Thelonious Monk: Giant Of Jazz

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30712, 30 March 1965, Page 11

Thelonious Monk: Giant Of Jazz

Recognition came late to Thelonious Monk, the brilliant jazz pianist and composer who will give the first of two concerts with his quartet in Christchurch on Thursday and the second on April 13.

In the 1940’s Monk was one of the handful of men responsible for the creation of modern jazz; but, although closely associated with the key figures in the “bop” movement, he stayed on the periphery of the movement and developed his music along lines of his own choosing. And it is only in the last few years that Monk has been recognised as what he is: possibly the most important man in contemporary jazz. For years he was. and to a certain extent he still is, the least understood man in jazz —an enigma shrouded by a mystery. His infrequent public appearances, his publicity (which, promoters being what they are, concentrated on his eccentricities rather than his music), his unconventional habits (he eats at odd intervals and often goes for as much as three days without sleep) and the seemingly abstract nature of his music combined to create an image of Monk as a remote figure who had somehow managed to write a few durable tunes —the hauntingly beautiful “Round Midnight,” for example. He had a reputation for being unreliable and bad box office and sometimes lived up to it.

Earthly Talent But, like Mark Twain’s death, the other-worldly qualities of Monk’s music were greatly exaggerated. Monk’s reputation as an enigma was simply a mask for his more earthly talents as a jazzman securely grounded in tradition, with a sense of logic that gave his compositions and solos an architectural precision and a sense of rhythm that made it impossible for him not to swing superbly. “When you swing,” he once said to his sidemen, "swing some more.” Musicians, then critics and

later the jazz public became aware of this after 1957, when Monk signed contracts with Riverside, a jazz recording company which understood his music and promoted it sympathetically, and the Five Spot, a New York night club which provided him with his first regular work for nearly a decade. His records, such as the exciting “Brilliant Corners,” were issued to five-star reviews, he began placing high in the jazz polls and promoters (the ultimate determinants of which musicians work and which do not) began to sit up and take notice. Now Monk is able to enjoy security rare in jazz: regular appearances with his quartet at concerts, jazz festivals and night clubs, where he is able to command a fee of several thousand dollars for a week’s work. His records sell in quantities impressive by jazz standards and he has been awarded a seal of American respectability, a cover article in “Time.”

Thelonius Sphere Monk has always trodden his own path where jazz is concerned. Born

in New York in 1920, he began learning the piano at the age of six. His first job, when he was 17, took him throughout America with a “rocking female evangelist.” “Rock ’n’ roll or rhythm and blues, that’s what we were doing. She preached and healed and we played. And then the congregation would sing.” Back in New York, Monk began working with a few musicians with whom he felt some rapport—Dizzy Gillespie, the late Charlie Christian, the late Charlie Parker, and Kenny Clarke, the drummer with whom Monk wrote “Epistrophy,” one of the first modern jazz standards. Cut Off In 1951, Monk’s source of income from night clubs was cut off. With a friend, he was arrested on a narcotics charge (never, many jazzmen feel, satisfactorily proved) and gaoled for 60 days. Worse than the loss of freedom was the loss of his police card, the passport without which it is impossible to work in a night club in New York. For the next six years Monk was sustained by a few jobs out of the city, a few record dates and his wife, Nellie, who worked during his silent years. Another friend who helped Monk through the dark years is the Baroness Nica Koenigswarter, who has befriended and helped many jazzmen. The baroness is, at least in part, responsible for Monk’s present prosperity, for it was a lawyer retained by her who got back Monk’s police card in 1957 and opened the way to the crucial job at the Five Spot. Now Monk has an income that permits him to concentrate on being a musical genius.