to be associated with him during that period.”⁹ Although many of their encounters were over drinks at Pat’s bar on West 64th Street or just hanging around Monk’s house, the times they sat down together at the piano revealed the depths of Monk’s knowledge and skill. Once, while looking over a tune by Sonny Stitt, Thelonious “stumbled through the first chorus of it, you know, putting it together. And the second chorus he took off on one of the most amazing choruses I’d ever heard, I mean, reminiscent of Fats Waller or Art Tatum, I mean he just completely wiped it out, you know? And then . . . he went back into playing it like he couldn’t determine what the chords were or anything. I mean just really putting it together. And I was wondering how could he in one instance play the heck out of it and in the next instance fumble with it like he wasn’t familiar with it, you know? So that kind of wiped me out, you know, I never quite got over the shock of that.”¹⁰

While it is impossible to fully explain the inconsistencies Patrick witnessed, Monk’s health was in decline. Throughout the early part of 1970, he was constantly ill with colds and flu, and at fifty-two he began to feel the uncomfortable effects of an enlarged prostate. His emotional state was no better; he continued to take Thorazine sporadically, but his bouts of depression and manic episodes came with even greater frequency. That winter, Toot had to keep an eye on his father, who occasionally left the house dazed and underdressed. “I remember walking down from Lincoln Center . . . we walked from Lincoln Towers on 67th and West End all the way down to 63rd Street on West End in a blizzard. He had on his pajamas and his slippers. No coat or anything, just his hat.”11 During one particularly violent episode, Thelonious picked up a huge potted plant in the lobby of their building and rammed it through a plate-glass window. The Monks were charged for the damage and threatened with eviction.¹²

Improving Monk’s health became Nellie and Nica’s primary objective. Nica sought out doctors and willingly covered medical expenses beyond Monk’s financial reach. Nellie turned to organic and holistic healing methods. She had become a devotee of juicing in an effort to deal with her own abdominal ulcers. “She had so many operations,” Jackie explained, “and she was looking for an alternative. She wanted to heal instead of being constantly cut.”¹³ Nellie invested in two large juicers and kept a huge stock of fresh carrots, spinach, celery, and beets, which she would purchase at Hunt’s Point produce market in the Bronx.¹⁴ She put Thelonious on a regimen of juices to treat his enlarged prostate and related urinary tract problems. He tried the new regimen but was never consistent—though he did give up alcohol. So devoted was Nellie that she would bring her juicer to the Village Vanguard “and mix up health foods for him right there in the kitchen.”¹⁵

Helping other musicians, friends, and family heal through juice therapy became Nellie’s crusade. In the spring of 1970, she had even taken Nica on as a “patient” after she broke her finger and a couple of ribs in an accident that totaled her Bentley, and contracted hepatitis, she believed, from one of Dr. Freymann’s needles (“I’m still getting vitamin shots”); and a bad case of cirrhosis of the liver forced her also to stop drinking.¹⁶ But no matter how many sick folks Nellie restored, their neighbors did not appreciate the loud whirring of electric juicers at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. Some Lincoln Towers residents campaigned to have the Monks evicted.¹⁷

The band was scheduled to begin a two-week engagement at Toronto’s Colonial Tavern on February 2, but Monk’s health delayed the opening by four days.¹⁸ They made the gig, but for the duration of their stay he and Nellie remained holed up in their room at the King Edward Hotel. No one could get Monk out of his room, not even Duke Ellington, who happened to be in town to perform with the Toronto Symphony. Wilbur Ware recalls, “Duke was knocking on Monk’s door. ‘Hey, it’s Duke.’ Monk wouldn’t answer him.’” When he did emerge from his room, however, he was delighted to see Duke and some members of his orchestra in the audience on closing night.¹⁹

Duke was impressed with Monk’s new band, and he had good reason. Pat Patrick’s private recordings made at the Jazz Workshop in Boston a couple of weeks later reveal a confident and swinging ensemble comfortable not only with Monk’s repertoire but with the whole history of jazz. Patrick demonstrates strong blues chops on “Straight, No Chaser,” but midway through his solo he takes his improvisation “outside” the changes and the melody, drifting into fairly radical harmonic territory. Similarly, Patrick takes off on “I Mean You” with a boppish solo, slips into echoes of Coleman Hawkins’s improvisational style, and then goes “out” the standard harmony with a flurry of dissonant sixteenth notes. Beaver Harris played with little clutter and a driving rhythm that energized the band, Monk in particular. But when he soloed, he dispensed with tempo and time signatures and created abstract soundscapes using all components of his drum kit.20 Monk granted Harris unusual freedom, as long as his experiments were limited to solos. But on the last day of the Jazz Workshop gig, Harris got a little too comfortable, a little too free. As Harris tells it, “I was working away, then all of a sudden something struck me, something told me to add something to the high priest of Jazz, free him up more. So I went out to Zildjian when we were in Boston and I brought some gongs back, cymbals and all. I told Nellie ‘I’m gonna introduce the high priest of Jazz tonight with a big hit on the gong.’ She said, ‘Oh Beaver, I wouldn’t do that if I was you, you better leave things as they are.’ By that time I was drinking sloe gin, Patrick and Wilbur Ware were in the band, we were all together. Pat went out to pick up the cymbal and the gong with me, and brought ’em back to the Jazz Workshop and put this gong in the corner. Here comes Monk, tipping in the door, you know, and he’s gettin’ ready to come to the bandstand, I saw him, I’m drunk, the gin is rocking up on me ever faster, I said, ‘Bam,’ hit the gong like a baseball. Monk went straight to the bar and got a triple triple. Then he came up to the bandstand, sat down, started playing . . . playing for a while, then came my turn to take a solo. I played ‘bap’ (one beat) . . . ‘bap bap’ (two beats) . . . Monk played . . . I played ‘bap’ . . . Monk said ‘Motherfucker, if you didn’t feel like playing why didn’t you stay at the hotel?’”²¹ Wilbur Ware remembered, “Monk was very angry” with Harris, especially over the incident with the gong. The trip back to New York, Monk would not speak to Harris. Despite Monk’s assertion that he “never fired nobody,” he never called Harris back for the next date and wasted no time replacing him.²²

