Until someone comes along who can provide a credible explanation of the mechanics behind reincarnation, I will remain a skeptic. However, I do believe that everyone who enters the “physical plane” is wired to achieve a specific goal or life task during their stay on Earth. This manifests in what is referred to as a “calling,” a fervent interest and/or talent that drives our behavior. We all want to believe that our lives have a purpose beyond mere existence and our calling points us in the right direction.

Unfortunately, everyday life throws all sorts of obstacles in our way that distract us from achieving our purpose: social norms, parental expectations, peer pressure, judgments, and tantalizing but irrelevant pleasures. We often engage in self-sabotage by making dumb choices, taking one step forward and three steps back. Our economic systems are not designed to help people achieve their potential, so we often wind up performing work that is far removed from our desired goals. Manifesting our calling requires a combination of patience, perseverance and a stubborn belief that our purpose is the only thing that truly matters.

All the great artists in any field were imbued with that stubborn sense of purpose. I’ve never heard anyone use the phrases “starving economists” or “starving executives,” but I’ve heard of and know more than a few “starving artists.” Devoting oneself to the act of creation entails significant financial risk, especially when the artist veers from the tried-and-true. The Impressionists were considered radicals because they violated the established rules of academic painting, and many were unable to display their work in public for several years (until they banded together and decided to go indie). Even after gaining a modicum of recognition, Monet still had to stay one step ahead of his creditors.

In addition to the pecuniary risks, the more innovative artists are often subject to ridicule and disdain. Rejection is a two-way street. The innovator who rejects accepted practices is likely to face immediate and sometimes lasting rejection that can take a serious emotional toll. Some give up; some turn to drugs to ease the pain; others shoulder on, determined to overcome any obstacles that stand in the way of manifesting their calling.

In his marvelous biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin Kelley tells us how Monk found his calling during his childhood. “’A lady gave us a piano,’ Thelonious recalled. ‘The player-piano kind. I saw how the rolls made the keys move. Very interesting. Sounded pretty good to me. I felt I did not want to waste this person’s gift, so I learned to use it’ . . . Thelonious began teaching himself as soon as they rolled the old upright into the door. He banged a little, listened for differences between the black and white keys, tried to mimic his father’s two-fisted barrelhouse style, and in no time was picking out melodies he had heard on the radio or hymns his mother sang . . . Thelonious was eleven when he began taking piano lessons, although even his formal lessons began informally. He was so fascinated by the piano that he’d stay in the house during his sister’s lesson and study everything she did very carefully, including the notes on the page.”

Young Monk studied under Simon Wolf, a classical pianist and violinist, learning works by Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Liszt and Mozart, “and he loved working through some of the most difficult pieces . . . Wolf was amazed by how quickly Thelonious mastered many pieces, not to mention his curiosity about the piano’s mechanics and his wide range of musical interests.” A year or so into his training Wolf confessed, “I don’t think there will be anything I can teach him. He will go beyond me very soon.” As Monk was more interested in jazz than classical music, he soon began to explore stride piano, first learning a few licks from a neighbor and eventually attending casual get-togethers with some of the all-time stride greats, including James P. Johnson and the legendary Art Tatum.

Monk formed his first band at the age of sixteen, too young to play in New York City’s many jazz clubs. When he finally reached legal adulthood, he immediately secured a union card and landed some gigs as a house pianist, most notably at Minton’s Playhouse, one of the epicenters of the emerging bebop style and renowned for its cutting contests featuring many players who would become jazz legends. Kelley painted a vivid picture of a Monk performance at Minton’s:

