Thelonious Monk: American Composer

[Music] [Music] this surveyor was in this special for a night like tamales would come up and win and have the piano there for the plaintiff the feeling was tuned and everything was top-notch where the news would come out and be like it was supposed to be in the man was very artistic and very particular about everything that he liked and playing the music what nothing people that came there to listen to it you tell my mom I'm coming out look nothing when you first met mom I met mark an early for any part of 4041 118th Street between 7th and st. Nicholas Avenue on your left-hand side Linda's Playhouse [Music] his melodies were beautiful his cars were unusual his colors his rhythmic sense and the spiritual feeling in the music when you heard his music they just carried you away the most difficult thing about monk in the studio was his a combination of his perfectionism and his really basic I think inability to understand what the hell was supposed to be so difficult about his music you know the attitude that he understood it why couldn't you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there's a lot of things that we do in company one tonight and we all do some of the usual things we use some of the usual phrases mug one like that you know so monk was like a like a real free spirit who said I'm gonna play this way this is what I want any play stuff that nobody else ever played [Music] [Applause] [Music] he was a rebellious spirit and probably one of the few people who who really stuck to their gun and got what he wanted out of what he wanted to do you know as very few people who make it who make it doing what they want to do monk went to a period of not making it but he still was monk when he made it he still was monk he epitomizes what a jazz musician is supposed to be he has a style which is instantly identifiable whether it's in composition whether it's in his playing or whether it's someone playing along the lines of felonious monk it's a very personal approach to jazz everyone treated the line special I knew there was something special about this guy cause he he didn't quite act like all my uncle's and-and-and or his friends or you know and everybody felt very happy he elicited a real good feeling from everybody in the family all the time you know he was big on like any time anybody in the family had a birthday thys was there to play happy birthday which is an extraordinary event to hear him play happy birthday believe me it was not the traditional voicings but you know for a long time I didn't really know what it was per se you know I would listen to him play the piano and I knew that he didn't play like everybody in fact now in retrospect as I get older I would have to say that was certainly a point when I was very young where I was rather distressed that it didn't seem like dad was doing with everybody else who was a world-famous entertainer was doing you know it was like he was into his own thing [Music] [Music] it was a message he had a way of saying to the piano and giving you a message you know every note was clear precise at the same time a tremendous sense of Swing and in addition all of that he showed me that all the values of our music are modern like stride piano for example monk was a stride pianist all of his life and he would write even a very complicated piece of music and he would play somewhere along the line stride piano because that was the way he heard things and the way he organized things on stride piano was a this incredible period around the 20s and 30s you know in four days also of the great great pianist such as James P Johnson lucky Roberts wooly lion Smith and many others and they would play a lot of rent parties you know and the piano became like a total Orchestra and they would play for dancing and James P Johnson ironically he lived in San Juan Hill in the same areas monk you know and James Pete was one of our really master pianist and they all wanted to try and his trial was just a wonderful way for pianist to swing I like straight [Music] I think it's easier to understand Thelonious if you realize that in many ways he was himself a tremendously traditional artist he had a great awareness of the past in jazz well you know the area that he grew up in on in the west 60s in New York was an area that James P Johnson was living in at that time and apparently James P was a childhood hero of his I mean I recall a recording session when I did the first solo album I did with monk we were standing in a control room listening to playback of a improvised blues that he had done and he turned around and said to me gee I sound just like James P Johnson [Music] and for me slowness was wonderful because he put the traditional and modern and put together so there was no separation you know and you are a beautiful blue scarf functional I'm gonna play this for you and use a little bit of stride [Music] we first moved there was 1922 summer right so there were houses on both side of 63rd Street in fact all the way up like where they have Lincoln Center now there were houses on both sides of Street all the way up to Central Park West and most people from the West Indies and we were about the only Americans when we first moved over here and since our name was monk they thought we were West Indian too and his mother was a Jehovah's Witness and she was very very close to a number of the ladies in the community and the noise was very very close to his mother and although she came from Carolina I think a lot of her influences in later life the influences that affected fluence because he came here when he was three came from those from those friends that his mother had who were from whose origins were in the various islands in the Caribbean mostly Western names you find the the children have to play something or do something so most of them either play the piano or the violin so in that atmosphere my mother said I had to take piano and Thelonious he didn't want played a violin so he had