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Eight 10-inch reels of acetate tape were labeled "Carnegie Hall Jazz 1957." One of the tape boxes had a handwritten note on the back that said "T. One day in late January, Larry Appelbaum was thumbing through some old Voice of America audiotapes about to be digitized at the Library of Congress when he made a discovery that would stun him and many other jazz fans. Let’s take a listen to one of his earliest tunes, “ Epistrophy,” recorded live at Carnegie Hall in 1957. Anointed by some critics as the “High Priest of Bebop,” several of his compositions (“52nd Street Theme,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy”, “I Mean You”) were favorites among his contemporaries. Monk’s harmonic innovations proved fundamental to the development of modern jazz in this period. The after-hours jam sessions at Minton’s, along with similar musical gatherings at Monroe’s Uptown House, Dan Wall’s Chili Shack, among others, attracted a new generation of musicians brimming with fresh ideas about harmony and rhythm-notably Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mary Lou Williams, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Monk’s close friend and fellow pianist, Bud Powell. Minton’s, legend has it, was where the “bebop revolution” began. Returning after two years, he formed his own quartet and played local bars and small clubs until the spring of 1941, when drummer Kenny Clarke hired him as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. By his early teens, he was playing rent parties, sitting in on organ and piano at a local Baptist church, and was reputed to have won several “amateur hour” competitions at the Apollo Theater.Īdmitted to Peter Stuyvesant, one of the city’s best high schools, Monk dropped out at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music and around 1935 took a job as a pianist for a traveling evangelist and faith healer. He was about nine when Marion’s piano teacher took Thelonious on as a student. He studied the trumpet briefly but began exploring the piano at age nine.
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Young Monk turned out to be a musical prodigy in addition to a good student and a fine athlete.
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During his stay, however, he often played the harmonica, ‘Jew’s harp,” and piano-all of which probably influenced his son’s unyielding musical interests. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family three years later, but health considerations forced him to return to North Carolina. Unlike other Southern migrants who headed straight to Harlem, the Monks settled on West 63rd Street in the “San Juan Hill” neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River. Monk:īorn on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Thelonious was only four when his mother and his two siblings, Marion and Thomas, moved to New York City. He dubbed Thelonious Monk, "Melodious Thunk," Art Blakey, "Smart Snakely" and Illinois Jacquet, "Michigan Coat." /bjPSCOoiGp- Denise Oliver-Velez ? October 27, 2020īiographer Robin Kelley details Monk’s beginnings on the official Monk website, which is maintained by Monk’s son, jazz drummer T.S. Thus, the “thunk.” Monk himself will continue to be an enigma for many, but his music has become part of the building blocks of jazz contributing classics to the standards playbook.īabs Gonzales, be-bop scat singer and poet was born Octoas Lee Brown. Though he was throwing shade, his moniker for Monk was apt: He dubbed him “Melodious Thunk.” There are few melodies as haunting as some of Monk’s compositions, and his percussive and often dissonant piano-playing style certainly differed from that of other piano players. It was jazz drummer Roy Haynes who introduced me to recordings of bebop jazz poet-singer-comedian Babs Gonzales, who gave nicknames to the musicians who were part of his world. The pianist whose sheer genius blew us away at the time was a man named Thelonious Sphere Monk. My young, aspiring jazz musician schoolmates and I became immersed in the tail end of the bohemian bebop scene in the Village. Even narrowing it down to what is known as “ the bebop era” doesn’t make it any easier. However, for me there was no question about who to feature today: The man and his music have fascinated me ever since I heard him play live in New York City while I was attending Music and Art High School in the early ‘60s. When discussing jazz pianists, who we’ve been exploring here on #BlackMusicSunday for the last two weeks, it has become difficult to cover all of the greats-there are so many.