Harlem. June 1941, in the wee small hours of the morning. If you could take a stroll down 118th Street, walking west from Seventh Avenue toward St. Nicholas, passing a few brownstones and parked cars, just before you got to the end of the unusually short block, you would reach the Cecil Hotel, an elegant five-story building on the south side of the street. A large, dark blue awning extends out from the building with the words “Minton’s Playhouse” emblazoned on it. You try to pass, but the faint sound of music draws you in. You climb the three small steps leading to the entrance, open the door, and suddenly you’re awash in cigarette and cigar smoke, chit-chat and laughter, and swinging music . . . You continue past the bar, past the never-ending debates and convivial conversations, past the dazed and lonesome souls nursing twenty-cent drinks, through a set of swinging doors. Now in the club proper, all you can hear is the music. To your left is a small bandstand, about twelve inches off the floor, and an equally tiny dance floor. Behind another set of swinging doors to the right is the kitchen with its delectable scent of fried chicken, greens, and candied yams. And in the middle are over a dozen tables draped with crisp, white tablecloths, surrounded by chairs. Nearly every seat is occupied, and nearly every patron is preoccupied with the music. There are moments when the music might sound altogether foreign, by comparison to the popular swing bands of the day. But to call it “revolutionary” or “avant-garde” would be an exaggeration. These young artists joyfully jam on the familiar, retaining the head-bopping, toe-tapping, danceable quality of swing music.

The most jarring sound of all is coming from the upright piano and the kid playing it. Bespectacled and clean-shaven, he’s just a little too thin for his gray pin-striped suit. You may not hear him at first, over the din of horns and drums, but when you do, you’re startled by his broken, jagged lines and sparse, dissonant chords. They sometimes sound like mistakes. The songs are familiar—“Nice Work,” “Sweet Lorraine,” “Stardust”—but the piano opens with strange introductions and his melodic lines compete with countermelodies that sound as if they don’t fit the harmony. There are moments when he sounds a little like Teddy Wilson or Earl Hines, Herman Chittison or even Art Tatum, but these are just momentary flashes. Once he gets into his solo, he elicits winces, chuckles, and nods of approval from the audience. Some folks even shout his name: “Monk! Monk!”

Kelley, Robin DG. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (p. 61-2). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Bottom line: Monk earned the respect of New York jazz aficionados and a few emerging bebop stars at a very early stage in his career. In the parlance of the national pastime, he would have been considered a “can’t miss prospect.”

So much for prospecting. For the next six years, Monk’s career was stuck in neutral. Part of the stuckness can be blamed on the war and the recording ban, but even the small labels that had cut a deal with the Musicians Union showed no interest in Monk. He appeared on a grand total of one recording with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in 1944 while continuing to perform in clubs and impromptu improv sessions. The lull had no impact on his determination to expand the boundaries of music; instead of waiting for his lucky break, he worked on his piano skills and ramped up his compositional efforts. “He’d show up at Minton’s in the afternoons to practice and usually stayed well past closing time. ‘I’ve had to come back and plead with him,’ complained Teddy Hill, ‘to quit playin’ the piano so I could close up the place ’cause it was against the law to keep it open any longer.’ From Minton’s, he would visit friends who had a piano, sometimes waking them up at an ungodly hour just so he could work out a problem or a new composition. He lived on about five hours of sleep and often skipped a meal or two.” (Kelley, ibid).

In 1947, he was introduced to the husband-and-wife team of Alfred and Lorraine Lion (later Lorraine Gordon), owners of Blue Note Records. They recorded several Monk compositions that would eventually become classics but took a helluva long time to commit the recordings to shellac. 78s finally in hand, Lorraine visited several record stores only to get the brush-off: “I went to Harlem and those record stores didn’t want Monk or me. I’ll never forget one particular owner, I can still see him and his store on Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. ‘He can’t play lady, what are you doing up here? The guy has two left hands.’ ‘You just wait,’ I’d say. ‘This man’s a genius, you don’t know anything.'” Desperate for media attention, Lorraine began marketing Monk as the true founder of bebop (as if anyone gave a shit) and then attempted to overcome the perception of Monk’s “weirdness” by embracing it:

