Thelonious Monk: the Gentle Revolutionary

A Four Point Analysis

Modern Jazz: Bebop and Beyond // 2432QCM

Where’s jazz going? I don’t know. Maybe it’s going to hell.

You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
Thelonious Monk (1917 - 1982)

The music of Thelonious Sphere Monk is joyful, swinging and utterly original.
His utterly original style and eccentric personality inspired generations of
musicians, and his early 1940s tenure as the house pianist for Monday night jam
sessions at Minton’s Playhouse provided fertile ground for the germination of
bebop. The exploration of his upbringing and the socio-political state of New
York City during his life will provide context for a discussion about his unique
musical style, how it influenced the world of jazz musicians during his life, and
his legacy as a musical revolutionary.

Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on the 10th of October, 1917 in Rocky
Mount, North Carolina. His musical education began at an early age, trying out
trumpet and violin before finding joy in listening to his sister’s piano lessons and
teaching himself to play by ear at the age of 12. His father was an avid swing
pianist, possibly inspiring Monk’s clear love of the genre. He was five years old
when his family moved to New York City, where his natural intelligence and
musical talent caused him to flourish as a musician (Gourse, 1997). He spent his
early teens touring as a church organist with a popular evangelist, seeding the
rich, rhythmic, gospel roots so evident in his large body of composition. In his
later teens, he formed a jazz trio with musicians Morris Simpson (drumset) and
a saxophone player remembered only as ‘Dukey’- they played at seemingly any
club that would take them (Keepnews, 1989, p. 21). Monk’s name started to
spread around the time of World War II, a time of collective, communal struggle
for the inhabitants of New York City; seemingly brought together and driven

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apart by unrelenting chaos. Unemployment rates were at 14.6%, and the first
social security checks were distributed on January 30th 1940 totalling $75,844
US (Sutton & Schwarzman, 2012). The city would regularly shut off the lights
in events called ‘dimouts’ - conserving power and obscuring the city at night,
preventing German air strike. In times like these, Broadway would be illuminated
only by headlights and theatre signs, facilitating spikes in crime and the general
growth of tension, building up to the Harlem race riots of 1943 (Stewart, 2017).
The 7.5 million inhabitants of the bustling city were thrown around in the
political turbulence of the 1940s, mourning the death of President Roosevelt in
April 1945 before rejoicing at Japanese surrender that August (Sutton &
Schwarzman, 2012).

Thelonious Monk seemed to survive New York City’s hopeless struggle

unscathed, living in his mother’s apartment rent free and serving as the house
pianist at the hallowed Minton’s Playhouse jam sessions, where he revolutionized
jazz alongside drummer Kenny Clarke, trumpeter Joe Guy and bassist Nick
Fenton. The Minton’s sessions were established in 1941, quickly growing to
legendary status as a result of free whiskey and meals provided by the
neighboring Apollo Theater, and regulars including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie
Christian, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Max Roach, Clifford
Brown, Bud Powell and Art Blakey (Gourse, 1997, p. 21). A student from
Columbia University named Jerry Newman produced a few budget student
recordings around this time, which have now become available on YouTube.
These are the earliest recordings of Monk’s genius, in which the trademarks of
bebop are heard in their youth - most notably time-centric ride cymbal patterns
and offbeat accents on the bass drum, angular harmonies in the rhythm section
and long, fluid lines in solos (Gourse, 1997, p. 21). Monk’s genius was often
misunderstood, with non-musicians and musicians alike mistaking his playful,
percussive touch and angular harmonies for simple lack of technical facility. The
Newman recordings dispel this offensive misconception - Joe Goldberg writes in
his book Jazz Masters of the Fifties that he “can be heard… blithely making runs
that many writers have assumed for years were beyond his technical grasp”
(Goldberg, 1980). Minton’s was an environment where Monk was fundamentally

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understood, even revered for his incisive musical innovation and honestly
encouraging nature toward guest musicians.

