Thelonious Monk: the Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D. G. Kelley (review) David H. Anthony III Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, Volume 4, Number 2, Spring 2016, pp. 111-113 (Review) Published by Indiana University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/622191 Access provided by University of California @ Santa Cruz (4 Jun 2018 19:50 GMT) Book Reviews 111 INDYA J. JACKSON is a PhD student in the Department of English at The Ohio State Uni- versity. Her research is most interested in literary nationalism of the Black Arts movement. Jackson holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Tuskegee University and a Master’s degree in English literature from The Ohio State University. ([email protected]) doi:10.2979/spectrum.4.2.11 ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. New York, NY: Free Press, 2009. vi + 588 pp. ISBN 9780684831909 cloth. Decades before the millennial Brooklyn Renaissance, this exciting but woefully overlooked New York City borough held its own as an innovative showplace for African American improvisational music, or “jazz.” This found expression in clubs like the Blue Coronet, La Marchal, et. al. Further performance possibilities appearing in the sixties, seventies, and eighties were a series of concerts orga- nized by promoter and tireless impresario Jim Harrison, typically featuring aggre- gations of extraordinarily talented creative artists. At one, this writer joined a crowd convening at 8 PM on a Friday in a converted church to witness units led by Alice Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and Thelonious Monk, inter alia. It ended the following morning, Saturday, at 7 AM. On this occasion Monk played a short set, accompanied by Wilbur Ware on bass and Ben Riley on drums. Monk played with his back to the house on a piano that had seen better days; he made it into a Steinway. It is trite but too often true that it may take years for audiences and critics to catch up to pioneer artists. In the case of musicians, it can be their peers who will know and say so first, but real innovation can be risky. Even if a “new thing” is detected, it is difficult to safeguard rights of acknowledgment and remunera- tion. So it was with Thelonious Monk (1917–1982), protagonist of a dozen stud- ies, one of which stands head and shoulders above the rest. In the magisterial tome Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, spanning 29 chapters, a postlude, and two appendices, sociocultural historian, public intellec- tual (and deft ivory tickler) Robin Davis Gibran Kelley has executed a tour de force worthy of his subject. Monk was a prime, indeed premier architect of a genre of improvisational music that came to be called “bebop.” However, this was a designation 112 SPECTRUM 4.2 he personally despised as trivializing serious artistic endeavor. As Kelley tells it, Monk saw himself as the teacher of others who literally capitalized on his inno- vations, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, and Miles Davis. In 1957, cashiered by Miles and struggling to kick a crippling heroin habit, John Coltrane found refuge in the pedagogy and precision of the incomparable composer-performer Monk. After serving his grueling apprenticeship with “the High Priest,” involving daily tuition and nightly examination, Coltrane himself catapulted to the top rank of practitioners. Kelley’s Monk is like none we have seen before; we are unlikely to see an- other like him again. Sadly, much “jazz” reportage, as readers readily realize, is marred by more than its share of miscreants, mythmakers, and malcontents. Since almost anyone can present himself as an “authority” in the field, carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen abound. As with athletics, this is further compli- cated by “race.” Critics, mostly White, regularly rant of “natural,”“unschooled,” and “instinctive” talent, as if practice and tutelage never occurred. The upshot of this is that nonsense gets produced and reproduced before being granted cre- dence as “fact.” Monk, then, was at times a victim of this documented idiocy. Kelley systematically shows how this paper trail of preposterous and puerile pomposity has obscured the life and labors of the real Thelonious Monk. Kelley’s method is straightforward. Over a decade and a half he assembled and interviewed as many people as knew Monk who were still breathing. He de- veloped a close relationship with Nellie, Monk’s widow and muse, who gave him access to hours of private recordings and scores bearing Monk’s hand. He used his considerable skills to reconstruct not only the musician’s genealogy, but the stages of his growth as a piano pupil, a performer, then a composer, arranger, and inspiration of successive generations of imitators. Chapters are titled with a phrase or sentence Monk uttered, complemented by a parenthetical chronologue. Kelley is insightful regarding relations between Black musicians of southern birth and Antillean ancestry, highlighting cleavages arising from the contrasting cir- cumstances and consciousness that sometimes divided them. He is also scrupulous in tracing the stories behind individual compositions, telling how they were credited, as well as who got paid for them—and who did not. He traces name changes and offers several revelations. The famed “Round Midnight,” for example, started as “I Need You So,” initially credited to Thelma Elizabeth Murray, a singer Monk requested to write lyrics to his love anthem to Nellie, granting her authorship in 1943. A year later, Bud Powell, Cootie Williams, and lyricist Bernie Hanighen slightly altered the bridge then recorded and copyrighted it under their own names along with Monk’sas“Round Midnight.” Book Reviews 113 Above all, this is an effort to set the record straight. Monk had a sense of humor but he was as serious as a heart attack about his process. He worked inces- santly, pushing himself and others to improvise at their highest level. Like Duke Ellington, he was able to select the best interpreters of his music and drilled them until they got it right, no matter how long it took. In common with many masters, he preferred that players first get a melody under their fingers, hearing and feeling it, before pulling out his charts. When and if they asked to see them, he shared them, but he helped them learn using all their senses, bar for bar, note for note. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original is a fitting trib- ute to an innovator who saw, heard, and played notes others had to learn to listen to. It teaches that the African American artistic tradition of spontaneous composi- tion, known as improvisation, results from steady effort. While talent and genius are terms that do apply to Monk, these qualities must be honed and nurtured by teaching and practice, i.e., work. Those engaged in it, many of whom have been, are, and shall be of African descent, whether we call them cultural workers or artists, undertake arduous skilled labor like other toilers, not as “natural” creatures but as sentient beings. Monk read and wrote notation and could breeze through the Western pianistic canon from Bach to Chopin and beyond. Anyone who seri- ously listened to him should have been able to hear that. DAVID H. ANTHONY, III DAVID H. ANTHONY, III, author of Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior (New York University Press, 2006) teaches African history, African cinema, and African American history. He explores linkages between art, culture, society, and faith tra- ditions. ([email protected]) doi:10.2979/spectrum.4.2.12.

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