Nineteen forty-eight became the year Thelonious Monk was invented. In fewer than two hundred words, Lorraine Lion—building on William Gottlieb—established the lens through which the entire world would come to see Monk. Elusive, mysterious, strange, eccentric, weird, genius—these were the foundational adjectives that formed the caricature of Monk. It was Lion who dubbed Thelonious the “High Priest of Bebop,”57 re-presenting him to jazz audiences as a kind of mystic. His reputation for lateness, unreliability, and drunkenness only added to his image as an eccentric, as did stories of his sleeplessness and nocturnal adventures in search of someone’s piano to play. Neither Lion nor Gottlieb nor anyone else seems to have considered that these episodes, or his fits of obsessive creativity, could have been early signs of manic depression. Monk’s behavior was weird and made good copy. Blue Note’s marketing campaign marked the beginning of Monk’s iconization, his transformation into what critic Nat Hentoff called “a stock cartoon figure for writers of Sunday supplement pieces about the exotica of jazz.” Monk became a novelty, marketed to the public for his strangeness—his name, his music, his bodily gestures, his famous non-verbal communication, his unpredictability. “Pictures of Monk in dark glasses and goatee,” Hentoff later observed, “would usually be captioned ‘Mad Monk’ or ‘The High Priest of Bop.’ Exaggerated stories of his personal life were the ‘substance’ of the articles. There was no attempt to discuss the nature or seriousness of his musical intentions. Monk became part of the Sabbath sideshow of resurrected murderers, celebrated divorce cases, and Elsa Maxwell.”

Kelley, Robin DG. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (p. 132). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Given the virtually non-existent response from the record-buying public, it’s safe to say that Blue Note’s counterintuitive marketing plan only made it more difficult for jazz fans to take Monk seriously and burdened him with another obstacle to overcome.

As if being tagged as a weirdo wasn’t enough, Monk fell afoul of the law when the NYPD launched a warrantless search of a car occupied by Monk, fellow jazz pianist Bud Powell, and two of Powell’s “friends” and found a bag of heroin Powell had tossed onto the car floor next to Monk’s feet. When questioned, Monk denied that the smack was his but refused to admit it was Powell’s. His refusal to testify against his pal—combined with his inability to cough up the $1500 bail—earned him a sixty-day stay on Riker’s Island. Making things worse, the fuzz confiscated Monk’s cabaret card, meaning he could no longer play in any New York joint where they peddled booze—a significant hit to his already modest income, especially for a guy trying to raise a family. Over the next five years Monk shouldered on, playing gigs in law-flouting clubs in the boroughs, various out-of-town venues and an unexpected set of appearances in Paris. Though the Paris gigs were something of a mess because the French musicians assigned to play with Monk had a hard time following his idiosyncratic stylings, the trip was hardly a waste of time. During his stay, Monk recorded a solo session for French radio, after which Mary Lou Williams introduced him to Baroness Pannonica “Nica” de Koenigswarter (nee Rothschild), a jazz fanatic who had befriended and supported many jazz musicians in New York and would become the patron and champion Monk desperately needed.

Monk moved to Prestige Records in 1952, and despite another batch of brilliant compositions and the presence of top-tier jazz artists (Sonny Rollins, Max Roach and Art Blakey), none of the five LPs drew much interest from either record buyers or critics. In an interview with Collector’s Weekly, jazz producer Michael Cuscuna explained the conundrum:

When you jump to the modern era, starting in ’47, the sessions with Thelonious Monk must have been fairly astonishing to hear. Even when I heard them 10 years later it was astonishing. Monk was like this fully formed alien that had just landed on earth. The thing about Monk is that everything sounds wrong, but it’s perfectly right. It always sounds like it’s going to fall over the cliff, but it never does. Everything fits in place. It always works.

Alfred Lion told me that there were three people in his life that when he heard them, he just flipped and had to record everything they did. The first was Monk, the second was Herbie Nichols, and the third was Andrew Hill, where he didn’t care how much money he made or lost. He just had to record this music.

Unfortunately, I don’t think people were ready for it at all. Monk went to Prestige in ’52 for about two or three years, and he sold horribly on Prestige, too.

Cuscuna ends his commentary by noting, “Then he went to Riverside, a startup label. Riverside really hammered away at trying to get Monk recognition.” The strategy employed by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer was to have Monk record more familiar pieces written by established composers to allow the listening public to get used to his unconventional style. The owners suggested that Monk could begin by covering Duke Ellington, and as the Duke was one of Monk’s cherished heroes, they had no problem gaining his acceptance. Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington earned Monk a few more plaudits from jazz critics, while some complained that the music was “restrained,” a fair assessment that Robin Kelley attributed to Kenny Clarke’s lackluster performance on the drum kit. Though the album wasn’t a best-seller, it did achieve the goal of making Monk a bit more accessible to borderline jazz fans.