to play the trumpet so I took piano lesson he took trumpet lesson but they found I used to have broad achill trouble you know it coal in the chest so much and the music teacher told my mother that he shouldn't play the trumpet because it was affecting you know it's blowing and he got interested in the piano so my brother would stop playing and he found that he could play pick up any tune that came along you know without the music so my mother said that uh if he was going to play he should learn how to play the right way so the teacher who was teaching me which I didn't like pianist he started teaching my brother my place so he took lessons there was a strong tradition of education there was a strong tradition of religion involved in those things there was a strong a structure for respect and authority for elders and those kind of things and those values were very very important to Thelonious and I think it had an an overall influence on the way he the way he went about his job in his music which was very working like fashion [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] we had a little band and they would go up to Apollo on Wednesdays to the Amateur Night and he and his two friends of the drama and a trumpet player but the three of them anyway they would go up and they won every time they went up so they barred them from coming up there because they will win in each time they were too good to play in other words that's the way people consider it then he played other places they just had gigs where they played different places and then he this some preacher woman he went away with she needed some musicians to go with you know it's a comedy home and she was doing I heal and then preaching and she came and asked my mother and the other kids mother if they could go because they wanted to age so they had to sign for them and they went away though she needed these musicians you know they bring the people in they play good music and people follow music so they they up top business and they were really help too because by going away and listen to different music and meeting different people they became better musicians and then from there you know he got to know people and then he was going up to mentions used to go in and sit in and play and listen so they finally had him he was the piano player up there when you came in the bar was here was a fairly big bar but you could hear the music which was back here and it was set up so that you had tables all over the place so you could eat you could get sandwiches and stuff as well as drinks and then as you came back this way there was a kind of a dance floor which I guess if memory serves correctly must have been about in here somewhere because the tables were pretty much on the walls and the bandstand as I remember was maybe thought about that high maybe because you had to go up steps to get on the bandstand and this was the hippest crowd in New York I mean these people really listen to music yet pimps and hustlers and people in the business but you also had a lot of just sheer jazz fans and I mean these are people that knew that the music that they heard here was more often than not on the cutting edge this was the place where monk you know got together he was a playing I love with Charlie Christian and this way they created this music Bebop how it happened we never know it's kind of something that is like a like a miracle yep dizzy and Charlie Parker Miles they all get together and create this music on bebop but muk muk he seemed to been that that central figure [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] chronologically he existed at the beginning of the modern jazz movement he was involved with all of the key players in the bebop game but if you compare him well either with the most obvious comparison with Bud Powell or if you compare him with some of the other young bebop players of the time maybe somebody like Al Haig or door Omar Moroso monk was not really on the same wavelength as those people or putting in another way they weren't on the same wavelength that he was on I go through on his house and but would come by a lot of times and hang out but bud had this awesome awesome technique on the piano I mean he just he just created that whole bebop concept you know of piano which everybody was attempting to play like but now you know those tremendous runs in that tremendous feeling those huge chords and he would play tremendous temples that he could handle [Music] [Applause] [Music] Maloney's was just like they like the opposite of that felonious wookie could take like one note you know and give you a message he just could take one note you take an octave and just take an octave level or like for me it's a good example of that you know [Music] [Music] though he was one of the main contributors to the music he came to the music in the same way that dizzy bird Kenny Clark each one was was tremendously individualistic monk brought these harmonic and and kind of rhythmic displacement where you would expect to hear them going one way he kind of moved it around a little bit and you hear that in Charlie Parker you hear that in where Charlie Parker goes over the bar line you hear that in Dizzy Gillespie but some of his long lines they'd love monk for that reason I mean he and he stimulated their thinking so with monk they said bebop I think Time magazine said bebop and beyond that's how I describe monk music you know so bebop was was the term that was given this music although everybody played a little bit different you know monk played a certain way but power playing a certain way Elmo Harvey Nichols played a certain way Miles Davis played a certain wave festival played a certain way but it was called bebop but in the way everybody had an individual expression [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] when I came in I was just did enamored with the the excitement of being on 52nd with 20 clubs and history of jazz right they're all and then one block and all these