When they opened at the Village Vanguard on March 5, Wilbur Ware suggested his fellow Chicagoan, Leroy Williams, to take over on drums. The thirty-two-year-old Williams had much in common with both Patrick and Ware. He was born to a musical family, having taken piano lessons from his mother and played drums in his grandfather’s sanctified church. He, too, attended DuSable High School in order to study under Captain Walter Dyett, although Dyett insisted he study privately with drummer Oliver Coleman before joining the band. He played professionally around Chicago for several years before relocating to New York with Ware’s encouragement.²³ Just prior to joining Monk, he had recorded with pianist Barry Harris.²⁴ Monk liked Williams enough to pay him a compliment after his first night at the Vanguard. “Leroy,” he said, “you got good time. Most drummers don’t have good time.” But he also gave him some valuable advice. “The very first song we played, I was playing a whole lot of drums, pulling out all my tricks, you know, and when we finished Monk simply said to me, ‘You have all night to play.’ That’s all he had to say.”²⁵

Jack Whittemore booked the band from May 15 through 23 at the Frog and Nightgown in Raleigh. Established in 1968 by a British scientist-turned-jazz drummer named Peter Ingram, the modest 125-seat club became a popular spot known for its mix-race clientele and a target for white supremacists, who had on occasion threatened the space and its owners with violence.³⁰ The local press made a big deal of the native son’s return, though the buzz did not produce sizable crowds. On most nights, half the seats remained empty. With much fanfare, Ingram unveiled a “homecoming cake” with a fez perched on top emblazoned with the words “Welcome home to North Carolina.” Monk dug the cake and graciously thanked everyone, announcing, “I’m from Rocky Mount,”³¹ but neither Paul Jeffrey nor Leroy Williams remembers Thelonious speaking about North Carolina or traveling anywhere beyond the club and their hotel room at the Downtowner Motor Inn. “Every night after the gig we all took a cab back to the hotel and Monk and Nellie were the first ones out. They’d cut out to their room and we wouldn’t see them until the next day. Wouldn’t say a word.”³² None of the local Monk clan showed up to hear him, as far as we know, and Nellie recalled her husband having no interest in reaching out to lost relatives or discovering his roots.³³

Monk’s reaction should not surprise us. He rarely talked about North Carolina, and as an avid supporter of Southern civil rights struggles, his view of the region had been shaped immeasurably by stories of white racial violence. And on this trip, some of his fears and assumptions were confirmed. Four days before the band arrived, a twenty-three-year-old black man named Henry Marrow, Jr., was beaten and fatally shot in broad daylight by three white men in Oxford, just forty miles north of Raleigh. While patronizing a local grocery store owned by Robert Teel, Marrow allegedly propositioned Teel’s teenage daughter-in-law. Larry Teel, the woman’s husband, confronted Marrow and assaulted him with a wooden plank. In defense, Marrow threw gravel to ward off the blows and then drew a knife. Meanwhile, Robert Teel and his stepson, Roger Oakley, grabbed guns and the three men shot Marrow as he tried to flee. As he lay on the ground bleeding and onlookers ran for cover, the three men beat Marrow with the butts of their rifles and shot him in the head.³⁴ It was Emmett Till redux, except that Marrow was a husband, father, and veteran of the U.S. Army, and this was the era of desegregation and Vietnam. In response to Marrow’s cold-blooded killing, black residents, many of whom were Vietnam veterans, rose up in rebellion and burned several white-owned businesses. Protests were held throughout the state. The Teels pleaded self-defense, claiming that the knife-wielding Marrow threatened their lives. As much as Thelonious and Nellie watched television, it is likely they knew about the tragedy in Oxford. They returned to New York before an all-white jury acquitted Marrow’s accused killers.³⁵

While they never filled the club, Williams remembered, “the crowd was always receptive. We played a couple of matinees and there were even some children who came to hear us. Monk really got a kick out of this.”³⁸ Not everyone was so enthusiastic. Local music critic Bill Morrison found the group formulaic, rigid, and disconnected from the audience. He wasn’t impressed with Jeffrey, whom he criticized for playing “a flat horn intentionally” as a way to mirror Monk’s piano. In fact, he suggested that the band stifled the pianist. “The combo’s formula approach must inevitably restrict the star. Yet it was he we came to hear. And most frustrating were those flashes of solo piano that indicated if Monk were left alone with his keyboard, he might well produce music that could mesmerize.”³⁹

Never one to pay attention to reviews, Monk was pleased with his band and satisfied with Jeffrey’s playing. Besides his work ethic and openness to new ideas, both Nellie and Monk appreciated Jeffrey’s personality. Throughout the gig, he constantly tried to reach out to Monk, strike up a conversation, engage the man. “During intermission, Wilbur went one way, Leroy went the other way. So, I said, ‘Doesn’t anybody say anything to Monk?’ . . . So I eased around there and said to Monk, ‘You want a drink?’ He replied, ‘I don’t drink.’ I said, well, shit, I struck out there. Then he said, ‘Maybe some orange juice.’ And I knocked everybody over trying to get to that bar to get him this orange juice.” It worked. Monk slowly opened up, talking about what was playing on the juke box and informing Jeffrey that he “invented the jazz waltz” when he recorded “Carolina Moon.” Over time, Monk learned about Jeffrey—how he was born in Harlem but grew up on one of Father Divine’s Peace Mission farms upstate, listened to classical music as a kid, and studied clarinet all through his matriculation at Ithaca College. He talked about knowing the late Scott LaFaro, the bass player Monk had adored, when they were both young clarinetists in the Ithaca College orchestra. And he hipped Monk to places he’d been and the people he’d played with, from blues singers Wynonie Harris, Big Maybelle, and B.B. King, to Illinois Jacquet and Monk’s old friend Sadik Hakim.40

