Widely considered as one of the most important musicians in jazz -- he is one of only five jazz musicians to be featured on the cover of Time -- Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy," "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk," "Straight No Chaser" and "Well, You Needn't."
He could play be-bop but commented that be-bop "sounds like dixieland to me." His compositions and improvisations are full of dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are impossible to separate from Monk's unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations; a style nicknamed "Melodious Thunk" by his wife Nellie.
Early life
Monk was born 10th October 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk, two years after his sister Marian. A brother, Thomas, was born a couple of years later. In 1922, the family moved to 243 West 63rd Street, in Manhattan. Monk started playing the piano at the age of six. Although he had some formal training and eavesdropped on his sister's piano lessons, he was essentially self-taught. Monk attended Stuyvesant High School, but did not graduate. He briefly toured with an evangelist in his teens, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz.
Monk is believed to be the pianist featured on recordings Jerry Newman made around 1941 at Minton's Playhouse, the legendary Manhattan club where Monk was the house pianist. Monk's style at the time was described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences include Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists. Monk's unique piano style was largely perfected during his stint as the house pianist at Minton's in the early-to-mid 1940s, when he participated in the famous after-hours "cutting competitions" that featured most of the leading jazz soloists of the day. The Minton's scene was crucial in the formulation of the bebop genre and it brought Monk into close contact and collaboration with other leading exponents of bebop, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker and later, Miles Davis.
Early recordings (1944–1954)
In 1944 Monk made his first studio recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was among the first prominent jazz musicians to promote Monk, and Monk later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on the 1957 session with John Coltrane. Monk made his first recordings as leader for Blue Note in 1947 (later anthologised on Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1) which showcased his talents as a composer of original melodies for improvisation. Monk married Nellie Smith the same year, and in 1949 the couple had a son, T.S. Monk, who later became a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born in 1953.
In August 1951, New York City police searched a parked car occupied by Monk and friend Bud Powell. The police found narcotics in the car, presumed to have belonged to Powell. Monk refused to testify against his friend, so the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card. Without the all-important cabaret card he was unable to play in any New York venue where liquor was served, and this severely restricted his ability to perform for several crucial years. Monk spent most of the early and mid-1950s composing, recording, and performing at theaters and out-of-town gigs.
After his cycle of intermittent recording sessions for Blue Note during 1947–1952, he was under contract to Prestige Records for the following two years. With Prestige he cut several under-recognized, but highly significant albums, including collaborations with saxophonist Sonny Rollins and drummer Art Blakey. In 1954, Monk participated in the famed Christmas Eve sessions which produced the albums Bags' Groove and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants by Miles Davis. Davis found Monk's idiosyncratic accompaniment style difficult to improvise over and asked him to lay out (not accompany), which almost brought them to blows. However, in Miles Davis' autobiography Miles, Davis claims that the anger and tension between Monk and himself never took place and that the claims of blows being exchanged were "rumors" and a "misunderstanding."
In 1954, Monk paid his first visit to Europe, performing and recording in Paris. It was here that he first met Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild banking family of England and a patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She would be a close friend for the rest of Monk's life.
Riverside Records (1954–1961)
At the time of his signing to Riverside, Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records did not sell in significant numbers, and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for mass-market acceptance. Indeed, with Monk's consent, Riverside had managed to buy out his previous Prestige contract for a mere $108.24. His breakthrough came thanks to a compromise between Monk and the label, which convinced him to record two albums of his interpretations of jazz standards.
His debut for Riverside, which featured bass innovator Oscar Pettiford, was built around Monk's distinctive interpretations of selection of well-known pieces by Duke Ellington, including "Caravan" and "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)". The resulting LP, Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, was designed to bring Monk to a wider audience, and pave the way for a broader acceptance of his unique style. According to recording producer Orrin Keepnews, Monk appeared unfamiliar with the Ellington tunes and spent a long time reading the sheet music and picking the melodies out on the piano keys. Given Monk's long history of playing, it seems unlikely that he didn't know Ellington's music, and it has been surmised that Monk's seeming ignorance of the material was a manifestation of his typically perverse humor, combined with an unstated reluctance to prove his own musical competency by playing other composers' works (even at this late date, there were still critics who carped that Monk "couldn't play").
Finally, on the 1956 LP Brilliant Corners, Monk was able to record his own music. The complex title track, which featured tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, was so difficult to play that the final version had to be edited together from three separate takes. The album, however, was largely regarded as the first success for Monk; according to Orrin Keepnews, "It was the first that made a real splash."