fabulous musicians with you know art a time working on opposite art tatum I'm working with Ben Webster one of my all-time idols right next door is Coleman Hawkins with with Don Byas playing with felonious monk playing on piano and so you know it's nice to see a familiar face that's a man it's it's good see what you've been into they said well I haven't done too much but you know I've known a few things with Hawkins and so I think they had like two or three weeks there at there at the club or something I first heard monk with Coleman Hawkins on 52nd Street club I think called a downbeat club you know and I walked in because Hawk is my is my idol you know so ever he play I'll always be there I always catch the musician I'd never heard before well I first reaction among because that night he didn't play much piano you know I couldn't understand what Co Hawkins was done with this piano play cause he was just hitting a couple notes and just stopped and wouldn't play but something drew me back and went back again and discovered I was listening to it to a true genius it wasn't like every other piano players I mean he didn't do showbiz you didn't throw his hands up he just played piano and he did what he did and if you didn't listen then you might miss to the point of everything and most of them did and Kolbert Hawk has caught a lot of Hell for hiring more [Music] [Music] resistance that he got creatively and artistically came from from the media and from the critique side which has nothing to do with the music I think he always felt a little bit malign that he was considered outside of the mainstream because I mean if there if there was ever a mainstream guy felonious was mainstream all you have to do is listen to the compositions that he chose to perform even early early in his career he was picking compositions by Berlin in my colporteur and Duke Ellington and those people you know and if you listen to his playing stylistic we are Tatum Willie the lion Smith do gongs and all those people prop up so prominently and that's why those guys knew exactly who he was and exactly what he was doing [Music] thorniest was with bud and they were on their way out of town and bud made a stop I believe and was seen by undercover police and felonious took the the drugs whatever it was that Butthead because but it had a lot of trouble and the law basically took the wait but it did result in him losing his cabaret card when I got to know Marvin what began working with us it was just simply an established fact that he did not have a cabaret card and that meant in New York City in those days that you could not work in a in any club or bar in New York I mean he did come around to jam sessions he was allowed to sit in he was he did a lot of things unofficially but officially he couldn't work to the extent that he should have been allowed to work I think that this was a a terribly racist thing that took place it was done deliberately at one point I feel because too many black musicians were working downtown in the big picture I don't know if it had as detrimental effect on his career as it had on his basic emotion as a person I mean not being allowed to ply your craft not being allowed to earn a living in your hometown for your wife and your family has got to eat at anyone but in that period is when the lines did a great deal of writing he was home my mother was working two and three jobs and so consequently felonious was playing mr. mom and he was at the piano to afford them an opportunity to really concentrate on his writing see when he signed with Riverside in the mid 50's he had been recording for about seven years for both Blue Note and prestige and had developed a reputation of being tremendously difficult to listen to tremendously difficult to understand and as a result had a very small cult following and no real acceptance as yet in the jazz world so we began with I thought it was fairly safe and it was I began by suggesting an all Ellington album [Music] we did another trio album involving standards and then I guess we felt that we and the world were ready to tackle monk playing his own material with horns and that was the third riverside album was the brilliant corners album with Sonny Rollins which is it's the first monk album for me that made a big splash [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] we lived in a very very tiny apartment in the beginning and I know we spent a lot of time in the bed together all four of us it was remarkable I could lay in the bed with my dad until I guess until I was about ten years old I mean did anytime you might walk in the house you might find all four of us on the bed playing cards or cuz my father and mother were big on games they liked to play all kinds of card games all kinds of card games you know all the time and of course you know Thelonious was very it was excellent ping-pong player and absolutely extraordinary pool player so he was big on games he liked that competitive little thing but we played games a lot but it was a very very we were very very close-knit family you know Thelonious took me and my mother my sister out on the road with him a lot you know in the latter years he really liked that my mother always and now when I think about it in retrospect I know he was going through great changes to make this make it possible for us to do these things because he wasn't making that much money [Music] I met Nika in about 1954-55 and I've always thought of of the Baroness as being possibly the only example in our times of sort of the modern version of the medieval patron of the Arts I mean I think she was a true patroness and was extremely helpful to quite a number of musicians of whom you know the most notable were bird and monk all the musicians would always go to her place and whatnot she always be around I think perhaps that the Baroness realized what what a genius this man was you know and probably just she had that sense that timing to realize that this was a master and maybe let me see the