Unfortunately, the trip ended on a sour note. When it was time to settle accounts, according to Nellie, Peter Ingram came up short. According to the contract, the band was supposed to receive $3,000 for the eight-day gig, minus Whittemore’s ten-percent commission.⁴¹ I don’t know if Ingram simply didn’t have the full $2,700 in cash to pay Monk, or if Nellie expected the entire $3,000 and believed Ingram was responsible for the commission, but all parties left on bad terms.⁴² The next day, as protesters converged in Raleigh following a four-day, forty-one-mile march from Oxford led by Henry Marrow’s pregnant widow, Willie Mae Marrow, Thelonious Monk left his birth-place for the last time.⁴³

Back home, Monk had to hustle for work. Besides a short gig at the Vanguard the last week of May, the quartet played a concert in Chinatown in June, where they were the odd group alongside performances by the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, the Taiwan Aborigine Dance Group, and the Lotus Sisters.⁴⁴ Monk’s only other appearance that summer was a benefit organized by composer and activist Cal Massey on behalf of Harlem’s St. Nicholas Park Renewal Corporation.⁴⁵ Monk rehired Pat Patrick on all of these dates, while Paul Jeffrey temporarily replaced Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis in Count Basie’s band. But with so little work, Patrick had no choice but to quit the band. Once again, financial woes dogged Monk. He owed Columbia three LPs, but he had not made a single studio recording in almost two years, and Teo Macero was too busy producing other artists to record Monk live.⁴⁶ His contract was not up until September 1973, but as long as his lack of productivity was “due to Monk’s illness or refusal to work,” Columbia could drop him from the label without being vulnerable to breach of contract and Monk’s claim to the $18,000 advance he would have earned for three albums.⁴⁷ Teo Macero begged corporate to keep him. He explained that illness kept Monk out of the studio, and he reminded his boss that, “Miles Davis didn’t do anything really spectacular for three years and then came up with BITCHES BREW.”⁴⁸ Macero’s pleas were ignored. By the end of the year, Columbia quietly released Thelonious Monk from his contract. Their last release was Thelonious Monk’s Greatest Hits in 1969. With Monk now declared a financial liability, the ad promoting the LP read as bitterly ironic: “If you dig the cat in the hat, you probably look upon all Monk music as great, because it’s Monk and nobody comes close.”⁴⁹

Meanwhile, Monk and Nellie struggled to reconstruct his band. George Wein booked the quartet for a Japanese tour in October featuring Woody Herman’s big band, Carmen McRae, and Baden Powell,⁵⁰ but because Japan imposed tighter guidelines barring convicted felons from obtaining visas, Wilbur Ware could not make the trip. Leroy Williams could have gone, but Nellie “told us, ‘You can’t have anything on your record if you want to go.’ Well, I had a few traffic tickets so I thought they wouldn’t let me in. Only later I found out that the rule only applied to felonies.”⁵¹ George Wein loaned Monk the rhythm section he had been using for the Newport Jazz Festival All-Stars—bassist Larry Ridley and drummer Lenny McBrowne.⁵²

Much of the “rehearsal” time was spent walking around the old neighborhood, hanging out at Pat’s Bar and greeting old friends on the street. Monk used the time to get to know his new protégé and train him in the art of musicianship. Among other things, he told Jeffrey, “You got to be clean [well-dressed] to work with me” and “you got to read music.” With nineteen years separating the two men, Monk often treated Jeffrey in a fatherly manner. “He had the biggest heart, you know,” Jeffrey recalled. “I was going over there just about every day and sometimes spent the night. He wanted to make sure I ate so he would take me to this Chinese restaurant in his neighborhood. . . . Even if I wasn’t hungry he’d insist I eat. He’d say, ‘Well, you’re working, you’re playing.’ So I guess he remembered times when musicians didn’t have nothing. But he would always do that. He’d say, ‘Let’s stop and get something to eat.’ So the compassion that he had was like nobody I ever worked for.”⁵⁴

The band opened at Tokyo’s Sankei Hall on October 1, and their performance was broadcast on Japanese television. “I think we only had a couple of rehearsals at Nica’s before we left,” Larry Ridley recalled, “so Lenny and I figured stuff out on the bandstand. Paul Jeffrey had some lead sheets and that was helpful, but I learned most of the tunes from hearing them and opening up my ears.”⁵⁵ For the next two weeks, they traveled around the big island to cities Monk had played before—Sendai in the north, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Kyoto in the south.⁵⁶ But at least half of their concerts were held in Tokyo to sold-out, enthusiastic audiences. George Wein arranged for Monk to sit in with the New Herd, a Japanese big band known for its Dizzy Gillespie–style arrangements led by veteran clarinetist Toshiyuki Miyama.⁵⁷ Monk was open to collaborating, but the plan was almost derailed when Miyama sent over a young woman to “help” Thelonious with the score. He was insulted. “You think I can’t read?” he asked her flatly before telling her to leave.⁵⁸

Monk’s spirits were high during the entire two-week tour. He and Nellie caught up with Japanese acquaintances, including Reiko Hoshino, who left her Kyoto jazz café to accompany Monk and Nellie on the tour. Larry Ridley had especially fond memories of the trip because Thelonious, whom he first met in 1958, had really opened up to him. He came away with an impression that belied the myths and media-generated stereotypes. “Thelonious was very astute about his music and contrary to that attempt to portray him as some people did as being weird or whatever, he was a very bright, brilliant person. . . . Like a lot of the older guys, he wasn’t into playing a lot of notes or, even in conversation, using a lot of words. I remember telling Thelonious how I was sick of whites calling us ‘boys’ and stuff like that. He said, ‘Ain’t no drag, Larry, ’cause everybody wants to be young.’ I said, hmm. Case closed. I mean, that was diametrically opposed to what I was even thinking about it. We were right in the Civil Rights period and we were very sensitive about what we were being called. And Thelonious just gave me a different way to think about it.”⁶¹