After having his cabaret card restored, Monk relaunched his New York career with a landmark six-month residency at the Five Spot Cafe in New York beginning in June 1957, leading a quartet that included John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. Unfortunately little of this group's music was documented, apparently because of contractual problems, Coltrane signed to Prestige at the time. One studio session was made by Riverside but only later released on Jazzland; an amateur tape from the Five Spot (not the original residency, it seems, but a later 1958 reunion) was uncovered in the 1990s and issued on Blue Note. On November 29 that year the quartet performed at Carnegie Hall and the concert was recorded in high fidelity by the Voice of America broadcasting service. The long-lost tape of that concert was rediscovered in the collection of the Library of Congress in January 2005. In 1958 Johnny Griffin took Coltrane's place as tenor player in Monk's band.
In 1958, Monk and de Koenigswarter were detained by police in Wilmington, Delaware. When Monk refused to answer the policemen's questions or cooperate with them, they beat him with a blackjack. Though the police were authorized to search the vehicle and found narcotics in suitcases held in the trunk of the Baroness's car, Judge Christie of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that the unlawful detention of the pair, and the beating of Monk, rendered the consent to the search void as given under duress. State v. De Koenigswarter, 177 A.2d 344 (Del. Super. 1962). Monk was represented by Theophilus Nix, the second African-American member of the Delaware Bar Association.
Columbia Records (1962–1970)
In 1962, Monk signed to Columbia Records, one of the big four American record labels of the day along with RCA Victor, Capitol, and Decca. He had not recorded a studio album since 5 By Monk By 5 in June of 1959, a year that had seen the dual innovations of free jazz by Ornette Coleman, and modal jazz by Miles Davis via his landmark LP on Columbia, Kind of Blue, enter the jazz world. Monk jumped ship to Columbia as he ran out his contract to Riverside via a series of live albums, working with producer Teo Macero on his debut for the label.[3] Featuring a stable line-up that had been with him for two years, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist John Ore, and drummer Frankie Dunlop, sessions in the first week of November yielded the Columbia debut released in 1963, Monk's Dream.
The resources at Columbia allowed Monk to be promoted more widely than earlier in his career. Monk's Dream would remain the best-selling LP of his lifetime, and on February 28, 1964, Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and was featured in the article, "The Loneliest Monk". He continued to record a number of well-reviewed studio albums, particularly the debut, Criss Cross also from 1963, and Underground from 1968. But by the Columbia period his compositional output was much reduced, and only his final Columbia studio record Underground featured a substantial number of new tunes, including his only waltz time piece, "Ugly Beauty."
As had been the case with Riverside, his period with Columbia Records contains many live albums, including Miles and Monk at Newport from 1963, Live at the It Club and Live at the Jazz Workshop, both from 1964 with the latter relased in 1982. After the departure of Ore and Dunlop, the rhythm section of Monk's quartet during the bulk of his Columbia period was rounded out by Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums, both of whom joined in 1964 and would, along with Rouse, be his longest-serving band for over four years.
Later life
Monk had disappeared from the scene by the mid-1970s, and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last studio recordings were completed in November 1971, near the end of a worldwide tour with "The Giants of Jazz", which also included Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, Art Blakey, Kai Winding and Al McKibbon.Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip" sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses, and he developed an unusual, highly syncopated and percussive manner of playing piano. He was also noted for the fact that at times he would stop playing, stand up from the keyboard and dance while turning in a clockwise fashion, ring-shout style, while the other musicians in the combo played. Bassist Al McKibbon, who had known Monk for over twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said: "On that tour Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning', 'Goodnight', 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly." A different side of Monk is revealed in Lewis Porter's biography, John Coltrane: His Life and Music; Coltrane states: "Monk is exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]: he talks about music all the time, and he wants so much for you to understand that if, by chance, you ask him something, he'll spend hours if necessary to explain it to you."
The documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) attributes Monk's quirky behaviour to mental illness. In the film, Monk's son, T.S. Monk, says that his father sometimes did not recognize him, and he reports that Monk was hospitalized on several occasions due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late 1960s. No reports or diagnoses were ever publicized, but Monk would often become excited for two or three days, pace for days after that, after which he would withdraw and stop speaking. Physicians recommended electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment option for Monk's illness, but his family would not allow it; antipsychotics and lithium were prescribed instead.[8][9] Other theories abound: Leslie Gourse, author of the book Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk (1997), reports that at least one of Monk's psychiatrists failed to find evidence of manic depression or schizophrenia. Others blamed Monk's behavior on intentional and inadvertent drug use: Monk was unknowingly administered LSD, and may have taken peyote with Timothy Leary. Another physician maintains that Monk was misdiagnosed and given drugs during his hospital stay that may have caused brain damage.
