“During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At the time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace.”
Jazz is considered an American contribution to music and an American tradition. The most well-known and innovative American jazz musicians were black making jazz an Afro-American tradition. Jazz is thought to have originated in New Orleans around the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, it has given rise to many jazz musicians, black, white and others. Among the many notable jazz musicians is the saxophonist John Coltrane. John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, NC on September 23, 1926. Cole (1976) says, “His birth was on the day of the autumn equinox, on the cusp of Virgo and Libra, one of the two days during the year in which night and day are in perfect balance. Perhaps the titles of some of his music reflect the value that astrology in his life, songs such as “Fifth House” (1959), “Equinox” (1960), “Crescent” (1964) and “Cosmos” (1965). Coltrane’s family moved to High Point, NC two months after his birth. His grandfather was an African, Methodist and Episcopal minister at the African Methodist and Episcopal Zion Church and had been a state senator representing the Edenton, NC area. His father, John Robert Coltrane, was a tailor who ran his own tailor shop, but whose real love was music. A self-taught musician, John Robert played the ukulele and violin and would sing country music for hours. (Simpkins, 1975) Senior Coltrane died in 1939, a traumatic year for the Coltrane family. Later that year, Reverend Blair and Coltrane’s uncle also died. He lived in a fairly well off family, but when his father and uncle died, his mother was forced to work at a white country club in High Point. After a few years, she left High Point and moved to Philadelphia where work was easier to find and more lucrative. Coltrane did likewise in 1943.
Coltrane began playing the alto sax in a local church, the church of the Reverend Warren Steele. Steele was also a musician and conducted rehearsals for the Community Band on Tuesday evenings. Young Coltrane also played in the high school band at William Penn High School where practice was in the auditorium on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Big bands dominated the music charts in the early 40s, so Coltrane only occasionally did he get to hear black musicians who were to be his first major influence, musicians like Duke Ellington, Count Basie and his idol, Lester Young, a celebrated tenor saxophonist in Count Basie’s band, (Porter, 1998).
In the forties, he became strung out on heroin, the prevalent drug among musicians at the time, and in his effort to cut down on heroin, he also got hooked on alcohol. Islam proved to be a rising positive counter force for many black musicians during the mid-forties, including Art Blakey, Ahmad Jamal and Coltrane. Philadelphia was one of the places where Islam took hold. Among the Muslims Coltrane met was Yusef Lateef who was playing with Dizzy Gillespie at the time and aroused Coltrane’s interest in the religion and philosophy of Islam. The influences he encountered during his two years with Gillespie helped to put his life back on track but did not add much to his musical credentials and he was still hampered by heroin. Often late for gigs, Gillespie fired him while on the road in Canada. Between 1948 and 1950, Coltrane ran out of work and found his music under attack by club owners and audiences. Frustrated, music seemed like a dead-end street, so he became deeply depressed. His addiction seemed to dominate his life and often embarrassed old friends who came to see him until he met a Moslem woman named Naima at a cocktail party in 1954 who became his first wife helped him put his life together.
Early on a spring morning in 1957, Coltrane woke up with a new resolve not to use drugs. One day soon afterwards, he retreated to his room and awaited the battle of withdrawal pains which he endured for the next few days. He emerged about four days later cured of his addiction to alcohol and heroin. This cure caused a change in him been brought about in part by a dream in which he heard a “droning sound.” (Nisenson, 1993) His search for this mysterious sound continued throughout the rest of his short life. His search for the sound led him to the music of India, the Mideast and Africa and had a great influence on his music in the early 60s. His music peaked when he recorded “A Love Supreme” (Kahn, 2002) in 1964, just three short years before his death. His opportunity to play with the keyboardist Thelonius Monk in 1957, the “High Priest of Bebop” (Fraim, p. 41), provided Coltrane the key to unlock many musical doors and to liberate the “dark and beautiful visions” he had seen throughout his life. (Fraim, p. 37) Monk’s greatest influence on Coltrane was to teach him about the “space” in music, when to fill a space, to let someone else fill it or just to leave it open. Monk disbanded his group in late 1957 leaving Coltrane on his own again, but leaving him wiser and stronger than before.