The group left Japan for San Francisco on October 14 and opened the following night at the Jazz Workshop for what was to be a two-week engagement. Ridley couldn’t make the gig, so Jules Colomby hired Los Angeles bassist Pat “Putter” Smith, a twenty-nine-year-old native Californian who was better known as the baby brother of Carson Smith, the bassist who backed Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker’s pianoless quartet.⁶² The younger Smith had studied composition at Whittier College and he was known for having transcribed some of Monk’s music. Smith was told, “there would be no rehearsal and there’s ‘no book’ [set list of tunes]. I flew in and I got a pad at the Gates Hotel, which is in the Tenderloin district, very low area. I mean, the gig didn’t pay much, you know, a couple hundred, I think, a week.”⁶³ Smith had been making pretty good money as a studio musician backing popular artists like Cher and Johnny Mathis, but he never complained—a chance to work with Monk was priceless. Monk appreciated his playing and the two men got along famously, occasionally shooting pool between sets. “He didn’t talk much at all. He had a tremendous sense of humor, but he gave off the sweetest, sweetest vibe, like a fountain of sweetness. But he was tremendously funny.”⁶⁴ Smith remembered one night when Monk got up to dance for an entire tune—a rare spectacle during this period—and a woman near the stage shouted, “Monk, I paid good money to see you.” Monk simply replied, “Are you blind?”⁶⁵ Overall, Monk seemed to be in a good mood. His old friend, critic Russ Wilson, showed up opening night and was impressed with the group. He praised Monk and all of his sidemen, characterizing the band as “a most felicitous meld.”66

Then on Saturday, the 24th, Monk suffered a severe manic episode. Paul Jeffrey had never seen anything like it. “I had to check out of my room,” he recalled, “and stay with them in their suite so I could walk with Monk because he’d stay up all night walking the street. He never went to bed. He would pace in the hotel lobby and kick over those sand-filled ashtrays. He was wreaking havoc and scaring people. . . . There was this old guy cleaning the pool. Monk went up behind him. The guy didn’t see Monk until he was like five feet from him. The guy dropped that thing and made tracks, and Monk picked up net and started cleaning the pool.”⁶⁷

The hotel management called the police. Monk wasn’t charged, but he was placed in a psychiatric ward for a couple of days. Jeffrey and Nellie remained with him the whole time—in fact, police permitted Jeffrey to stay in the “cell” with Monk until he was transferred to Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital in San Francisco.⁶⁸ Fortunately, Langley Porter happened to have two African-American musicians on staff, a social worker named George Johnson who played piano and a newly minted M.D. named Eddie Henderson. Dr. Henderson was known in the jazz world as one of the rising young trumpeters in the Bay Area. He had just recorded with Herbie Hancock and begun juggling a career as a professional musician and full-time psychiatrist.⁶⁹ Henderson had not been on staff long when they admitted Monk. “No one knew who he was. I said, ‘Wow, that’s Monk!’ . . . Nellie brought him in because he was more or less kind of catatonic. . . . He spoke in monosyllables, very abstract. The first thing I’m supposed to ask him, ‘Why are you here?’ That’s the traditional thing that a resident says. So he shows me his MONK ring, turned it upside down, and it looked like K-n-o-w. He said, ‘Monk, Know.’ I knew what he meant but they had no idea of what he was talking about.”⁷⁰

The next morning, Henderson found one of his colleagues trying to engage Monk using the standard Rorschach or inkblot test. He wouldn’t answer. When she tried the Thematic Apperception Test—a series of ambiguous pictures meant to prompt the subject to tell a story about what she or he sees—the situation went from bad to worse. Henderson recounts what happened: “She showed him a picture of a little boy sitting, grimacing, while his mother and father stand over him. He’s like grimacing playing a violin, and the parents are saying, ‘Well you better practice,’ you know. So Monk looked at me and winked and said, ‘Is this motherfucker crazy? I don’t see nothing. It’s just a picture.’ So I fell out laughing. The psychologist kept insisting that he try to interpret the picture. So Monk finally said, deadpan serious, ‘Okay, the little boy is really drugged.’ ‘Well, why, Mr. Monk?’ the psychologist asked. Now I’m thinking, ‘Oh no.’ Monk replies with no expression whatsoever: ‘Because his mother won’t give him no more pussy.’ The psychologist dropped the clipboard and that was the end of that interview.⁷¹

Nellie panicked. No one could tell her when her husband might be released, so she made plans to stay. Besides, given the flood of complaints from management and neighbors regarding the noise and Monk’s erratic behavior, she had had her fill of Lincoln Towers. She called her sister Skippy, who was now living in the Phipps Houses on West 64th Street, and asked her to move their entire household. It was a daunting task, but with her niece Jackie’s help they packed up the Lincoln Towers apartment and found a Brooklyn moving company to put all of their things in storage.⁷⁴ In the meantime, Boo Boo joined Nellie in California to help care for her father and with the expectation that the Monks were permanently relocating to the West Coast. Less than a year out of high school, Boo Boo had begun to pursue a career in dance, having worked with the Chuck Davis Ethnic Dance Troupe and studied with dancer/choreographer Nina Garland at the Eubie Blake Theatrical Workshop.⁷⁵ She hoped California might offer some performance opportunities.

Meanwhile, Eddie Henderson and George Johnson looked after Monk and did what they could to shorten his stay at Langley. When Monk began playing the piano in the dayroom and dancing around in the hallway, “the staff thought he’d gone mad. They were ready to put him in Napa State Hospital for the mentally insane, but we told them, ‘No, he’s back to normal now. He’s cool now.’” By early December, Henderson convinced the hospital to allow Monk out to play a week-long gig at the Both/And Club in San Francisco. Henderson agreed to chaperone him every night. Paul Jeffrey hired two prominent locals, drummer Clarence Becton and bassist James Leary. The first couple of nights were rough. Henderson wasn’t the most aggressive chaperone: “I told him, ‘No drugs, no alcohol,’ but he just disregarded me and got a triple Jack Daniels on top of the 2,500 mg of Thorazine. . . . He just went up and played and pushed the piano keys down far enough not to make a sound. The band was really drugged, you know. You couldn’t hear anything he was playing. He was making motions like he was playing and then he comes off [the bandstand] like he jumped in a pool, soaking wet. When I took him back to the hospital, he said, ‘That was a good set, huh, doc?’”⁷⁶