The recording of the follow-up album was delayed when Monk’s mother passed away, which “sent Monk spiraling into depression” (Kelley).  The strategy for The Unique Thelonious Monk involved interpretations of standards in a wide range of styles, featuring compositions from the Gershwin brothers, Eubie Blake, Fats Waller and Rogers & Hart. The first session took place on St. Patrick’s Day, 1956, with Art Blakey replacing Kenny Smith on drums. Halfway through the recording process, a fire in the Monk family’s apartment destroyed most of their possessions, including Monk’s piano. The family was forced to move in with Monk’s best friend Sonny Smith, his wife Geraldine and their seven children, making for a total of fifteen people sharing a three-bedroom apartment with no piano in sight.

Once again, Monk shouldered on. The recording was completed in a second session on April 3 and released a few months later. The critical reception was mildly positive, but now the critics (including some who panned Monk’s early recordings of his originals) complained that Riverside was “denying Monk the opportunity to record his own music” (Kelley). Unbeknownst to those Johnny-come-lately’s, Riverside had always planned to take Monk off the leash for the third album. Monk began assembling his band for what would become Brilliant Corners, aiming to build a group of first-rate musicians capable of performing his often challenging compositions and wound up with a pretty impressive lineup: Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Ernie Henry (alto sax), Max Roach (drums) and Oscar Pettiford (bass).

Still lacking a piano, Monk held the initial rehearsals at Nica’s place, where the players spent long nights learning his compositions without the benefit of charts: “Like Duke Ellington, he genuinely believed that the best way to master a song is to learn it by ear” (Kelley). His teaching methodology and the sheer complexity of some of his compositions would create some dissension once the band entered the studio, but by now, Monk was a master at overcoming obstacles, and with a huge assist from Orrin Keepnews, everything turned out well in the end. From Jazz Daily: “Brilliant Corners was met with critical acclaim upon its release. Down Beat magazine, one of the most respected voices in jazz journalism, awarded the album five stars. Nat Hentoff, the magazine’s editor at the time, called it ‘Riverside’s most important modern jazz LP to date,’ a sentiment echoed by many other critics. The album was praised for its innovation, complexity, and emotional depth, with critics recognizing Monk’s compositions as some of the most forward-thinking in jazz.” Monk’s career trajectory would soon rise to unimaginable heights as he released a series of studio and live albums lauded by critics and fans alike, often featuring some of the biggest names in jazz.

It’s always nice when the good guys win.

*****

“Brilliant Corners” (Thelonious Monk): After perusing several versions of the sheet music and reading a dozen or so interpretations of the structure, I found that the only aspect of “Brilliant Corners” to earn universal agreement was that the piece was a blues number set to 4/4 time in the key of Bb. Monk being Monk, I wasn’t surprised to find him guilty of several key violations—flattening flats, naturalizing flats and introducing dissonant chords like Bb/A7. The sticking point for musicologists and critics involves the structure following Monk’s distinctive introduction: some argue for a thirty-bar pattern of 8-8-7-7, while others insist on a twenty-two-bar pattern of 8-7-7. Either way you look at it, the pattern is two bars short of classic 24 or 32-bar blues. The melodic progression also features a healthy number of rests ranging from whole rests to eighth rests, indicating syncopation—nothing particularly out of the ordinary on paper, but when combined with the unusual pattern, I can understand why those stuck in the 24-bar or 32-bar paradigm might have found those rests equally problematic.

Monk’s truncation threw most of the ensemble’s members for a loop. Sonny Rollins was the only player to master the pattern, having spent more time working with Monk during the rehearsal period. Ernie Henry had some difficulty with it but gave it his best shot. Max Roach wasn’t particularly happy with the departure from norms but managed to pull it off because . . . well, because he’s Max Roach. As for Pettiford . . . what a dick!

Keepnews concurs: ”’I don’t remember that Sonny had any problems, but Max and Oscar Pettiford did. It almost caused a fistfight between Pettiford and Monk. Monk was a forgiving guy, but after that session he never mentioned Pettiford’s name.’ Pettiford became so angry that, on one take, he only pretended to play, strumming his fingers over the strings without producing a sound.”

Kelley, Robin DG. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (p. 211). (Function). Kindle Edition.

