Music Wench
Rock and Roll Grandma
Just thought I'd share this from another board I check in on from time to time (It's not me, it's someone who knows a lot more than I do about music. My jazz guru so-to-speak 
):
You do realize that Monk was Bipolar? That is what lead to his "dancing". Also, it's why his compositions were so different than anyone else. He could play the piano with the normal fingering, he just chose to play it in his own style and be original. His compositions are all off center, so to speak.
He would go days without saying anything or leaving the house. It finally lead him to just not playing or composing.
Over his career, he was institutionalized a few times.
From when he suddenly retired in 1973, until his death, he never went next to a piano again. He lived those last 9 years in the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter’s house. Barely leaving the house and in many cases the room he stayed in. He would die in her house. The Baroness has had two of the biggest giants of Jazz die in her house, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
When it comes down to Jazz composers, it's him and Duke Ellington as the two best, with Mingus coming in third.
It is only in the last 10-20 years that musicians are figuring out many of Monk’s compositions. Everyone covered 'Round Midnight, Straight, No Chaser, 52nd Street Theme (a song that has been recorded at least 200 times, but not once by Monk) (see below), and Blue Monk, from the beginning.
However songs like: Ruby My Dear, Well You Needn't, Off Minor, In Walked Bud, Misterioso, Epistrophy, I Mean You, Four in One, Criss Cross, Ask Me Now, Little Rootie Tootie, Monk's Dream, Bemsha Swing, Think of One, Friday the 13th, Hackensack, Nutty, Brilliant Corners, Crepuscule With Nellie (written for his wife), Evidence, and Rhythm-a-Ning, are only recently getting around to being covered.
Huge props have to his wife Nellie. She supported him when Monk was busted with pot. It was Bud Powell’s weed, but Monk wouldn’t fink out his friend, who had his own mental problems. Monk realized that Bud was even more messed up then he was. Monk was also in debt to Powell (see below). The police took away Monk’s cabaret card, and he could not perform live in NYC for 5 years.
It’s during this time, that he really started to compose some of the most serious music that Jazz will ever see. During that time, Nellie had several jobs, took care of Monk and their kids. All Monk did during that time was compose new music. When he finally was able to play live in NYC, he had a boatload of killer music in hand. In addition, how many women do you know that will allow their husband to live away from her and their kid’s, in another woman’s house for 9 years?
The title track from Brilliant Corners is so freaking difficult, that it was spliced together out of at least 25 attempted starts over 4hrs. I am not talking about a bunch of hacks, which were trying to record it with Monk. Beside Monk, there was Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Oscar Pettiford, and Ernie Henry.
Try doing a search on those songs, that I mentioned and see how many times they have been covered. Also, pay attention to just when others have recorded them.
Steve Lacy, who is one of the two or three greatest soprano sax players, spent a great deal of his career playing Monk compositions. For a couple of years, he and Roswell Rudd did nothing but play Monk covers in their group.
When Coltrane was in Monk's band for 6 months, they ruled NYC. The show to go see for those 6 months, in that town, was them. When musicians, even the biggest came to town, they would catch a performance.
Playing with Monk was like working on getting your Ph.D. He never played the sax, but he was the one that showed Coltrane false fingering, from just looking at Coltrane's sax. Coltrane is quoted as saying that he learned more from Monk than anyone else.
Monk's melodies are tricky to play on the piano (a lot trickier than people really realize, at first) because they require your hands to operate differently than is normally played by piano players are used to (ie using unique fingerings in the right hand; left hand rhythm shifts). Monk's rhythmic phrasing is very peculiar, and very precise!
Monk makes other piano players think, about phrasing and space (since piano players, don't have to breathe, like with a wind instrument; so, there's no necessary reason for them to 'break in play'). Monk and Miles both used space in their playing, which his why someone like Coltrane, fit in so well with both.
Touch is also important with Monk's playing. It's a real lesson in getting a sound out of the piano, where so many trained players come out with some non-descript, mushy touch.
His tunes have their own logic that have nothing to do with how harmony should work. Forget everything you think you know, because it isn't going to help.
He was so ahead of his times, it wasn't until the 1964, when Time Magazine put him on the cover, that people finally caught on, to what all the musicians already knew. He was one of only 3 Jazz musicians, to make the cover.
Some of Monk's quotes:
“I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing — even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”
“Wrong is right.”
“Where’s jazz going? I don’t know? Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.”
“Those who want to know what sound goes into my music should come to NY and open their ears.”
After the Time cover:
“I’m famous. Ain’t that a *****?”
This is something from Thomas Fitterling's book, "Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music". I believe Bud was between 17-20 years-old when this event is supposed to have taken place.
"As the musicians were packing up their instruments after the show, the police stormed the club and went after Monk. He refused to show his identification, and was forcibly arrested. A fan barred the door and challenged the officers. They tried to push him aside, but he wouldn't budge. 'Stop,' he yelled. 'You don't know what you're doing. You're mistreating the greatest pianist in the world!' At this point a nightstick came down on his head like a lightening bolt. The young fan was Monk's best friend, Bud Powell. He was dragged along with Monk, and thrown into jail after his injury was superficially treated at the hospital.
After his release Powell complained of alarming headaches. He eventually checked into Bellevue Hospital, then spent three months in Creedmore Hospital. There he was treated with various psychoactive drugs and shock therapy. His artistic career had barely started, but henceforth he would be bedeviled by psychological problems. Monk was aware that Powell's intervention had saved him from a similar fate. For his ill-starred protege, he wrote 'In Walked Bud', '52nd Street Theme', and 'Broadway Theme', otherwise simply known as 'The Theme.' The numbers were intended to be Bud's property alone, and Monk never recorded them."
