1917–1933: Early life Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on October 10, 1917, in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious (or Thelious) and Barbara Monk. His sister, Marion, had been born two years earlier. His birth certificate spelled his first name as "Thelious" and did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. His brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920. In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses, 243 West 63rd Street, in
Manhattan,
New York City; the neighborhood was known as
San Juan Hill because of the many African-American veterans of the
Spanish–American War who lived there (urban renewal displaced the long-time residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, though the Phipps Houses remained). Monk briefly studied the
trumpet before switching to piano at the age of nine. He took lessons from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, who taught him the
stride style of
Fats Waller,
James P. Johnson, and
Eubie Blake. His mother also taught him to play some hymns, and he would often accompany her singing at church. He attended
Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious public school for gifted students, but did not graduate. For two years, Monk studied
classical piano under Simon Wolf, an Austrian-born pianist and violinist who had studied under
Alfred Megerlin, the concertmaster of the
New York Philharmonic. Monk learned to play pieces by composers such as
Bach,
Mozart,
Beethoven, and
Liszt, but his favorites were
Chopin and
Rachmaninoff. The lessons were discontinued when it became clear that Monk's primary passion was jazz.
1933–1946: Early performing career Monk put his first band together at the age of 16, getting a few restaurant and school gigs. At 17, Monk toured with an evangelist, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. In the early to mid-1940s, he was the house pianist at
Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub.
Mary Lou Williams, who mentored Monk and his contemporaries, spoke of Monk's rich inventiveness in this period, and how such invention was vital for musicians, since at the time it was common for fellow musicians to incorporate overheard musical ideas into their own works without giving due credit. "So, the boppers worked out a music that was hard to steal. I'll say this for the 'leeches,' though: they tried. I've seen them in Minton's busily writing on their shirt cuffs or scribbling on the tablecloth. And even our own guys, I'm afraid, did not give Monk the credit he had coming. Why, they even stole his idea of the beret and bop glasses." For Alfred Lion, co-owner of Blue Note Records, sales were a secondary consideration.
Michael Cuscuna relates that Lion told him 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. Due to Monk's reticence, Gordon became his mouthpiece to the public. In February 1948, she wrote to
Ralph Ingersoll, the editor of the newspaper
PM, and described Monk as "a genius living here in the heart of New York, whom nobody knows". As a result, one of
PM's best writers visited Monk to do a feature on him, but Monk wouldn't speak to the reporter unless Gordon was in the room with him. In September of the same year, Lorraine approached
Max Gordon, the owner and founder of the
Village Vanguard and secured Monk his first gig there. Monk was showcased at the club for a week, but not a single person came. In 1954, Monk paid his first visit to Paris. As well as performing at concerts, he recorded a solo piano session for French radio (later issued as an album by
Disques Vogue). Backstage, Mary Lou Williams introduced him to Baroness
Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, a member of the
Rothschild family and a patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She was a close friend for the rest of Monk's life: she "served as a surrogate wife right alongside Monk's equally devoted actual wife, Nellie" and "paid Monk's bills, dragged him to an endless array of doctors, put him and his family up in her own home and, when necessary, helped Nellie institutionalize him. In 1958, Monk and the baroness were stopped by the police in Delaware. When a small amount of marijuana was discovered, she took the rap for her friend and even served a few nights in jail." The Five Spot residency ended Christmas 1957; Coltrane left to rejoin Davis's group, and the band was effectively disbanded. Monk did not form another long-term band until June 1958 when he began a second residency at the Five Spot, again with a quartet, this time with Griffin (
Charlie Rouse later) on tenor,
Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and
Roy Haynes on drums. On October 15, 1958, en route to a week-long engagement for the quartet at the Comedy Club in
Baltimore, Maryland, Monk and de Koenigswarter were detained by police in
Wilmington, Delaware. When Monk refused to answer questions or cooperate with the policemen, they beat him with a
blackjack. Although they had authorization to search the vehicle and found narcotics in suitcases held in the trunk of the Baroness's car, Judge Christie of the
Delaware Superior Court ruled that the unlawful detention of the pair, and the beating of Monk, rendered the consent to the search void as it was given under duress.
1962–1970: Columbia Records After extended negotiations, Monk signed in 1962 with
Columbia Records, one of the big four American record labels of the day. Monk's relationship with Riverside had soured over disagreements concerning royalty payments and had concluded with two European live albums; he had not recorded an album for Riverside since April 1960. Working with producer
Teo Macero on his debut for Columbia, the sessions in the first week of November had a lineup that had been with him for two years: tenor saxophonist Rouse (who worked regularly with Monk from 1959 to 1970), bassist
John Ore, and drummer
Frankie Dunlop. ''
Monk's Dream'', his first Columbia album, was released in 1963. Columbia's resources allowed Monk to receive more promotion than earlier in his career. ''Monk's Dream
became the best-selling LP of his lifetime, and on February 28, 1964, he appeared on the cover of Time'' magazine, being featured in the article "The Loneliest Monk". The cover article was originally intended to run in November 1963, but it was delayed due to the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
1971–1982: Later life and death Monk had disappeared from the scene by the mid-1970s for health reasons and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last studio recordings as a leader were made in November 1971 for the English
Black Lion label, near the end of a worldwide tour with the Giants of Jazz, a group which included Gillespie,
Kai Winding,
Sonny Stitt,
Al McKibbon, and
Art Blakey. Bassist McKibbon, who had known Monk for over twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said: "On that tour, Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning,' 'Goodnight,' 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly." A different side of Monk is revealed in
Lewis Porter's biography
John Coltrane: His Life and Music; Coltrane states: "Monk is exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]: he talks about music all the time, and he wants so much for you to understand that if, by chance, you ask him something, he'll spend hours if necessary to explain it to you." Blakey reported that Monk was excellent at both chess and
checkers. The documentary film
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) attributed Monk's quirky behavior to mental illness. In the film, Monk's son said that his father sometimes did not recognize him, and he reported that Monk was hospitalized on several occasions owing 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, then pace for days after that, after which he would withdraw and stop speaking. Doctors 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), reported that at least one of Monk's psychiatrists failed to find evidence of
manic depression (
bipolar disorder) or
schizophrenia. Another doctor maintains that Monk was misdiagnosed and prescribed drugs during his hospital stay that may have caused brain damage. Monk did not play the piano during this time, even though one was present in his room, and he spoke to few visitors. He died of a stroke on February 17, 1982. His funeral was held at Sanctuary of St. Peter's Church. He was buried in
Ferncliff Cemetery (Grave 405, Hillcrest 1 section) at
Hartsdale, New York.
Posthumous myth: Monk at Juilliard There have been numerous published references since the 1980s in Monk biographies claiming that he attended the
Juilliard School of Music, an error that continues to be disseminated in online biographies of Monk. At Monk's funeral service in 1982, it was mentioned in his eulogy that he took classes in harmony and arrangement at Juilliard. In the 1988 documentary film
Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser,
Samuel E. Wright narrates that "Monk began playing piano without formal training. Later, he took lessons and studied music theory at the Juilliard School of Music." The complete lack of documented evidence connecting Monk with attending Juilliard was noted by Monk biographer Thomas Fitterling in the first German edition of his Monk biography published in 1987. The Juilliard canard may have its early source in the fact that Monk's sister Marion thought that her piano teacher, a Mr. Wolfe (sic), who briefly taught Thelonious around 1930, may have been connected to Juilliard as a teacher or student. In fact, the Monk family piano teacher had been trained by the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic and has no known connection to Juilliard. ==Technique and playing style==