The players can’t say that Monk didn’t warn them of the challenges ahead in his four-bar solo introduction. The most distinctive part of the solo involves his emphasis on the set of four out-of-key eighth notes (Db), repeated twice in the pattern. Monk slips out of the Bb scale nine times in four bars, flattening and naturalizing with what appears to be sheer abandon—but as predicted by Michael Cuscuna, “everything sounds wrong, but it’s perfectly right.” After two albums of covering standards, that brief introduction confirms that Monk had no intentions of becoming a full-time interpreter and abandoning his quest to explore new directions in music.

The ensemble enters with Sonny Rollins thankfully taking the lead role in introducing the main theme, initially performed to a slow walk tempo. Monk certainly didn’t take it easy on Sonny when he developed the composition, challenging Sonny’s lung capacity by forcing him to play a pattern of eight flattened sixteenth notes at the near-bottom of the tenor sax range, repeated in various spots throughout the composition. I’m sure Sonny checked his pads before every run-through, as any leakage would have blown (pun intended) the entire sequence. For the average saxophonist, such a demand might qualify as pure torture, but Sonny Rollins was not your average mug. Meanwhile, Max Roach does a superb job supporting the solo, filling the empty spaces with tight drum rolls and some pretty slick work on the cymbals.

A bit after the one-minute mark, the tempo moves to double time for a few bars, where Rollins “takes seriously Monk’s insistence on using melody as the basis for improvisation” (Kelley) while Monk plays a light counterpoint. Sonny’s solo continues when the tempo shifts back to straight time, where he produces a gorgeous, soulful improvisation on the theme while Monk comps his efforts with a gentle touch and sweet chord combinations. Like the Energizer Bunny, Rollins keeps on going, restating the main theme all the way through another segment in double time where he begins his fade and turns things over to the pianist, who eases the rhythm back to straight time. Monk’s extended solo features everything I love about the guy—his amazing dexterity, his mastery of syncopation, his faithfulness to the theme and those delightfully surprising intervallic leaps. When listening to this solo, I sometimes get the feeling that his fingers are trying to tell the piano to do something impossible—something beyond the white and black keys, a sound that only exists in his fervent imagination. And though Max Roach may have bitched about this or that, he does a superb job following Monk’s lead, no matter what unexpected direction the bandleader chooses to take.

It’s almost impossible to follow Monk, and while I can understand the desire to mix in the alto sax, Ernie Henry’s shot at a solo is nowhere near as interesting as Sonny’s or Monk’s turns in the spotlight. Henry takes a more laid-back approach with fewer notes and longer rests, likely due to his discomfort with the piece. In comparison to the flurries from Sonny and Monk, his solo feels like a bit of a letdown—even more so when Max Roach follows Henry’s efforts with a drum solo that feels more like a mini-symphony (if such a thing were possible). The piece closes with a restatement of the main theme in both straight time and double time, where Monk provides perfectly timed fills in response in support of the motif.

And guess what? After spending four hours wrestling with “Brilliant Corners,” the ensemble was unable to record the piece all the way through—not even once! Producer Orrin Keepnews was left with twenty-five incomplete takes and no knowledge in the art of splicing. Fortunately for posterity, he decided it was a good time to learn. Robin Kelley declared Keepnews’ efforts “stunning” with only one obvious splice at the end of the drum solo. Personally, I think he missed a splice in the space between the Henry and Roach solos, but I would also declare his work “stunning,” especially given the complexity and sheer originality of the piece. “Brilliant Corners” achieved Monk’s goal of introducing new variations in jazz, and from a compositional standpoint, it is a brilliant piece of work.

I always assumed that the title “Brilliant Corners” reflected the extended tonic range of the composition . . . and I could be right . . . or I could be wrong. As noted in a guest post by Monk researcher Jerry Suls on Playback With Lewis Porter there are several hypotheses—some involving the musical architecture and others arguing that the “brilliant corners” are a reference to jazz clubs located on various “corners” in Manhattan. In the end, Suls leans towards one hypothesis . . . with an asterisk:

However, when I inquired with Joel Forrester, co-leader of the Microscopic Septet, and close friend of the Baroness “Pannonica,” he wrote, “I’ve no idea about ‘Brilliant Corners,’ except that it reduces to [has the same meaning as] Sharp Turns, which is just what happens⎯in both the heads and the solos⎯halfway through the form: the time doubles up.”