As his health declined, Monk's last six years were spent as a guest in the New Jersey home of his long-standing patron, Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, who had also nursed Charlie Parker during his final illness. Monk didn't play the piano during this time, even though one was present in his room, and he spoke to few visitors. Monk died of a stroke on February 17, 1982 and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Since his death, his music has been rediscovered by a wider audience and he is now counted alongside the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and others as a major figure in the history of jazz. In 1993, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2006, Monk was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.
Who Knows
Thelonious Monk Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
It means more to me than just a night
That we share
So make sure that you′re prepared
Baby and know that love is not just something to do
It's the moment that transcends
Our physical into a more spiritual level of understanding
Somehow this night
Just might lead us into a place
Where our emotions can grow if we let them go
Cause who knows
What may happen
If we act on our attractions
And loose ourselves
Inside a world made for us
And no one else
Hey girl just let me love you
Now ain′t no need to be afraid
Cause I'll be as gentle as it takes
To provide you with the right amount of
Pleasure and pain and I'll
Make sure that you feel alright
Even if it takes me all night
Cause the joy is all mine
When I know your satisfied
So lets keep giving all we got
Listen, now I can see it in your eyes (yeah)
(I can handle whatever′s on your mind)
That you want to baby just as bad as I do
(And girl I wanna give it to you)
Now if you can just set aside your fears
And just try to deal with what′s going on with us right now
Oh baby girl
Come on and let me love you
The Thelonious Monk song, "Who Knows," is a love song that speaks about the significance of love and spirituality. In the first verse, the singer expresses that the moment they share goes beyond just a physical interaction. It is an invitation to the listener to prepare themselves for an emotional and spiritual exploration of love. The second verse is a reassurance to the partner that there is no need to fear or hold back. The singer promises to be gentle and take time to provide the right balance of pleasure and pain. They express their joy in the partner’s satisfaction and the importance of both partners giving their all. The singer urges the listener to set aside their fears and be ready to accept the love that they deserve.
The song speaks on different levels of love, its impact on the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of human existence. The lyrics suggest that love can elevate one's consciousness to a level of understanding beyond physical gratification. The singer is willing to provide emotional and physical support to their partner, showing that love goes beyond just physical attraction. The song’s calm and reassuring tone conveys a sense of care and concern towards the partner's emotional wellbeing.
Line by Line Meaning
Now what we came here to do
The reason for being here is more than just spending the night together
It means more to me than just a night
This isn't just a casual encounter, it is more significant than that
That we share
What is being shared is something more intimate than just physical attraction
So make sure that you're prepared
Be ready for something more profound than just a physical encounter
Baby and know that love is not just something to do
Love is more than just a physical activity, it transcends to a spiritual level
It's the moment that transcends
The moment being shared is something that goes beyond the physical realm
Our physical into a more spiritual level of understanding
Going beyond the physical to a more enlightened state of being
And who knows
There's no telling
Somehow this night
There's something special about this evening
Just might lead us into a place
It could take us to a realm beyond the physical
Where our emotions can grow if we let them go
If we allow ourselves, our emotions can develop beyond the physical and spiritual states
Cause who knows
There's no predicting what may happen
What may happen
There's no telling what is possible
If we act on our attractions
If we allow ourselves to act on our impulses
And loose ourselves
Get lost in the experience
Inside a world made for us
In a space that is just for us
And no one else
Without any outside influence
Hey girl just let me love you
Allow me to love you in a way that is beyond the physical
Now ain't no need to be afraid
There's no reason to feel scared
Cause I'll be as gentle as it takes
I'll be as caring and gentle as necessary
To provide you with the right amount of
To give you what you need in the correct measure
Pleasure and pain and I'll
Experience the mix of sensations
Make sure that you feel alright
Ensure that you are comfortable and content
Even if it takes me all night
No matter how long it takes, I will make sure you're okay
Cause the joy is all mine
The happiness I feel is from your satisfaction
When I know your satisfied
I'm content when I know you're content
So lets keep giving all we got
Let's continue with our emotional and physical connection
Listen, now I can see it in your eyes (yeah)
I can sense what you're feeling
(I can handle whatever's on your mind)
I'm here to support you and deal with any issues you have
That you want to baby just as bad as I do
You desire this just as strongly as I do
(And girl I wanna give it to you)
I want to fulfill your emotional and physical needs
Now if you can just set aside your fears
If you can temporarily forget about your concerns
And just try to deal with what's going on with us right now
Focus on the special moment we're sharing right now
Oh baby girl
Darling
Come on and let me love you
Allow me to love you beyond the physical plane
Writer(s): Thelonious Monk, Monk Thelonious
Contributed by Charlie T. Suggest a correction in the comments below.