Thelonious Monk is known as one of the most gifted jazz musicians. He was the pioneer of bebop and his influence as a pianist and composer had significant effects on different kinds of music (Monkinstitute). Music of Thelonious Monk is based on Ingrid Monson’s and Paul Berliner’s work (Solis 3). Nevertheless, Monk is famous for his improvisations, which are so outstanding that a jazz critic Whitney Balliett once pointed out “His improvisations were molten Monk compositions, and his compositions were frozen Monk improvisations.” (Deveaux 169)
Thelonious was born in North Carolina on October 10, 1917, but his family in a short time went to New York (Monkinstitute). Thelonious Monk took the first piano lesson when he was a child and at the age of 13 he became a winner of the amateur competition that was hold at the Apollo Theater (Monkinstitute).
When he was 19 years old, Thelonious played together with the house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem (Monkinstitute). Working together with this music band helped him to develop such an extraordinary style of jazz as bebop (Monkinstitute). He also shared opinion of other musicians regarding ways to reaching the harmony and understanding of different music genres (Solis 1). Monk’s style differed greatly from other of the bop musicians, but his concepts of playing saturated their works, and therefore he is considered to influence indirectly or directly on many jazz players of those times (Solis 1).
In 1947, Monk started his recordings with Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion for the Blue Note (Solis 1). These albums express his exclusive improvisational style, which is based on extraordinary reiteration of phrases, an unusual usage of dissonant sounds and space (Monkinstitute). However, Monk was not acknowledged and respected as a man of culture at the end of the 1940s (Solis 1). Unfortunately, jazz press ignored him and it seemed as he never would be as famous as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others who appeared on the stage in those times (Solis 1).
That year Monk married Nellie Smith who gave him two children (Monkinstitute). In the following decade, Thelonious recorded musical performances together with Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis, and was recognized as a front man for Prestige Records and then for Riverside Records (Monkinstitute). That time he released two albums that were named “Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane” and “Brilliant Corners” and brought Monk a worldwide fame as a composer and pianist (Monkinstitute).
The Thelonious Monk Quartet together with John Coltrane started a regular engagement at the Five Spot in 1957 (Monkinstitute). The band’s performances had a great success and the highest praises of critics (Monkinstitute). Monk had a lot of tours across U.S.A. and Europe and recorded several very significant musical compositions during the next few years (Monkinstitute). Thelonious Monk was honored to appear on the cover of Time magazine in 1964 (Monkinstitute). Despite this fact, Monk was a controversial person with extreme sensitivity to negative feedbacks of critics who were not devotees of his music (Solis 2).
During a couple of years, Monk made plenty of recordings of Tin Pan Alley music compositions (Deveaux 169). It may look odd to mark out these records for a great attention because it was absolutely normal for Monk's contemporaries to play songs that are “standards” or popular (Deveaux 169). But these performances are authentically strange and particularly for playing solo piano using the stride tradition that has a lack of the virtuos bravado or extroversion (Deveaux 169). Some of these plays are unusually out of tempo as if Thelonious was trying to give the unfolding of every accord via an extraordinary weight or to play in absent-minded way (Deveaux 169). At the same time, other chords seemed to sound mechanically and stiffly in tempo (Deveaux 169). During Monk’s improvisations horrifyingly banal passages were relieving one another with the most inexplicable and unsettling dissonance (Deveaux 169). Furthermore, they usually sound more similar to idiosyncratic and faithful renderings of the music records than simple improvisations (Deveaux 169).
The pop records that Monk was making during his career had something like vintage (Deveaux 169). Most of these songs were released during 1920-1930 years, and therefore they were considered as “standards” by the time when Monk heard them (Deveaux 169). Actually, some of his selections are very surprising (Deveaux 169). Music records such as George Gershwin's “Liza” and Fats Waller's “Honeysuckle Rose” had been added to the repertory of practically each gigging jazz player long time ago (Deveaux 169). Thelonious Monk very often played this kind of tunes with his quartet sharing solo parts with the saxophonist (Deveaux 169). But other choices, particularly for solo piano, often look like definitely old-fashioned (Deveaux 169). During 1950-1960, solo performances of such records as “Sweetheart of All My Dreams”, “Memories of You” and “Just a Gigolo” was added to the regular repertoire together with typical stock of extraordinary improvisations of his music band (Deveaux 169). When these songs were played in order to open an entertainment program of a nightclub, they were set aside in the context of three kinds of improvisations: as pop songs, as a repertory that originates from the music of the past times, and as solo piano playing (Deveaux 169).
The Monk’s style of adding dissonance to songs such as “Lulu's Back in Town” is usually created as a type of joyfully parody or disrespectful nostalgia, the whimsical humor of a musician who in the same way as the cubist artist enjoyed unfolding excluded scraps of pop culture for purposes of modernistic aesthetic values (Deveaux 169). The composition “There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie” was assuredly the best example of such kind of parody (Deveaux 169).