Forrester’s explanation seems to me to be the most straightforward, although without additional information, “Brilliant Corners” remains a puzzle, which may have been intentional on Monk’s part.

As reflected in his many compositions and interpretations, it’s obvious that Monk’s brain had unique wiring, so I guess we’ll never know.

CONSUMER WARNING!! Do not . . . I repeat, DO NOT waste your time listening to the 1968 version of “Brilliant Corners” that appears on the album Monk’s Blues. It’s a Big Band arrangement that sounds like it could have been used as the opening theme to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Monk’s contribution qualifies as a cameo and the band has no feel whatsoever for his music. Yecch!

“Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are” (Thelonious Monk): According to Kelley, the title reflects “Nica’s incessant troubles with the management at the Bolivar Hotel . . . They were constantly trying to get rid of her, complaining about her late-night parties and musician friends—Thelonious included.” According to the altrockchick (who?) in a review of Monk’s Dream, “‘Bolivar Blues'” appeared under a different title on another Riverside album, Brilliant Corners, but in a much slower tempo with amazing saxophone performances by Sonny Rollins (tenor) and Ernie Henry (alto). To me, they’re two completely different pieces based on the same motif, with Monk’s intro containing clear signs of boogie-woogie on this version, while the original is late-night sexy and lasts for over thirteen glorious minutes. If you’re in the mood for quirky-cheerful, go with the Monk’s Dream version; if you’re in the mood for a perfect accompaniment to foreplay, go with the original.”

Lots to unpack here, so let’s get on with it.

Monk’s contributions to music involved two distinct phases. The creative period covered his recordings with Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside from 1947-1961. The Columbia period spanned the years 1962-1969, during which Monk’s compositional output plummeted. Most of his Columbia catalog involved fresh takes on original compositions from the creative period and covers of standards. In the years before Monk signed on with Columbia, head producer George Avakian had been on a mission to increase public appreciation of jazz and the label had cut deals with several jazz greats (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, etc.) so it was hardly surprising that Monk went with Columbia when his relationship with Riverside soured. Columbia shared Riverside’s desire to make Monk more accessible to the public, which explains the homogenization of the title, replacing Monk’s playful vocalization with the rather dull “Bolivar Blues.” In terms of quality, the Columbia recordings are “cleaner” from a sonic perspective, less improvisational, but not necessarily “better.”

“Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are” eschews the aforementioned complications of “Brilliant Corners” and features an easy-to-follow structure where the musicians take turns soloing. The piece opens with the full ensemble presenting the motif set to a tempo I would call a “sophisticated strut.” The first solo goes to Ernie Henry, who obviously feels more comfortable with the slow blues feel and delivers a solo Kelley tagged as “Ernie Henry’s finest moment on record. There is a crying, human quality in his sound; his solo, with its slurred, loping notes, tells a story in the best tradition of the blues.” Unsurprisingly, I would characterize the solo as “fucking sexy” and a marvelous comeback after his rocky performance on “Brilliant Corners.” Monk gets the next solo, initially restating the theme while adding his fair share of awkward pauses, off-key notes and impressive runs up and down the keyboard. Pianists have limits when it comes to the blues because they can’t bend the notes but Monk’s note patterns create the illusion that he has climbed into the piano to get the damn thing to bend. Rollins leaves the on-deck circle and steps into the spotlight with Monk providing contrasting major chords and a few bluesy riffs in the near background and I have a hard time deciding which brilliant performance to lock onto. What happens next is a common bugaboo in many early jazz recordings. It seems like Monk is about to take another solo, but the sparseness of his patterns would indicate otherwise. It takes a few more seconds for the listener to realize that the segment is intended to give Oscar Pettiford a shot at a bass solo but his offerings are nearly inaudible, requiring the listener to crank up the volume so you can hear his exceptional bending ability. You’ll want to turn it down at the 11:22 mark when Max whacks (hey, that rhymes!) the snare to let everyone know he’s ready to confirm his status as one of the greatest drummers in jazz history. The piece ends full circle with a return to the main motif . . . as it should. Great job, guys!