In 1957, Coltrane began making albums on his own rather than as a sideman to others. He was finally emerging into the light of jazz. In the October and November issue of Jazz Review magazine, jazz critic and pianist Zita Carno noted that Coltrane could play a full three octaves on his horn and do so with the “equality of strength in all registers.” (Carno, 1959a, b) When Coltrane’s life as a sideman to others was over, he found it necessary to move on and become a teacher, to take other musicians under his musical wing. He was 33 and began composing. He carried his sax everywhere, wore it at the dinner table, sat on the side of his bed with it strapped to his neck thinking late at night, even fell asleep with it on. His search for that droning sound continued and became his Holy Grail. Both the sound and his search for it were the background of much of his work in the 60s. It led to greater improvisational freedom. As he moved into the 60s, he believed it might be possible someday to approximate the strange sound he was hearing.
The final aspect of Coltrane’s musical experiments of the early 60s was to find the right musicians to bring it all together. He needed superb musicians who had learned under jazz masters as he had learned. Coltrane was not satisfied with the sound of the first group he assembled, the first John Coltrane Quartet. They opened at the Jazz Gallery in New York City in May 1960. His opening audience included “beatniks”, a term for intellectuals at the time, avant-garde writers, painters, hard-core jazz fans and other musicians such as pianist Cecil Taylor and Thelonius Sphere Monk. His opening performance got a rave review in the New York Daily News which urged people to “Run, do not walk or otherwise loiter on your way down to the Jazz Gallery (to hear) John Coltrane….” Despite the successful opening, Coltrane was not happy with the sound. He felt the rhythm section was competing with him instead of supporting him and he wasn’t happy with the keyboard. After some thought, he decided to contact McCoy Tyner, a keyboardist he had admired since the mid-fifties. Coltrane and Tyner were a mutual admiration society, an association that would not be replaced until 1965 when Tyner was finally replaced by Coltrane’s second wife, Alice Coltrane. With McCoy Tyner at the keyboard, Coltrane finally had the basic foundation he desired. Tyner’s style was elegant, majestic and powerful. They became one of the most dynamic musical interactions in the history of jazz, an interaction that coincided well and meshed precisely. In October 1960, Coltrane finally realized the musical interaction he was seeking. Their first album together, My Favorite Things which sold more than 50,000 copies during its first year of release, brought Coltrane a wider audience of listeners and won him the number one tenor saxophone spot in a DownBeat magazine poll for the his first time.
One evening while visiting his mother in Philadelphia in May 1967, Coltrane suddenly clutched his stomach in extreme pain, staggered into the bedroom and closed the door. Exiting one hour later, he looked at his wife Alice and his mother as if neither were in the house with him. When they returned to New York, Alice contacted a stomach specialist who placed Coltrane in a hospital after an examination. Coltrane ignored the doctor’s orders and went home. On July 14, 1967, he met with Bob Thiele of Impulse Records. Thiele later recalled, “I got the distinct feeling that he was dying. I could see death on his face.” (Fraim, p. 199) On Sunday morning, July 16, 1967, Coltrane was rushed to Huntington Hospital. He died at 4:00 AM the next morning, Monday, July 17, 1967 of primary hepatoma—liver cancer. He was survived by his second wife, Alice Coltrane and their three sons, John Jr. born in 1965 and twins Ravi and Oranyan born in 1967.