Nellie begged to differ, though for different reasons. She disliked Leary and reprimanded Jeffrey for hiring him. A couple of days later, she replaced Leary with Rafael Garrett.⁷⁷ Monk eventually found his bearings and midway through the run he began to sound like his old self. Critic Sammy Mitchell praised the music, but noticed the obvious effects of his illness. Monk was gaunt and “seemed introspectively deep in a nirvanic cocoon, occasionally emerging with a message sometimes cryptic but worth waiting for.”78 But he was well enough to be released and happy to be playing again. Despite being “off-form,” Mitchell thought Monk “pulled a goodly quota of wily quips, subtle pokes and puns throughout the sets, pulling the tails of chords and putting a rueful grimace on runs. Shadowy at times, Monk was still substantial listening.”⁷⁹

Soon after closing the Both/And club, Monk, Nellie, and Boo Boo took off for Los Angeles, where Thelonious began a three-week engagement at the Manne-Hole four days after Christmas. Monk called back Putter Smith on bass and trusted Shelly Manne to find a drummer. Manne suggested eighteen-year-old Leon Ndugu Chancler for the coveted spot. “When I was sixteen, I used to stand in the alley outside the Manne-Hole to hear the music since I didn’t have any money. Shelly would see me out there and let me in for the last set. Eventually, he let me sit in. My first paying gig there was with Gerald Wilson, whom I’d met when he was brought to Locke High School to conduct our band. When I got the job I was only a week out of school.” Chancler also developed his chops as a member of Young Soul, an after-school program that trained black youth in the performing arts. In no time, he was gigging with Hugh Masekela, Willie Bobo, and sitting in with the likes of Donald Byrd and Herbie Hancock.⁸⁰

Ndugu met Monk on the bandstand on opening night before a packed house—no rehearsal and no words from the leader. And yet, the young drummer felt comfortable. “Paul Jeffrey just told me to listen and follow Monk and that’s what I did. I knew some of Monk’s music from records. In fact, I had just joined the Columbia Record Club a few weeks before and gotten Monk’s Dream so I was listening to that. So we weren’t going beyond the things I already knew.”⁸¹ Leonard Feather was pleased to see Monk back on the scene and liked the band, though he found the drummer “occasionally a mite too intrusive.” He parsed his words carefully, suggesting that while a new generation of jazz fans will find Monk’s style “irresistible in its unorthodoxy,” for veterans like himself “it will all have the air of déjà entendu.”⁸² Feather’s bout of nostalgia for the good old days seemed to be wearing off.

While most of the audience followed Monk’s every move, at least one patron was digging the hulking, bespectacled white guy hunched over the bass. “He was sort of looking at me from the audience in a way I would come to recognize,” Putter Smith remembered. “He came up and asked me where the bathroom was, but he never introduced himself.”⁸³ The patron turned out to be Guy Hamilton, director of the film Goldfinger. Three months later, Smith got a call from Universal Studios to read for the part of the notorious and quirky Mr. Charles Kidd, part of a duo of assassins in his latest James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever. Smith got the gig but kept his night job. Monk, who had watched at least two of his sidemen (Frankie Dunlop and Charlie Rouse) pursue failed acting careers, couldn’t help but be amused by Smith’s good luck. Here was a soft-spoken, fairly conventional-looking white guy, with no desire to become an actor, landing a significant role in a huge Hollywood motion picture. Besides bit parts in a couple of movies and a television series, Smith’s acting career suffered the same fate as Mr. Kidd—it went down in flames.⁸⁴

Returning to New York wasn’t part of the plan, but Monk insisted. Fortunately, Nellie had not given up their place in Lincoln Towers after all, but Thelonious was shocked to walk into a virtually empty apartment. Paul Jeffrey witnessed what happened. “Monk kept asking, ‘Where’s my furniture?’ and no one would answer. I remember one day we went down to Rouse’s place—because Rouse lived underneath Monk, a couple of flights down. And Monk went into Rouse’s house, knocked on the door, and Sandra opened the door. Monk went all through the house looking for his furniture. He was upset.”⁸⁶ Nellie knew they eventually had to leave Lincoln Towers, so she kept most of their belongings in storage or at Skippy’s place. Besides their bed, some cots, and Monk’s piano, the apartment stayed bare for nearly a year.

Even before the Monks left California, Jules Colomby tried to resurrect Columbia’s aborted collaboration between Monk and Blood, Sweat and Tears. He booked three nights at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall (March 1–3) for the quartet to open for, and ultimately perform with, BS&T, to be followed by a four-city tour featuring both bands. Columbia planned to record the concert and prepared to deduct $5,258 from Monk’s advance to cover the production costs (he was still under contract), but the deal was never consummated. I suspect that Monk was happy to share the marquee with BS&T but had no interest in performing with them.⁸⁷ Still, the show went on. Monk kept Paul Jeffrey and hired his old friends, Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe Jones. Bobby Colomby, BS&T’s drummer, was beside himself. “I worshipped Philly Joe. When I saw him come into the hall during the sound check, I began playing some of his solos verbatim, but I don’t acknowledge that he’s there. I play about five of his solos from different recordings. . . . And each time he gets more upright and smiles and goes back to what he was doing. Finally at the very end I play one of his long solos, put the sticks down and say, ‘All right, we’ll all be here at seven o’clock. Okay? Let’s get some rest.’ And I walk past him and nonchalantly ask, ‘Are you Philly Joe Jones?’ He says, ‘Uh-huh.’ And then I say, ‘Where did you cop all my licks?’ He grabbed me and we hugged, and that night I never played so well in my life. I was walking on air. . . . The guys in the band were looking at me like, ‘Wow, what the hell’s up with you.’ I could do anything. I could play anything. I was transformed.”88

Bobby Colomby was perhaps the Monk quartet’s most adoring fan during those three nights. While the audience appreciated the three old guys and the not-so-old saxophonist, they came to see BS&T. So did the press; they completely ignored Monk.⁸⁹ The same thing happened at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C.—5,000 fans waited respectfully for Monk’s group to finish their set so that they could sit through the Tears’ ninety-minute show. The reviewer for the Washington Post never mentioned Monk.⁹⁰ Wilbur Ware described the tour as “kind of weird. All these electronic Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Thelonious Monk acoustic quartet.”⁹¹ The tour’s backers agreed, forcing Jules to cancel the remaining concerts—except for Quebec City and Syracuse University, where Monk’s group performed alone.⁹²

As soon as they came off the road in mid-March, Monk fell into a deep depression. He stopped speaking, barely ate, and appeared dazed and confused. He would not see a doctor, so Jeffrey persuaded an old college friend, Dr. Reese Markewich, to pay Monk a visit. A year out of medical school, specializing in psychiatry, Markewich had recently become a resident at Beth Israel Hospital. He also maintained a dual career as professional jazz pianist and flutist who gained some notoriety for organizing a city-wide, all-doctors jazz ensemble.⁹³ His prognosis wasn’t good. He declared Monk catatonic and immediately checked him into Beth Israel for treatment and tests.⁹⁴

Markewich kept him there nearly a month. Consequently, he missed gigs—including a week at the Village Vanguard—and lost precious income. Without Nica’s help, he would not have been able to cover his mounting medical expenses. Family and friends paraded through the psychiatric ward to see Monk, but he remained uncommunicative. Photographer Doug Quackenbush, who dropped by a couple of times, observed: “Nellie would visit him every day and he wouldn’t recognize her.”⁹⁵ He didn’t recognize anyone at first. Dr. Markewich and friends and family tried to vain to get him to play the piano in the day room, but he would not budge. Markewich finally drew him out by organizing a “talent show” for the psych patients. Paul Jeffrey and Toot were there. Jeffrey: “They had one [patient] down there with two or three fingers missing and he played some bullshit on the piano. They figured if Monk saw that, it might inspire him to play. So nobody knew whether Monk was going to go to the piano or not. So this little cat got out there and he did whatever the fuck he was doing, you know. And now it was Monk’s turn. . . . So Monk went out there, sat down at the piano. First he didn’t play anything. He sat there for a minute. And all of a sudden he started playing Rachmaninoff’s ‘Prelude in C-Sharp Minor.’ Fucked everybody up.”⁹⁶

Thelonious was released in late April or early May. Dr. Markewich continued to care for him, making unofficial house calls and getting to know Nellie and the kids. Monk came to trust Markewich (though his distrust of hospitals never waned), but the doctor’s genuine concern did not result in a more accurate diagnosis or treatment for his condition.⁹⁷ He did leave Beth Israel with a renewed desire to play, but in the interim he lost his rhythm section. Philly Joe and Ware formed their own quintet and played wherever they could, though both artists anticipated rejoining Monk when his health improved.98 Nellie wasn’t having it. She argued vociferously for Toot to take over the drum chair. Paul Jeffrey as well as most of the Smith cousins knew Nellie wanted Toot in the band. As Jackie explained, “Aunt Nellie promoted Toot with the same focus and determination that she invested in Thelonious.” But she also mused that Boo Boo may have paid a price for her aunt’s determination. “Boo Boo was very, very gifted. Besides dance, she had a beautiful voice and showed a lot of potential as a pianist. I was giving her [piano] lessons for a minute. . . . She wanted to be the best that she could be. Very likable, very social. She could have been more, but my aunt Nellie wanted to make another Thelonious with Toot, so Boo Boo was always in the shadow a little bit.”⁹⁹

Toot never wanted to be another Thelonious, but he wanted to be a musician. For the past five years, he had been practicing at home and taking little duo and trio dates with pianist Ran Blake—mostly house parties and university gigs.¹⁰⁰ Now at twenty-one, he was anxious for more serious challenges. Whether it was Nellie’s admonitions, or the fact that Thelonious was home from the hospital and could hear what Toot was up to, or both, the elder Monk finally came around. “One day in May, my father just walked through the house and passed me sitting in his chair watching TV. He walked by and said ‘You ready to play?’ I started to look at him and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he kept on walking. Two or three days later, we were on national television, and that’s how it began. I mean, it was trial by fire.”¹⁰¹ The show was Soul!, an hour-long black arts and affairs program produced by the legendary Ellis Haizlip. Soul! enjoyed a national following and featured a wide range of performing artists, poets, and political figures.¹⁰² Monk’s quartet was slated to appear on a special show celebrating Malcolm X’s birthday. Fortunately for Toot, the show wasn’t live; it was taped on May 19 to be aired the next day.¹⁰³ Larry Ridley, the bassist on the date, remembered: “Toot was scared as hell. Naturally. I mean, to jump up in there and to be on the bandstand playing his father’s music and playing with guys who were more established professionally.”¹⁰⁴ Jackie Smith was there, too, though she thought everyone was a bit on edge. “Toot was nervous and Monk was fussing with Paul because he didn’t come in at the right time. So Thelonious burst out, ‘What do I have to do? Play myself to death?’”¹⁰⁵ Toot felt the strain as well, but not when he first arrived. On the contrary, he strolled into the WNET studios cocksure and confident. And then his dad threw him a curve. “Now keep in mind, I’ve been practicing in the same house with the man for five years, working on ‘Evidence’ and ‘Rhythm-a-ning’ and everything. So I’m ready to wail. I know we’re going to hit something and swing to death. What does he do? Call ‘Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-lues-Are,’ a slow blues I’m supposed to play with sticks, not brushes. So here I had geared myself for ‘X’ and he dropped ‘Y’ on me. I had to shift gears. Right then and there I realized, he wasn’t jivin’.”¹⁰⁶

Fortunately, Monk had nearly a month off before playing a week at the Vanguard in June and a week at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., in August.¹¹⁰ Toot, whose style drew heavily from the polyrhythmic approach of Elvin Jones, played passionately, forcefully, and loudly. Like many young drummers he sometimes pushed the tempo, but his raw abilities were impressive. And what he lacked in experience he made up for in confidence. Still, Monk took him down a notch by refusing to grant him solos during the first couple of months. (By contrast, Larry Ridley was allowed to take lengthy solos.) Paul Jeffrey had the unenviable task of reining Toot in. “Monk told me not to give him any solos. So here I am on the bandstand, and when Monk finishes I got to come right in. Boo Boo got mad and would ask Monk why Toot didn’t get any solos. But Monk had said that, because at that time he was still growing.”¹¹¹ In retrospect, Toot realized that his father was right and he still had a lot to learn. Thelonious didn’t mind mistakes, but he held his sidemen accountable for careless or thoughtless mistakes. Toot found out the hard way during his first engagement at the Vanguard: “The joint’s packed and somewhere in the tune we’re playing I dropped the ball. I turned the beat around. Now I recovered my butt off, and we continue and we finish, and it’s Monk so everyone is cheering, saying yea, yea, yea. So we go off the bandstand and we’re standing in the kitchen area and there’s a whole lot of people. I’m standing against the wall in the Vanguard, these white folks are telling me I’m the greatest thing since roast beef and I’m sucking it up. All of a sudden, I feel this presence. It was my dad, and he leaned down in my ear, while I’m at the height of my ecstasy and he says, ‘Stop fucking up the time, motherfucker.’ And then he eased on away. The lesson was honesty. I hadn’t said to him, when we finished, ‘I’m sorry. I screwed up.’ I tried to act like it didn’t happen, or worse, because we had been so accepted, it didn’t matter, which was the wrong attitude. From that day forward, accountability was serious.”¹¹²

Me to Sr.: Do you think much about religion now?

Monk, Sr.: At all times. You just know everybody goes for religion.

Me to Sr.: How do you feel about Jesus Christ Superstar?

Monk, Sr.: It’s a gimmick.

Monk, Jr.: It’s gone too far for just a gimmick. I think it’s healthy. The kids do not accept just anything. This is just another fight of the young.

Me to Sr.: How do you feel about that?

Monk, Sr.: No comment.

Monk, Jr.: The people who are running the church are saying one thing and doing another. Why, the Catholic Church can pay off the national debt.

Monk, Sr.: How do you know? Have you seen their books?

Monk, Jr.: The Catholic Church owns everything inside the Catholic churches and all kinds of property.

Monk, Sr.: This is a Catholic country, you know.

Monk, Jr.: I can’t help that. Look at Harlem. The church isn’t helping the people. They throw people out. This is not an opinion, Dad, this a fact.

Monk, Sr.: Well, I’m not a preacher.¹¹⁴

The quartet broke up temporarily in September so that Monk could go on a world tour with the Giants of Jazz, a kind of bebop revival group put together by George Wein. He wanted to resurrect his 1967 “Bebop All-Stars” idea but rather than limit the group to one performance he wanted to create a real band. Monk and Dizzy were always at the top of his list, as were Sonny Rollins, J. J. Johnson, Ray Brown, and Max Roach. The last four opted out due to scheduling or financial reasons, so Wein recruited alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt, trombonist Kai Winding, Al McKibbon, and Art Blakey. In theory, there was to be no leader, everyone agreed to travel coach, and each member received a share of income from films or future recordings.116 Monk was never enthusiastic about the group or the tour, but he needed money badly. What Monk’s quartet could demand had not increased in years; he still drew between $2,000 and $2,500 a week for club engagements—minus his booking agent’s 10 percent commission.¹¹⁷ The two-month tour began in Australia, continued on to Japan and Israel, and hit all corners of Europe, ending in London on November 14.¹¹⁸ The schedule was grueling; they performed in over thirty venues, sometimes giving two concerts a night. Paul Jeffrey counseled against Monk doing the tour. “He was very sick. He lost weight and his clothes didn’t fit him. Then Nellie had him on the juices and the Baroness would come over every day and give him junk food, trying to get him to eat.”¹¹⁹ George Wein was well aware of Monk’s condition, so he brought pianist Jaki Byard along as a possible backup.¹²⁰

The Giants enjoyed enthusiastic crowds, generally positive reviews, and a relatively problem-free tour.¹²¹ But even George Wein, the group’s greatest champion, did not think the Giants of Jazz “cohered as a unit.”¹²² The initial Australian performances were a little rough but they retained some of the electricity of a classic jam session. But over time, especially once they hit Europe, spontaneity gave way to routine. They usually opened with a medium to uptempo blues such as Gillespie’s “Blue ’n’ Boogie” and/or “Wee” (aka “Allen’s Alley”) penned by Monk’s old friend, the late Denzil Best. This was usually followed by “ ’Round Midnight” featuring Monk and Dizzy, Gillespie’s “Tour de Force,” a lovely rendition of “Everything Happens to Me” featuring Sonny Stitt, “Loverman” featuring trombonist Kai Winding, followed by three more Gillespie tunes: a rapid-fire “Woody ’n’ You,” a lengthy bass/trumpet duo on “Tin Tin Deo,” and for the finale, “A Night in Tunisia” showcasing Art Blakey.¹²³ Because they often played two shows a night, the repertoire ran a little deeper, but not much. For all intents and purposes, the Giants of Jazz evolved into the Dizzy Gillespie show. His tunes and musical conception dominated, and he became the unofficial emcee. Dizzy would later say that the role of leader in a band of leaders was thrust upon him. He did not want it and did not believe it was “good for any length of time because you fall into a groove where everybody looks at me in the band and says, ‘What are we gonna play?’ . . . I don’t want to act like I want to be the leader of them, although all of them at one time or another have worked for me.”¹²⁴