“Pannonica” (Thelonious Monk): Brilliant Corners was recorded at Reeves Sound Studios on 304 East Forty-fourth Street, a convenient location for jazz players planning to make post-gig recordings. Reeves was primarily designed to make film soundtracks but became Riverside’s go-to studio sometime in the 1950s. Because film soundtracks are quite diverse, the studio stored all sorts of instruments . . . two of which pertain to our narrative.

As “Pannonica” is the second song inspired by Nica you should probably know more about the Baroness. From Raise Up Off Me: A Portrait of Hampton Hawes:

This bitch was so rich she had permanent tables reserved at all the clubs and a number you could call from anywhere in New York to get a private cab. If I was sick or fucked up I’d call the number and the cab would come and carry me direct to her pad. On my off nights she’d sometimes pick me up in her Bentley and we’d go around to the clubs. At the Five Spot, listening to John Coltrane’s bass player Wilbur Ware solo, if I turned to her and said, “You know what, Nica, Wilbur Ware can play,” she’d answer in her little clipped British accent, “Oh, yes, he’s a motherfucker.”

I had heard that when she was younger and living with her family in England her brother turned her on to some jazz records, and when she later moved to Mexico with her husband, a French baron, she’d often split to New York to hear the music and hang out with the musicians. There are other embellishments to the story — her husband breaking her records and threatening to kick her out of the house — but the only important truth is that she loved music and musicians and dedicated her life to them. Her pad became a place to drop in and hang out, any time, for any reason. Monk would fall by, Sonny Rollins with his new record, Horace Silver who wrote “Nica’s Dream” for her. She’d give money to anyone who was broke, bring bags of groceries to their families, help them get their cabaret cards, which you needed to work in New York.

Oh, how I long to live in an age when rich people weren’t despicable assholes.

Robin Kelley gives us some insight into the motivation behind the song: “Nica recorded it on her portable Wollensack reel-to-reel tape recorder sometime in the summer of 1956, soon after Monk completed it. It is his spoken preamble that interests us: ‘It was named after this beautiful lady here. I think her father gave her that name after a butterfly that he tried to catch. I don’t think he caught the butterfly.'” (Kelley)

When he arrived at Reeves, Monk couldn’t resist the temptation to take a peek into the storeroom where they kept the instruments and serendipitously stumbled upon a celeste. He immediately thought of using the gentle bell-like sounds on “Pannonica,” perhaps to give the song a touch of butterfly. Despite the existence of multi-track recording (thanks to Les Paul), Monk insisted on playing both piano and celeste at the same time. “He positioned it perpendicular to the piano, which allowed him to play it with his right hand while playing chords with his left, resulting in a strange and jarring juxtaposition of sound.” (Kelley)

The brief opening passage featuring Monk’s acrobatics does carry a sense of mystery, intensified by his decision to play both instruments at the low end of the keyboard. He cues the players with a rising figure on the celeste that reminds us of its typical role in music—to communicate magic and fantasy. Rollins and Henry lead the way during the initial melodic statement, played in a languorous tempo that allows the listener to savor every note, then continue to improvise on the melody for several minutes. When composing the piece, Monk tossed a curveball into the mix with a structure of 33 bars set to a pattern of 8-8-8-9. This gave both Rollins and Henry some trouble during the recording session, and when you listen closely, you’ll often hear Monk supplying the extra beat on the piano.

The segment of the piece with the greatest emotional impact comes in the form of Monk’s two-instrument solo, which begins around the 4:23 mark. He opens on the piano with some pretty nifty runs, then eases up on the tempo when he turns to the celeste to supply the core melody while playing low chords on the piano. Sensing new possibilities, he begins to expand the melody to include new patterns as he savors the softer tone of the instrument. There are moments when it feels like he’s holding a baby in his arms, lightly caressing the keyboard as if he is trying to soothe the child. The sheer tenderness of the passage brings tears to my eyes every time.

“Pannonica” was blessed with one of Monk’s most beautiful melodies, and Jon Hendricks was so taken by the melody that he wrote lyrics for the song, christening his version “Little Butterfly.” Carmen McRae covered the song on Carmen Sings Monk; I’ve included her version below the Monk original for those who may be interested.