Coltrane’s musical journey was part of a mystical journal he took through music and through life. Alice Coltrane said, “I think what he was trying to do in music was the same thing he was trying to do in his life. That was to universalize his music, his life, his religion….” (Fraim, p. 164) He once told Elvin Jones that he believed a particular combination of notes would cause matter to fall away from itself. The universal sound Coltrane sought was related to the very core of music and the mystical nature of the octave from which music is created. Perhaps the period between 1961 until his death is 1967 is the period during which he gained his greatest acclaim as an extremely influential jazz musician. His music and musical career soared from 1957 until his death at the age of 40 just ten short years later. He is considered to have been a major influence on the saxophonists who followed him and to have reshaped modern jazz. He is a musician who is still receiving acclaim today, about forty years after his passing. This year he has received a posthumous award for his playing and his influence on jazz. The Pulitzer Prize Board has awarded him a Special Citation this year for his “masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.” His recording career was brief, beginning in 1955 and ending with his sudden passing in 1967, but he produced dozens of albums during that time, many that were not released until long after his demise. Some of his music such as a 2005 release by Blue Note of Coltrane and Thelonius Monk playing at Carnegie Hall on November 29, 1957 is still being discovered. His time with us was much too short, but during his stay, he gave us good music, he stood on the shoulders of giants and grew to become a giant himself. Perhaps his stay was too brief and his growth was still just beginning, but he left us a musical legacy behind for future generations to savor. His influence and presence certainly can and will be felt in the music he left behind for many generations to come. Few of us can claim such a legacy.
References
Carno, Zita (1959a). “The Style of John Coltrane.” Jazz Review 2(9), 16-21.
Carno, Zita (1959b). “The Style of John Coltrane.” Jazz Review 2(10), 13-21.
Cole, Bill (1976). John Coltrane. New York, NY: Schirmer Books.
Fraim, John (1997). Spirit Catcher. The Life and Art of John Coltrane. West Liberty, OH: The GreatHouse Company.
Gitler, Ira (1985). Swing to Bop; an Oral History of the Tradition in Jazz in the 1940’s. New York, Oxford University Press.
Gitler, Ira (1958). “Trane on the Track.” Down Beat 25(21), 16-17.
Kahn, Ashley (2002) A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album (1st ed.), New York: Viking.
Melody Maker, August 14, 1965.
Nisenson, Eric (1993). Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. New York, NY: Da Capo Press.
Porter, Lewis (1998) John Coltrane: His Life and Music, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Simpkins, Cuthbert O. (1975). Coltrane; a Biography. New York: Herndon House.
Thomas, J.C. (1975), Chasin’ the Trane, (Reprint of 1975 ed. published by Doubleday) Garden City, New York: Da Capo.
Thelonious Sphere Monk
“You know, anybody can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that’s not easy.”
Thelonious Monk, 1961
There are musicians and then there are MUSICIANS, and certainly there are many great musicians throughout history, but few can compare with Thelonious Monk. There is no doubt that throughout life we hear platitudes and superlatives about many people, often deserved, occasionally less so or not deserved at all, but Thelonius Monk stands alone among musicians in the unique style he brought to his instrument, a style that some have referred to as “playing off key”. Jazz is considered a uniquely Afro American contribution to music, a style indigenous to the U.S. created by Afro-American musicians in an era beginning early in the 1900s. While there was certainly good jazz in the 19th century, particularly associated with New Orleans, the individuals most noted as the legends of jazz and more or less the fathers of traditional jazz today are individuals born during the early 20th century,
Thelonius was born “Thelonius Sphere Monk” on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Little is known of his early life. Named after his father, his parents, Thelonius and Barbara Monk, gave birth to three children Marian, Thelonius and Thomas during about a 5 year period. In 1922 Monk’s family moved to 243 West 63rd Street in the “San Juan Hill” neighborhood of Manhattan, near the Hudson River when Thelonius was about 4 or 5-years old. (Gourse, 1997; Kelley, 2005; Williams, 1979) During his school years he attended Stuyvesant High School but he never graduated. His father, Thelonious, Sr., joined the family in 1925 but later had to return to North Carolina for health reasons. Also a musician, the elder Thelonius played often the harmonica and the piano and thus probably had a significant influence on Thelonius, Jr. The younger Thelonius began playing the piano around the age of six and was largely self-taught, a factor that might have ultimately contributed to his unique playing style. Thelonius was a good student, a fine athlete and a musical prodigy who briefly studied the trumpet before turning to the piano around the age of nine. Although he had some formal training, his musical talent was essentially self-taught mostly gleaned by eavesdropping on his older sister’s piano lessons, so he had little formal training, perhaps a blessing in disguise as we may never have heard his unique, “off key” playing if he had been formally trained.