):You do realize that Monk was Bipolar? That is what lead to his "dancing". Also, it's why his compositions were so different than anyone else. He could play the piano with the normal fingering, he just chose to play it in his own style and be original. His compositions are all off center, so to speak.
He would go days without saying anything or leaving the house. It finally lead him to just not playing or composing.
Over his career, he was institutionalized a few times.
From when he suddenly retired in 1973, until his death, he never went next to a piano again. He lived those last 9 years in the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter’s house. Barely leaving the house and in many cases the room he stayed in. He would die in her house. The Baroness has had two of the biggest giants of Jazz die in her house, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
When it comes down to Jazz composers, it's him and Duke Ellington as the two best, with Mingus coming in third.
It is only in the last 10-20 years that musicians are figuring out many of Monk’s compositions. Everyone covered 'Round Midnight, Straight, No Chaser, 52nd Street Theme (a song that has been recorded at least 200 times, but not once by Monk) (see below), and Blue Monk, from the beginning.
However songs like: Ruby My Dear, Well You Needn't, Off Minor, In Walked Bud, Misterioso, Epistrophy, I Mean You, Four in One, Criss Cross, Ask Me Now, Little Rootie Tootie, Monk's Dream, Bemsha Swing, Think of One, Friday the 13th, Hackensack, Nutty, Brilliant Corners, Crepuscule With Nellie (written for his wife), Evidence, and Rhythm-a-Ning, are only recently getting around to being covered.
Huge props have to his wife Nellie. She supported him when Monk was busted with pot. It was Bud Powell’s weed, but Monk wouldn’t fink out his friend, who had his own mental problems. Monk realized that Bud was even more messed up then he was. Monk was also in debt to Powell (see below). The police took away Monk’s cabaret card, and he could not perform live in NYC for 5 years.
It’s during this time, that he really started to compose some of the most serious music that Jazz will ever see. During that time, Nellie had several jobs, took care of Monk and their kids. All Monk did during that time was compose new music. When he finally was able to play live in NYC, he had a boatload of killer music in hand. In addition, how many women do you know that will allow their husband to live away from her and their kid’s, in another woman’s house for 9 years?
The title track from Brilliant Corners is so freaking difficult, that it was spliced together out of at least 25 attempted starts over 4hrs. I am not talking about a bunch of hacks, which were trying to record it with Monk. Beside Monk, there was Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Oscar Pettiford, and Ernie Henry.
Try doing a search on those songs, that I mentioned and see how many times they have been covered. Also, pay attention to just when others have recorded them.
Steve Lacy, who is one of the two or three greatest soprano sax players, spent a great deal of his career playing Monk compositions. For a couple of years, he and Roswell Rudd did nothing but play Monk covers in their group.
When Coltrane was in Monk's band for 6 months, they ruled NYC. The show to go see for those 6 months, in that town, was them. When musicians, even the biggest came to town, they would catch a performance.
Playing with Monk was like working on getting your Ph.D. He never played the sax, but he was the one that showed Coltrane false fingering, from just looking at Coltrane's sax. Coltrane is quoted as saying that he learned more from Monk than anyone else.
Monk's melodies are tricky to play on the piano (a lot trickier than people really realize, at first) because they require your hands to operate differently than is normally played by piano players are used to (ie using unique fingerings in the right hand; left hand rhythm shifts). Monk's rhythmic phrasing is very peculiar, and very precise!
Monk makes other piano players think, about phrasing and space (since piano players, don't have to breathe, like with a wind instrument; so, there's no necessary reason for them to 'break in play'). Monk and Miles both used space in their playing, which his why someone like Coltrane, fit in so well with both.
Touch is also important with Monk's playing. It's a real lesson in getting a sound out of the piano, where so many trained players come out with some non-descript, mushy touch.
His tunes have their own logic that have nothing to do with how harmony should work. Forget everything you think you know, because it isn't going to help.
He was so ahead of his times, it wasn't until the 1964, when Time Magazine put him on the cover, that people finally caught on, to what all the musicians already knew. He was one of only 3 Jazz musicians, to make the cover.
Some of Monk's quotes:
“I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing — even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”
“Wrong is right.”
“Where’s jazz going? I don’t know? Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.”
“Those who want to know what sound goes into my music should come to NY and open their ears.”
After the Time cover:
“I’m famous. Ain’t that a *****?”
This is something from Thomas Fitterling's book, "Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music". I believe Bud was between 17-20 years-old when this event is supposed to have taken place.
"As the musicians were packing up their instruments after the show, the police stormed the club and went after Monk. He refused to show his identification, and was forcibly arrested. A fan barred the door and challenged the officers. They tried to push him aside, but he wouldn't budge. 'Stop,' he yelled. 'You don't know what you're doing. You're mistreating the greatest pianist in the world!' At this point a nightstick came down on his head like a lightening bolt. The young fan was Monk's best friend, Bud Powell. He was dragged along with Monk, and thrown into jail after his injury was superficially treated at the hospital.
After his release Powell complained of alarming headaches. He eventually checked into Bellevue Hospital, then spent three months in Creedmore Hospital. There he was treated with various psychoactive drugs and shock therapy. His artistic career had barely started, but henceforth he would be bedeviled by psychological problems. Monk was aware that Powell's intervention had saved him from a similar fate. For his ill-starred protege, he wrote 'In Walked Bud', '52nd Street Theme', and 'Broadway Theme', otherwise simply known as 'The Theme.' The numbers were intended to be Bud's property alone, and Monk never recorded them."
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