It took until the famed 1956 Five Spot residency for Monk to become a
household name, but his underground, cult-like following of forward thinking
musicians was born in the early 1940s. His singular focus on music was
inspirational to all - in the words of Minton’s curator Teddy Hill,

“I’ve never seen him excited except when he’s playing… he’ll come
in here [Minton’s] anytime and play for hours with only dim light”
- Teddy Hill, 1947 (Gourse, 1997, p. 61).

His passion for originality was so strong that he often supported those of less
experience in his own, tactlessly honest way. He is cited as “my first inspiration”
by Dizzy Gillespie, and legends such as John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins have
been known to attribute their musical success to his mentorship. In this respect,
his modernisation of the jazz idiom extended to the minds of its players - nearly
all have tried (with varying degrees of success) to imitate his unique style. In an
analytical sense, the Monkian sound, aptly referred to as ‘Melodious Thunk’ by
his wife Nellie, was under constant renewal until his Blue Note recordings of
1947, and left vastly unchanged thereafter. In a few clichés, the style consists of
strange harmonic dissonances, rhythmic sensibility and complexity, highly
developmental logic, a percussive touch, judicious use of overtones to imply notes
unplayed and the most elusive element of all: a light sense of humour, with the
power to light a grin on any listener’s face (Solis, 2002, p. 90). His highly notable
influences include Duke Ellington, stride pianist James P. Johnson, Art Tatum
and others, but a crucial element of his unorthodox piano technique was his
unusually small hands. His brother Thomas recalls, in an interview with Peter
Keepnews, that:

“he had the smallest hands for a piano player… he had a friend
named Louis Taylor who played the piano. Louis had big hands,

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 like the finer piano players. My brother used to sort of get
aggravated because he couldn’t stretch like Louis or the others”
- Thomas Monk, from (Keepnews, 1989, p. 62)

His peculiar technique also involved maintaining flat fingers, striking the keys in
the most percussive, childlike way possible – this worked brilliantly in
conjunction with his uncanny sense of time, causing drummers such as his highly
esteemed son to proclaim that “Thelonious was like a magic carpet, man… it was
another rhythmic center coming from him and carrying you, the drummer! It
forced you… to swing the hardest you will have ever swung” (Solis, 2002, p. 90).
Not only do all of his tunes swing with utmost intensity, their melodies are often
rhythmically innovative, best displayed on the hits Rhythm-a-ning, Criss Cross,
Straight No Chaser and Eronel – this makes these seminal tunes rather difficult
to play initially, but incredibly enjoyable once they have been learned.
Developmental logic is a key theme of jazz composition, and none had as deep
an understanding of it as Monk, best displayed in his nine chorus solo on the
first take of Bag’s Groove, recorded with Miles Davis and Milt Jackson in 1954.
Each chorus functions as a brick in the spectacular yet elegant edifice of music
he presents, with a characteristic riff introduced and developed over the 12 bar
form, the following riff typically foreshadowed in the last few bars. Here, the
mastery of Monk’s thematic construction is laid bare: over his nine choruses, he
invokes a call and response chain with two clear climaxes (in the fourth and
eigth) (Solis, 2002, p. 95). In addition to this genius, Monk’s musical playfulness
is one of his greatest strengths. Ben Riley, his drummer from 1964 – 1973
comments on playing Monk’s music:

“This is one of them things that most people don’t collect in what
they’re doing: that humour. See, they do everything else –
notewise and whatnot – but they forget the humour… if you listen
to some of that phrasing you have to laugh, say ‘how did he figure
that out!’ You know? These are the things that you have to bring
to the table: do it your way, but don’t neglect the humour.
- Ben Riley, 1999 from (Solis, 2002, p. 101)

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Playing in a ludic sense without making the music seem trite is very difficult,
proving Monk’s musical sensibility. All of these rather unique factors of Monk’s
playing make his compositions moving and sublime to perform, cementing him
as a jazz revolutionary.

