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The Life and Times of an American Original
Free Press
October 2009
On Sale: October 6, 2009
608 pages
ISBN: 0684831902
EAN: 9780684831909
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
"The piano ain't got no wrong notes!" So ranted Thelonious
Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at
the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies
shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the
birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's
greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his
musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed
behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk's hats or his
proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the
ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental,
eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us
little about the man or his music. In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive
access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as
well as on a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning
historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly
different Thelonious Monk -- witty, intelligent, generous,
politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father
and husband. Indeed, Thelonious Monk is essentially a love
story. It is a story of familial love, beginning with Monk's
enslaved ancestors from whom Thelonious inherited an
appreciation for community, freedom, and black traditions of
sacred and secular song. It is about a doting mother who
scrubbed floors to pay for piano lessons and encouraged her
son to follow his dream. It is the story of romance, from
Monk's initial heartbreaks to his lifelong commitment to his
muse, the extraordinary Nellie Monk. And it is about his
unique friendship with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, a
scion of the famous Rothschild family whose relationship
with Monk and other jazz musicians has long been the subject
of speculation and rumor. Nellie, Nica, and various friends
and family sustained Monk during the long periods of
joblessness, bipolar episodes, incarceration, health crises,
and other tragic and difficult moments. Above all, Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an
artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his
musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject,
reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the
twentieth century. Elegantly written and rich with humor and
pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern
jazz's most original composer.
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