#37 - Thelonius Monk

Ah, jazz!  Here we hat tip to the top cat in the felt hat.  Literally, the musician who, in the mid-'40s, started wearing a beret and sunglasses.

Music is a strange beast, being indirect (patterns of notes that are recognized) and internal (sounds that are heard).  By way of contrast, touching is much more direct.  So, it's perhaps not surprising that a music would develop, jazz, that leaned towards touching: improvisation.

In the world of Rock & Roll, improvisation is the gold standard for separating ability from contrivance.  If all you can do is follow notes on a page, "you ain't goin' nowhere", as the Dylan lyric says.  So, jazz was and is essential to Rock's integrity.

Noodling?  No, we're talking about a musician so immersed in gospel, early jazz, and music theory (Julliard School of Music) that his piano playing was pure American genius.  When others schooled in the 'stride' style were using the left hand as a rhythm section, Monk constructed melodies with both hands.

Granted, he was great, but why Monk, and not Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker or Lionel Hampton for the hat tip?  Even the more approachable Max Roach, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins or Benny Goodman?  For one thing, Monk is the second-most recorded jazz musician after Duke Ellington.  Second, when you see a guitar player wincing with slack jaw as the notes find their way around the rhythm section and fuse with the melody, that's internalization, which was Thelonius Monk to a T.  

Um, but Monk's music is so difficult!  That's because jazz, more so than other great music, is most rewarding when the listener gradually awakens, as the music unfolds, to the approaching wink of the eye that ties everything together.  It is perhaps telling that Monk was a great chess player.

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

6/4/10/4 = 24 out of a perfect 40

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Star power: The jazz musicians who have been on the cover
of TIME magazine: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis..., and yes, Thelonius Monk, just
as February turned into March, 1964.