I could watch him play and find out the things that I wanted to know.
I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. “Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order I felt I learned from him in every way – through the senses, theoretically, technically. Maybe.” – John ColtraneĬoltrane had already recorded his most dramatic and influential early solo on Davis’s version of “Round Midnight,” and his fascination with Monk’s music only grew as he struggled to put his life in order. he would stop and show me some parts that were pretty difficult, and if I had a lot of trouble, well, he’d get his portfolio out show me the music. I’d go by his apartment, and get him out of bed - he’d wake up and roll over to the piano and start playing. “We’d already recorded one song, ‘Monk’s Mood,’ and I liked it so well,” So he invited me around, then I started learning all of his tunes. In early 1957 Coltrane began visiting the Monk household. Coltrane saw this as a spur to rid himself of a longstanding heroin habit, but his attempt to go cold turkey while continuing to work, and the alcohol dependence that followed as he drank to ease the pain of withdrawal, left him in such disheveled shape that Davis fired him. After a decade of unnoticed employment with Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Hodges and Earl Bostic, the saxophonist had finally attracted attention as the aggressive, complex contrast to Miles Davis in the trumpeter’s first immortal quintet. John Coltrane’s issues had more to do with health. A scarcity of work under his own name led Monk uncharacteristically to record as a sideman with Sonny Rollins and as a guest with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. His irregularly-employed working band had dissolved late in 1956 when alto saxophonist Ernie Henry joined Dizzy Gillespie and the absence of a necessary cabaret card, which had been revoked after a questionable drug conviction in 1951, meant that Monk could not be employed in Manhattan night clubs. Yet two obstacles stood in the way of even greater acclaim for his music.
His Riverside Records contract, plus reissues of older work by Blue Note and Prestige in the new “long playing” format, brought renewed attention to his music, and his third Riverside collection, Brilliant Corners, was hailed as his magnum opus upon its release.
Monk’s challenges can be seen as work-related. The year 1957 brought two of the music’s Olympian figures together in collaboration, a year that, for distinct reasons, was pivotal in each man’s life. Thelonious Monk’s music had been played already before Trane with different saxophonists, but I think Trane was more precise, He was more careful about learning things exactly like Monk meant…” – Tommy Flanagan In Jazz History 1957 belongs to He was also noted for an idiosyncratic habit during performances: while other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano.Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of Time magazine (the others being Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis).“In John Coltrane, Monk found an analytical brother - a musician who shared in his intellectual approach and remained true to the sound and structure of his music. His style was not universally appreciated the poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin dismissed him as "the elephant on the keyboard".Monk was renowned for a distinct look which included suits, hats, and sunglasses. Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than a thousand pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Thelonious Sphere Monk (, Octo– February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer.