Thelonious Monk

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Lore & Background

Thelonious Monk was born on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious (or Thelious) and Barbara Monk. His family moved to Manhattan in 1922. He briefly studied trumpet before switching to piano at age nine, learning stride style from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, and classical piano from Simon Wolf, an Austrian-born pianist and violinist. He attended Stuyvesant High School but did not graduate. Monk put his first band together at 16 and by the early 1940s was house pianist at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where his work was crucial in the formulation of bebop. In 1944, he made his first commercial recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Monk married Nellie Smith in 1947; they had a son, T. S. Monk (called Toot), on December 27, 1949, and a daughter, Barbara (Boo-Boo), on September 5, 1953. In August 1951, police found narcotics in a car occupied by Monk and his friend Bud Powell; Monk refused to testify, and the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card, restricting his ability to perform in venues serving liquor for several years. A coterie of musicians led by Randy Weston introduced Monk to Black-owned bars and clubs in Brooklyn that flouted the law, enabling him to play one-night engagements.

Reader's Guide

Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodies, often using flat ninths, flat fifths, unexpected chromatic notes, low bass notes and stride, and fast whole tone runs. His playing style combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations. He is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time magazine. His composition "'Round Midnight" is widely recognized as the most recorded jazz standard composed by a single artist. Monk's distinctive look included suits, hats, and sunglasses, and he had an idiosyncratic habit during performances of stopping, standing up, and dancing for a few moments before returning to the piano. Despite early commercial indifference—his first Village Vanguard gig in September 1948 drew not a single person—Monk's work was championed by figures such as Lorraine Gordon, who wrote to the editor of PM describing Monk as "a genius living here in the heart of New York, whom nobody knows," and Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who "paid Monk's bills, dragged him to an endless array of doctors, put him and his family up in her own home and, when necessary, helped Nellie institutionalize him." His recordings for Blue Note and Prestige, including collaborations with Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, and Max Roach, are now regarded as significant contributions to jazz.

Did You Know?

• Monk's birth certificate spelled his first name as 'Thelious' and did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts.
• In March 1943, Monk was labeled by an Army psychiatrist as a 'psychiatric reject' and did not serve.
• Monk's first Village Vanguard gig in September 1948 drew not a single person.
• In 1954, Riverside Records bought out Monk's previous Prestige contract for a mere $108.24.
• Monk's composition "'Round Midnight" is widely recognized as the most recorded jazz standard composed by a single artist.