contribution that she was supposed to make [Music] the first part was a kind of a unique place just ordinary bar or near fifth Street and third Avenue and they had an upright piano originally in fact the first time they got a grand piano was between monkey and I don't know what it was about this place it just had a certain kind of spirit it certainly was the most beautiful club in the world it was just about a basic bar as you could find and it just became a V place and monk buck was very popular there first time I saw Polonius was the old five spot it was the band with John Coltrane shadow Wilson and we'll beware and I guess this was the most awesome quartet that I'd heard in my life going there from 9:00 to 4:00 every night that they worked I was sitting in there or standing outside and listening to four great musicians really fantastic for me and amongst music was such a challenge for John Coltrane he could take it take it to another sphere as you know training was incredible and hit a two of them together down five-spot was awesome awesome because mother just featured him funny cause you know and giving you on in space and train with fill the space up but all guys are stuff it was a natural marriage between the two natural [Music] [Music] look here Coltrane practice mountains Sonny Rollins practice Moto's and they practiced these Tunes they practice playing these songs you did not you did not necessarily come up and look at some monk change it's simply the song you know see monk was that kind of waiting period man I tell you the song my plate it's an old standard won't play called Lulu's back in town gotta get mold tuxedo press got sew a button on my vest cause tonight I gotta look my best do news back in depth man let me tell you I heard my practicing this song he played that tune in tempo and practiced that song for maybe two hours [Music] [Applause] [Music] the average period of disappearance I know I myself if you could sit and play a tune yourself in tempo and do it for an hour I don't think there are too many cats they can do you know so he was very special day with [Music] most exciting moment for me Widmark came at Savannah it was one day when he refused to play any of his songs and so he played all stand-ups and then death one new one really knew the truth about life then what was it else see it didn't matter what most played that's all monks sit down at the piano and read a sheet of music note for note and that sounded like milk see [Music] the new 5 spot on a street is the first chance I got an opportunity to be around them every night for six weeks I worked opposite him and I was with three different trios this was about 64 so the longest came in the room after the third week we he was there's no six week we were there the last week and he looked up at the stage and I was still I'm working with it so he walked billed me said who the hell are you the house drummer and kept going then I was the first words he had spoken to me for six weeks so that Monday we closed on Sunday and that Monday I had a phone call about 8:00 in the morning saying we'd like you to come down to Columbia because mr. monk is recording anyone like you to come down I hung up so the phone rang and rang again and he said oh this is no joke instead we're down here at Columbia studio waiting for you so I went down and there they were so we did this date which he never said nothing to me again I walked in he never said good morning he said nothing I've put two drums up and after I got everything set and he saw that I was ready he started playing he still hasn't said a word to me so we finished this whole I have an album and why are we listening to the playback he well told me said would you like some money I said no I don't wait for the check he said I don't want anybody in my band being broke I said in your band he said yes do you have your passport ready I said no he said well we're leaving Friday and I was in demand [Music] [Music] there are two numbers which are personally called masterpieces it's a song round about midnight a crap is killed with Nelly and on Monday among [Music] like a little composition consider than me I don't know I haven't really made them for me within my mind well then which is the one you like best to play I like all other college no in fact I like it even major in Sinhala kill infidels really I mean they're all good well I expect from the V a certain standard let me finally buy here you mean everything you write is 1/10 of a genius I don't know but I'm cornering you he was very witty and a very sensitive person in a way for my for me I believe that's why a lot of times he gave you these different airs and these different little gestures that he would do because he didn't want you to get close to him cause he because of him being a very sensitive prayer he was very sensitive person well I finally discovered felonious I went to his house after hearing him the second time I went by I asked him could I come by to see him and he said yes I went by his house and I was in his house about nine hours I'll never forget this because he had a picture of Billy Holladay in the ceiling and he had a red light in a small piano so being a young musician I started to ask him a lot of questions he didn't answer any question at all and I must have stayed there about maybe one hour asking a question you never said anything I stayed inside that room close to nine hours just with him all synagogues were required again very silent and finally I saw mr. monk thanks very much for inviting me you know I think I'd better leave right it's okay come by and see me again and I left and I was completely perplexed see well I went back to see him again a month later he played the channel almost two or three hours for me then I realized because I've done a lot of reading of Sufism and mysticism and I realized in the ancient cultures along the masses they communicate without words you see a monk was a master of that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] but