The truth is, Monk did not look well. He was thinner than usual and constantly wore a vacant expression; the wispy white tuft of hair on his chin and balding head—he now performed hatless—made him look quite a bit older.¹²⁹ He and Nellie rarely left the hotel room and he practically lived in bed. According to McKibbon, “in Tokyo we were having suits made, because they do it so fast and all that. Monk had his measured lying in bed. He wouldn’t get up for them.”¹³⁰ But as soon as he hit the stage, he surpassed all expectations. Jaki Byard began to wonder why he was there. “In Perth, Monk sounded so . . . oh Jesus. I never heard anybody play so well. And everybody was saying, ‘What’s, what’s happening with Monk?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, what’s happening? He’s playing his ass off! He’s playing, he’s sounding beautiful!’”¹³¹ His solos were lyrical and vibrant, even on “Woody ’n’ You,” which the band played at breakneck speed—tempos Monk never liked. Even when he wasn’t soloing, he revealed flashes of brilliance. Reminiscent of Minton’s, Monk opened “Everything Happens to Me” with one of his jarring signature introductions before providing Sonny Stitt’s nimble alto lines with startling harmonic and rhythmic support. Many critics agreed that Monk often stole the show. Dick Hughes, who reviewed the Sydney performance, ranked the Giants of Jazz concert among “the greatest experiences I’ve had in thirty years of listening to jazz,” and Monk’s solo on “ ’Round Midnight” “the most impressive single contribution of the whole series—an inspired testimony to his genius.”¹³² The Paris concert prompted critic Alain Gerber to write, “To call Monk a genius that night is the least one could say. His improvisation of ‘ ’Round About Midnight’ in the first concert was magnificent. I doubt he has ever played better in his life.”¹³³ And Randi Hultin, who caught the Giants in Berlin, concurred, identifying “ ’Round Midnight” as one of the evening’s “highlights.” “Monk,” she observed, “from the first touch on the piano, was strong and in a good mood.”¹³⁴ Strong indeed. Monk’s Berlin performance is arguably the best on record with the Giants of Jazz. Blakey and Monk are on fire; the dynamism between them is reminiscent of 1947, as is Monk’s playing, which is inventive and animated.¹³⁵

Following their final concert at London’s Victoria Theater on November 14, British producer Alan Bates invited Monk to Chappell Studios in London to record a few sides for his Black Lion label. Since Monk had an extra day to spare (the band was not scheduled to leave until the 16th), he agreed and recruited Blakey and McKibbon to assist. Blakey remembered Monk being less than enthusiastic: “He just did it because they asked him to and I did it because I’d do anything they’d ask me to do with Monk.”¹³⁹ Nevertheless, the impromptu session was extraordinary for several reasons. It was Monk’s first studio date in three years, and it would prove to be his last as a leader. It also turned out to be his most productive session ever: In six hours, he recorded twenty different songs in thirty takes. Finally, the Black Lion session served as a personal and historical accounting. It was the old man’s way of coming to terms with his oeuvre, taking stock of the past as he reflects on his musical legacy. After two long months of playing mainly Gillespie’s repertoire and repeating the same show night after night, Thelonious was anxious to return to his own music. The atmosphere was fairly relaxed and he was surrounded by a small crowd of well-wishers, including his old friend the Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren.¹⁴⁰ Nellie and Thelonious had not seen Guy in over a decade, so the session provided a lovely reunion.

The first half of the session Monk played unaccompanied, opening with a haunting, nine-and-a-half-minute, improvised warm-up subsequently titled “Chordially.” He followed with three takes of “Trinkle Tinkle,” transforming the finger-twisting melody that John Coltrane ultimately mastered into a stride piece worthy of James P. Johnson. After the first take, however, Bates and everyone else in the control room kept hearing mysterious clicking and scratching noises. Nellie figured out that Monk’s unmanicured nails were hitting the wooden cover behind the keys. So she borrowed a file from Al McKibbon’s female companion and went to work on Monk’s fingernails. By the next take, the clicking had stopped.¹⁴¹

When Monk brought the rhythm section in for the second half of the session, things got interesting and tensions rose slightly. By this time everyone had an opinion about what Monk should play. Nellie asked for “Introspection” and proceeded to sing “part of the tune by way of encouragement,” at which point McKibbon resisted: “There’s a lot of changes in that goddamn thing, and I don’t know them.”¹⁴³ As an alternative, McKibbon wanted to play “Crepuscule with Nellie” but didn’t know the changes. When he asked for some help, Monk just signified on him: “You played wrong notes up on the stage, you can play wrong notes with me!”¹⁴⁴ And he did. Four takes of “Crepuscule” (one unaccompanied) reveal McKibbon, barely audible, searching for the chords. It wasn’t the only time; he can be heard struggling on several tunes—“Evidence,” “Hackensack,” “Criss Cross,” and, yes, “Introspection.” McKibbon found none of this amusing. “We went in the studio and there we are, what are we going to play next? No sound from Monk, nothing. They said, ‘Okay, here we go. Watch the light. Okay, you’re on.’ And he started to play something and I just had to follow along. . . . So I told him, ‘You know, what’s going to happen now, we’re going to play and I’m not going to play my best and when the critique comes out they’re going to say, “It would’ve been a better recording had the bass player known the tunes.” ’ ”¹⁴⁵ Blakey knew the tunes, however, and he lit a fire under Monk. The rhythm kicked him into high gear and he played remarkably, particularly on “Nutty” and “Ruby, My Dear.” Here the trio delivers near-flawless performances.¹⁴⁶

The six-hour session was marred by one incident involving Bates and Guy Warren. “I asked His Grace, ‘Why not play “Thelonious”?,’ ” Warren later recalled. “That’s simple enough. So McKibbon says, ‘No, it’s not simple. The chord changes are not that simple!’ So I said, at the head play no chords. So Alan Bates says to me, ‘Why don’t you shut up?’” Those were fighting words as far as Warren was concerned, but he stayed cool. “After the recording was over I said, ‘Alan Bates, can I say something now you motherfucker. . . . I don’t work for His Grace. I came here because he invited me to come. I’m his guest. And I don’t work for you. Who the fuck are you?’ So I tore him up.”¹⁴⁷

Monk took six days off after coming home and then began a two-week engagement at the Vanguard with the quartet—Toot, Paul Jeffrey, and now Al McKibbon. On December 9, the Giants of Jazz reunited to play a benefit concert at Boston Gardens to save the Newport Jazz Festival. The previous summer disgruntled white youths had rioted, destroying the fairgrounds and bringing the festival to a screeching halt. Wein lost a fortune and vowed to move the festival to New York City.¹⁴⁸ The fundraiser drew a crowd of 7,000 and many prominent names, from Dave Brubeck to Aretha Franklin. Fans of the Giants got a wonderful surprise when Charles Mingus came out in place of Al McKibbon.¹⁴⁹

A few days later, Thelonious reverted into a catatonic state and had to be hospitalized again.

28

“What Do I Have to Do? Play Myself to Death?”