Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk, born October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and died February 17, 1982, was an American jazz pianist and composer. His improvisational style was unlike any other, and he added many pieces to the standard jazz repertoire, such as "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk," "Straight, No Chaser," "Ruby, My Dear," "In Walked Bud," and "Well, You Needn't." By 2009, only Duke Ellington had been recorded more often as a jazz composer.

Monk’s music and improvisations were full of dissonance and angular melodies, often using flat ninths, flat fifths, unexpected chromatic notes, low bass notes and stride, and fast whole tone runs. His playing was highly percussive, with abrupt, dramatic shifts in key releases, silences, and hesitations. He was a leading figure in the rhythm section of modern jazz and a model for accompaniment improvisation. Onstage, he was known for his suits, hats, and sunglasses, and for a peculiar habit: while other musicians kept playing, he would stop, stand up, dance for a few moments, then return to the piano.

Monk is one of only five jazz musicians to appear on the cover of Time magazine, alongside Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Wynton Marsalis. His composition "'Round Midnight" is the most recorded jazz standard by a single artist.

Monk was born to Thelonious (or Thelious) and Barbara Monk. His sister Marion was two years older, and his brother Thomas arrived in January 1920. His birth certificate listed his first name as "Thelious" and omitted his middle name, Sphere, which came from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses on West 63rd Street in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill neighborhood. (Later redevelopment replaced much of the community with the Amsterdam Housing Projects and Lincoln Center, though the Phipps Houses remained.) Monk briefly studied trumpet before switching to piano at age nine. A neighbor, Alberta Simmons, taught him the stride style of Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, and Eubie Blake. His mother also taught him hymns, and he accompanied her singing at church. He attended Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious public school for gifted students, but did not graduate.

For two years, Monk studied classical piano with Simon Wolf, an Austrian-born pianist and violinist who had studied under New York Philharmonic concertmaster Alfred Megerlin. Monk learned pieces by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt, but his favorites were Chopin and Rachmaninoff. The lessons ended when it became clear jazz was his true passion.

At 16, Monk formed his first band, playing at restaurants and schools. At 17, he toured as an organist with an evangelist, and in his late teens he began playing jazz professionally. In the early to mid-1940s, he was the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where much of his style developed during after-hours cutting contests with leading jazz soloists. His work at Minton’s was crucial to the creation of bebop, later advanced by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Monk is believed to be the pianist on recordings Jerry Newman made at the club around 1941. His style then was described as "hard-swinging," with runs in the style of Art Tatum. He cited Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists as influences. According to the documentary *Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser*, Monk lived in the same New York neighborhood as Johnson and knew him as a teenager.

In March 1943, Monk reported for his Army Induction physical but was labeled a "psychiatric reject" and did not serve. Mary Lou Williams, who mentored Monk and his peers, said of the period: "So, the boppers worked out a music that was hard to steal. I'll say this for the 'leeches,' though: they tried. I've seen them in Minton's busily writing on their shirt cuffs or scribbling on the tablecloth. And even our own guys, I'm afraid, did not give Monk the credit he had coming. Why, they even stole his idea of the beret and bop glasses."

In 1944, Monk made his first commercial recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was one of the first established jazz musicians to promote Monk, and Monk later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on a 1957 session with John Coltrane.

In 1947, Ike Quebec introduced Monk to Lorraine Gordon and her first husband Alfred Lion, co-founder of Blue Note Records. Gordon tirelessly championed Monk’s genius. Shortly after meeting them, Monk made his first recordings as a leader for Blue Note (later collected on *Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1*). These Blue Note sessions ran from 1947 to 1952. Monk married Nellie Smith in 1947, and their son T. S. Monk (called Toot), who became a jazz drummer, was born on December 27, 1949. A daughter, Barbara (known as Boo-Boo), was born on September 5, 1953, and died of cancer in 1984. In her autobiography, Gordon wrote of the early lack of interest in Monk’s recordings: "I went to Harlem and those record stores didn't want Monk or me. I'll never forget one particular owner, I can still see him and his store on Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. 'He can'..."