I hear monk play it's like a caiman heylia jackson sing it's like a bully how are they see there's a certain quality when the music just reaches you someplace else not just the ears but it reaches inside the spirit and his head round midnight has a kind of quality [Music] [Music] our music is a music of conversation and for Louie our song we played his trumpet he was talking it was really speaking when we hear the blues it's really a language a musical language of communication and Mark was a master of it so he could make one of those funny runs he was starting up here at the top of the piano and a half hour later he would get to the Father now you try to follow that trip with him going on the keyboard that's incredible [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and when I watched him and saw him and heard him was not just the melodies in the notes and the sounds of the colors it was kind of a wonderful commitment that this is what I'm going to say this is my music I will keep doing it you know [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] not only is monk such a master pianist and composer but when you watch him play he does a complete ballet he doesn't just play the piano but he puts his whole body into the piano and when markets suddenly appear some nana his whole body so like it's a whole dance [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] dancing was funny when this music was happening then he get up and do his little dancing cuz he was feeling good and he knew you knew where you were and the music was swinging and that's what he wanted so he said I'll have to play now you making it happen [Music] my association with jazz is that dancehalls you know we gave dances people dance to the music when you went to his bird he was at a dance when you hit to be good to hear anything if you were to hit kissed an Kim's man it was that a dancer you're doing those bands was ever it was that a dance so that dancing was part of the music and I think monk sort of news is some kind of way because monk has had his own little shuffle and you get up and dance by Charlie Rose play and the minute Charlie Brown stopped his solo monk was at the piano playing that means instantly right into it you know knows Paul's the dancing was a part of the piano player [Music] [Applause] [Music] he was way ahead when it came to the difference that makes that distinguishes the the van Gogh from the from the common distinguishes the greats you know and mock was the great you know and why how he learned it I can't tell you I don't know how a person could do it that early you know that was that was a genius madness of genius is funny in 1964 when the time article came out I think finally he understood that a number of people very interested in what he was playing and what he was doing I think it made him play more because now he knew people were listening to him so there were it was a great enthusiasm when we went out to work that he had because now he knew that he could see in person people standing in line waiting to come into here and play and then we were traveling quite a bit we went on to world tours and things were really really looking good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he was a very sensitive well I can say a very sensitive person a very knowledgeable person and I think a lot of things happen to him that he took be held within he never would release them and I think in the end I finally had finally caught up with him you know oh my mother he reached the point why he was doing the concerts he told you it's very popular but I just got the impression that the surroundings of the music didn't move with the music you know you see what I mean you had this tremendous music but they just weren't places I felt that somebody like monk monk could have had a place to play it was fabulous best piano and best conditions best sound everything you know and I felt it wasn't there and I could be wrong and I felt spiritually that he just he says shut the door I say okay I've given this much and he gave a lot you know saying okay this is for you you know I've stopped that's all he just said he didn't feel like playing so he stopped you know he if he say suddenly just say it but he don't go into details to tell you why or anything I guess he didn't know why himself when he didn't feel good we went over to see him a few times and he talked walk around with us he'd go out and take walks but he didn't feel like playing on a appearing in front of the public he came out one time I forgot when I was in 70s or something and played but then he didn't come back again after that I would go back to the fact that the group's feared and I was involved with where our first album was the dedication to Thelonious and the music that we wanted to play was his music and we decided that maybe if this album was good enough it would encourage him to return to playing again but the morning the day that we went into record he passed away that morning while we were in the studio so we never he never had a chance to hear the music [Music] I think mom was just he was a part of a golden era of the music you know there was a golden era of music and that's no I mean like all Golden Arrows they come to hand and so you have to go through you have to go through a certain period before there's a Renaissance he gave so much and he had to make great sacrifices to give what he gave because he never compromised his music some composer musician in Tsavo Kurama do disco does not make me some money you know Vermont was almost like a profit like he was here for a reason was here to bring us all this beauty all his love to the world and he couldn't compromise he didn't know how [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Chris Maxfield

Views: 248,281

Rating: 4.9441752 out of 5

Keywords: Thelonious Monk, Jazz, Be-bop, Educational, Music, Piano, Documentary

Id: ehvPDFfalFs

Length: 58min 34sec (3514 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018