From our overstocked archives
Circulating on the web are some great quotes from Thelonious Monk, as collated by fellow musician Steve Lacy. Some excerpts:
- Just because you're not a drummer, doesn't mean that you don't have to keep time.
- Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.
- Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!
- Make the drummer sound good.
- You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
- Don't play the piano part, I am playing that. Don't listen to me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!
- The inside of the tune [the bridge] is the part that makes the outside sound good.
- Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.
- What you don't play can be more important than what you do play.
- A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
- Stay in shape. Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he's out of shape & can't make it.
- (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!
- Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
- They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.
Your editor never heard Monk, but recalls one evening in the late
1950s a friend returned from a Boston club to report seeing Thelonious
sit at the piano for innumerable choruses, just smoking and listening to
the bass player and playing no more than one or two notes. Someone at a
front table shouted out, "Hey, Thelonious, play something." Monk let his
cigarette drop to the floor and then kicked it onto the complainer's
table. He then got up and slowly stalked the outside aisle of the club
before leaving and reportedly ended up in a mental institution that
night.
Wikipedia - 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. 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.
One last Monk tale found in a web comment: "My dad grew up in
the Village in the 40's and 50's and saw Monk play dozens of times. One
time he was at the bar at one of the clubs and in between sets Monk
comes up next to him, orders a Coke, drinks it down, looks at my dad and
says 'man, if alcohol tasted like Coke, the whole world would be
drunk.' He then goes back and starts his next set.
1 comment:
I saw him in a concert in 1965 in a big hall, his dancing was the highlight, off balance. Which is his music. He once advocated that improvisation stay inside the inside. His solos are better than his melodies- which may be the point. Whereas the old Germans like Beethoven studied Handel etc., except for his band, like Charlie Rouse, seems no one studied Monk as a theorist. Whether or not Frankie Dunlop was that great of a drummer, he certainly was one of the best when he played for Monk. This is like, whether or not Ben Webster was the best tenor player, he was when he played for Ellington, and Gonsalves after him. Similarly for Morton's sidemen. Like the 3 B's in classics, Morton-Ellington-Monk as bandleader/composers go.
Post a Comment