Deveaux also mentioned that Thelonious Monk had bumped into the melody from the collection of old songs just before he showed an ostentatious interpretation of it during recording session in 1959 (Deveaux 169). Even those tunes, which were doubtless well known to Monk, were recorded by him with a campy and broad sense of humor that made them immediately joyful (Deveaux 169). His performance of composition “Tea for Two” for Riverside in 1956 is an excellent example: the familiar tune, verging on triviality, is modified with an eccentric harmonic scheme that results in extravagant version of the circle-of-fifths play of the original melody. (Deveaux 169)
Thelonious Monk died on February 17, 1982 (Monkinstitute). His works include more than 70 compositions, which still inspire professionals of all music genres (Monkinstitute). Monk had a plenty of awards and he is still honored by many musicians (Monkinstitute). The Smithsonian Institution has given everlasting fame to work of Thelonious Monk and created an archive of his records (Monkinstitute). A documentary film about life of Monk was named “Straight, No Chaser” and was given a great praise by critics (Monkinstitute).
Another famous jazz musician of those times was Louis Armstrong. Collier characterizes him as “the cheerful, eager-to-please entertainer who mugged his way through his songs, talked a little comic jive talk, and occasionally played the trumpet, presenting a stage personality uncomfortably close to the lovable clown” (Collier 3).
Louis Armstrong breathed new life into jazz that had a great influence on different kinds of music such as: the music of the movies, TV, the theater; many variations of rock music; works of such famous musicians and composers as Poulenc, Milhaud, Copland, and many others (Collier 3). Thus, Louis Armstrong is known as the outstanding musical virtuoso of those times.
According to the Collier, he still remains the archetype of twentieth-century famous person (Collier 3). On the one hand, Louis Armstrong came from America, and in those times the world perceived U. S. A. as a birthplace of new concepts and mindsets (Collier 3). On the other hand, he represented the black part of American population, when one of the most significant worldwide political movements was striving of blacks for equality of rights (Collier 3).
Armstrong was also a great master of improvisation whose works have the same high level of extraordinary inspiration as music of Thelonious Monk. Thus, works of Louis Armstrong influenced greatly on numerous Western young musicians who preferred to use improvisation as a basic method of play (Collier 4).
Sidney Bechet was no less talented musician of 1940th than Armstrong and his music is also worthy of great attention. Yudkin thinks that “Bechet was, with Louis Armstrong, responsible for transforming the sound of jazz from an ensemble of improvisers to one that focused on a single player: the star soloist” (Yudkin 237).
Moreover, Sidney Bechet put the saxophone in the forefront of instruments used to play jazz (Yudkin 237). He was a gifted musician, with a broad timbre and resonating vibrato (Yudkin 237). Duke Ellington, a famous musician and composer, consider Bechet as “the epitome of jazz” (Yudkin 237).
As a beginning jazz performer, Sidney worked together with such great American celebrities as Bunk Johnson, Joe Oliver, and Henry Allen (Yudkin 237). Maybe Bechet is not as famous as Armstrong, who was also a vocalist, but he managed to sing strikingly via the saxophone (Jordan 8). In comparison with Louis, who is famous mainly for pop music recordings than amazing playing, Sidney Bechet didn’t reach stylistically beyond the traditions of New Orleans jazz (Jordan 8). Furthermore, Bechet remains a real benchmark for reed players of New Orleans, because he managed to capture every heart with his unique technique of playing a soprano saxophone (Jordan 8).
But there is one main thing that makes Monk similar and at the same time different in comparison to described above gifted jazz musicians. He used eccentricity and parody as a mask that conceals underlying levels of meaning (Deveaux 169).
Nowadays, there is no doubt that Thelonious Monk was an icon of American culture and jazz history (Solis 2). It becomes absolutely clear if you look through the LexisNexis database that is grounded on English-language newspapers (Solis 2). A request for his name in the 1990s provides with numerous citations, which this database still contains (Solis 2).
The main conclusion about these remarks is that very few of them are from journal and newspaper articles about Monk or his career (Solis 2). Some of them inform us about reissues of his musical recordings (Solis 2).
The uncertainty in this kind of reference shows the position of Thelonious Monk (Solis 2). His name is pointed as an indistinct but reciprocally comprehensive referent to confirm some artistic or cultural influence, and to imply hipness of counter-culture (Solis 2). Furthermore, Monk’s work is now generally noted to influence greatly on jazz players from different communities with various music’s styles (Solis 2).
The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was established to honor this damn talented jazz pianist by sustaining the music to which he devoted his life (Monkinstitute). Ingenuity, integrality, and unique technique of his work lay down a standard that is a prominent example for all who gain for musical perfection.
Woks Cited
“Thelonious Monk”. Monkinstitute.org, n.d. Web. Accessed 11 May 2016 at
< http://monkinstitute.org/about-us/thelonious-monk>
Solis, Gabriel. Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Print.
Deveaux, Scott. “Nice Work If You Can Get It: Thelonious Monk and Popular Song”. Black Music Research Journal 19.2 (1999): 169. Print.
Collier, James Lincoln. Louis Armstrong: An American Genius. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.
Yudkin, Jeremy. “Sidney Bechet: Treat It Gentle; the Lift and Times of a Jazz Master”. Yearbook for Traditional Music 42 (2010): 237. Print.
Jordan, Mark. “N.O. Transplant Pays Tribute to Jazz Pioneer”. The Commercial Appeal 18 Oct. 2013: 8. Print.