Throughout his lifetime, Monk polarised critics and musicians alike. One
reviewer for the influential publication Down Beat visciously referred to him as
“the pianist who did NOT invent bop… who generally plays bad, though
interesting piano” (Down Deat, 1949, p. 14). In an early article for the same
magazine, George Hoefer wrote in 1948 that “Thelonious Sphere Monk is one of
the most fabulous characters in jazz”, (Hoefer, Hot Box, 1948, p. 11) and in 1965
named him “one of the great innovators of modern jazz” (Hoefer, Hot Box:
Thelonious Monk in the '40s, 1965, pp. 43-44). His highly clever, joyful tune Well
You Needn’t was rated ‘tepid’, with scathing comments as “the whole band plays
like a vibratoless organ under the piano solo” left on the now well established
standard (Down Beat, 1948, p. 19). It’s clear that his artistic isolation was
necessary to prevent becoming resentful and bitter, yet Monk was self aware
enough to state in interviews that his lack of immediate recognition was due to
this reclusiveness, in addition to how hard it was for other musicians to play with
him. His adoration from fellow musicians is outlined in the previous paragraph,
and his influence on the development of jazz is known to have been tremendous
– through his active presence in every corner of New York City’s jazz scene
throughout his life, and his inspirational drive to produce an original body of
work. The cutting remarks left by faceless reviewers seem cruel and baseless in
hindsight, and nearly all jazz musicians today acknowledge Monk’s genius –
regardless of personal enjoyment. In this sense, he had a profound influence on
the music he was so deeply a part of and the culture therein, but not in time.
His widespread fame and success following his residency at the Five Spot in 1956
was not great enough to surmount the nearly 40 years of frustration he’d been
forced through prior. Around ten years after this residency and measure of fame,
his record label (Columbia) dumped him following a drop in record sales.
Exasperated and exhausted, Monk walked away from his career and became a

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recluse, voluntarily jailed in the house of his dear friend, Baroness Kathleen
Rothschild (Gourse, 1997, p. xv). He died there in 1982 of an aneurysim, and his
legacy has only grown since.

He is now taught in all institutions that offer jazz, as his trail-blazing

techniques were instrumental in the development of the genre. Since his death,
the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz has become one of the most prestigious
jazz institutiouns, established by his son in 1986 and achieving global outreach.
From adolescence until death, Monk composed without fail, turning out countless
pieces of music that have since made their way into the standard jazz repertoire,
favoured by musicians for their rhythmic innovation, melodic complexity and
harmonic originality. Any jazz show including renditions of standards is remiss
without a tune by the high priest of bebop, and his name is firmly imprinted in
the history of the genre.

Without Monk, bebop would have taken a vastly different course. He

was the examplar of the Nietzschean ‘übermensch’ – one who can rise above
worldy suffering and adversity, overcoming the restrictions of morality. His battle
of attrition was endless, continuing long after his death, but his unique musical
style now rings in imitation within practice rooms of all the world’s
Conservatoria. It is clear to anyone with an appreciation of jazz how pervasive
and influential he truly was, and he lives on in the continuing celebration of his
work.

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Reference List

Down Beat. (1948, April 21). Reviews. Down Beat, p. 19.

Down Deat. (1949, June 14). Reviews. Down Beat, p. 14.
Goldberg, J. (1980). Jazz Masters of the Fifties. New York City: Da Capo Press.
Gourse, L. (1997). Straight No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk.
New York City: Schirmer Books.
Hoefer, G. (1948, February 11). Hot Box. Down Beat, p. 11.
Hoefer, G. (1965, October 25). Hot Box: Thelonious Monk in the '40s. Down
Beat, pp. 43-44.
Keepnews, P. (1989, August 8). Young Monk. The Village Voice, pp. 18, 20-21.
Solis, G. (2002, Spring). Hearing Monk: History, Memory and the Making of a
"Jazz Giant". The Musical Quarterly, 90, 95, 101.
Stewart, J. (2017, May 4). B&W Photos Give Firsthand Perspective of Daily
Life in 1940s New York. Retrieved from My Modern Met:
https://mymodernmet.com/daily-life-new-york-1940s/
Sutton, P., & Schwarzman, S. (2012, April 2). 1940: What's Going On.
Retrieved from New York Public Library:
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/04/02/nineteen-forty-timeline