At this point, there was a two-month break in the recording process due to prior commitments on the part of Rollins and Roach. The delay (coupled with the desire to finish the album) led to changes in both the modus operandi and the lineup.

“I Surrender, Dear” (Harry Barris, Gordon Clifford): What’s this? A cover? Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a celebration of Thelonious Monk, composer! What’s with the Bing Crosby stuff?

Alack and alas, after completing “Bemsha Swing,” they had only twenty minutes of recording time left in the bank and found themselves one track short of completion. Given the lineup changes, there was no way in hell that the new ensemble could learn another Monk piece that quickly, so the pianist stepped up and offered to play a tune he had covered frequently in live performances over the years.

The song was Der Bingle’s first big hit back in 1931 and has been covered by many luminaries over the years. Crosby’s version is quite lovely and his voice and phrasing are absolutely perfect, but I will confess I had to laugh when I heard the lines “I may seem proud, I may act gay/That’s just a pose, I’m not that way.” Semantic shifts aside, I can understand how the song appealed to Monk’s tender side.

As far as I’m concerned, I could listen to Monk solo anytime, anywhere, whatever he chooses to play. Though there are plenty of Monkisms in the form of sudden emphases, off-color notes and unexpected pauses, he never travels too far from the original melody. Though the clock was ticking, you never get the impression that Monk is rushing his performance; as usual, he seems to savor every note, every chord and every pregnant pause in his interpretation. Nice job!

“Bemsha Swing” (Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best): Monk found himself with two open spots in the lineup after Ernie Henry departed the scene due to his schedule and Oscar Pettiford burned his bridges with his sour attitude. During the recording break, Monk had the great good fortune of securing a gig in Philly, where he led a quartet that included Paul Chambers, who would later link up with Miles Davis and make a major contribution to Kind of Blue. Monk immediately offered Chambers the opportunity to pick up the vacant bass role and thankfully, Chambers agreed. Instead of replacing Henry with another alto sax, Monk hooked up with the well-versed trumpet man Clark Terry, thereby varying the sound of the finished product.

Monk’s neighborhood on West 63rd Street was quite diverse, and according to Kelley, block parties became a form of cultural exchange. As many of the residents hailed from the Caribbean, Monk would have been exposed to the many forms of Caribbean music. Sometime during that period, he became good friends with Barbadian Denzil Best, a bebop drummer whose Caribbean feel would imbue “Bemsha Swing” with a touch of the islands.

I suppose Denzil could have participated in the sessions, but Monk had Max Roach, and you don’t mess with success. Roach was equally curious about the stock of instruments at Reeves and located a tympani gathering dust in the storeroom. You can hear the impact immediately after Monk’s full-of-good-mistakes piano introduction as the tympani gives the piece a rolling, booming sound that adds to the fun. Clark Terry blows like a man on fire, completely comfortable with the C-major/C-minor mix in the composition. In addition to his sonic booms (that’s a pun), Max delivers an energetic drum solo, followed immediately by Paul Chambers, and by golly, you can actually hear the bass! Given all the stops, starts, learning challenges and incomplete takes, it’s nice that Brilliant Corners ends on the upbeat.

*****

After enduring eighteen years of rejection, ridicule, tragedy, and police harassment that would have convinced most artists to wave the white flag and find work in the humdrum, Thelonious Monk was finally recognized as a once-in-a-lifetime talent. In an interview with Robin Kelley, Harry Colomby (Monk’s manager) shared his insights regarding the artist: “I realized that Monk was much more than a jazz musician. He was potentially a symbol. He was symbolic of strength, stick-to-it-iveness, purity, you know, beyond music, beyond jazz.” (Kelley)

I will close with a message to the struggling artists in the audience, whatever your field of endeavor. I know that it’s tough out there. The commercialization of the arts has made it difficult for true artists to break through the muck and the arts are currently under attack in many places around the world. I hope you find the motivation to continue your work because we need true artists more than ever to enlighten us with insight, expand our horizons, lighten our burdens, and inspire us to live meaningful lives. I urge you to follow Monk’s example and refuse to let anything stand in the way of manifesting your calling.

May the force be with you!