Around 1935, during his teens, Thelonius dropped out of high school at the end of his sophomore year to pursue music. That year, he became the pianist playing the church organ while touring with a traveling evangelist and faith healer where he remained until he formed his own quartet and played at local bars and small clubs two years later until the spring of 1941. He began to find work playing jazz in the early 1940s and played as the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse, a legendary Manhattan club, around 1941. (Gourse, 1997) Monk worked as a sideman in jazz groups in the early 1940s and was the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem where he encouraged another young jazz pianist, Bud Powell influenced and encouraged the young jazz pianist Bud Powell. His stint at Minton’s is thought to be the time and place where he perfected his unique style of playing. Bebop, later called simply Bop, was born in the 1940s. This period of Monk’s career is viewed as crucial to his development of the bebop style. It is also a time when he met and played with other jazz greats of the era. Although today Monk’s work with the Blue Note record label are considered to be some of his greatest recordings, when released in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they were a commercial failure. Critics were harsh and their harsh criticism limited Monk’s opportunities to work. (Kelley, 2005; Van der Bliek, 2001) Monk began playing with Prestige Records in 1952. He made his first solo album in June 1954 in Paris for Swing Records. Monk’s music career improved dramatically in 1957 when he began appearing regularly with other jazz greats of the time. In 1957 Monk made an album with Art Blakey for Atlantic records which almost overnight catapulted him to become one of the most controversial and acclaimed jazz improvisationalists of the late 1950s. That year Thelonius also appeared with John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin and Charlie Rouse and began regularly touring the USA and appearing in Europe. (Van der Bliek, 2001) Thelonius remained with Prestige Records until 1955 when, apparently dissatisfied with sales, Prestige sold his contract to Riverside Records where he remained until 1961. (Gourse, 1997) He wanted to introduce his music to a wider audience, but his music received a lukewarm reception from the critics. In 1962, Monk received a contract with Columbia records. (Gourse, 1997) By then, he was very popular and in fact, by 1964 his popularity and acclaim gave him the honor to be one of the few individuals, and only three other jazz musicians, to grace the cover of Time Magazine. Thelonius disbanded his group in 1970 and in 1971-2 worked in the Giants of Jazz together with Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al Mc Kibbon, and Art Blakey. Thelonius Monk retired from public appearances shortly after making solo and trio recordings for Black Lion Records in London even though some critics felt that those recordings marked the advent of a new phase in his development. Since then, Thelonius has appeared with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall and with a quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1975 and 1976, but otherwise has remained in seclusion in Weehawken, New Jersey.
Throughout part of Monk’s career, he was viewed by the media as being eccentric. His performance style has led both fans and detractors to call him “eccentric,” “mad,” or even”taciturn” rendering him perhaps one of the most talked about and least understood artist in the history of jazz. Stories of his behavior in public and in private often overshadowed his work. To make matters worse, the media created an image of Monk as a reclusive, naive, idiot savant. Yet, his friends and close associates view him as a hard worker and a family man. His family has managed to hold together despite long stretches without work, severe financial problems, sustained attacks by critics and other misfortunes. Now, his family has given rise to three generations of musicians, Thelonius Monk, Sr., Thelonius Monk, Jr. and now his son, Thelonius Monk, III who played drums with hin father in his father’s quartet. Thelonius Monk, Jr. made his final public appearance in July, 1976 before giving up playing altogether. He suffered a stroke on February 5, 1982 and fell unconscious. Thelonius never recovered and never regained consciousness. He died on February 17, 1982.
Today, Thelonius Monk is widely viewed as a genuine master of American music. Although he remained long misunderstood and little known, both his playing and his compositions had a formative influence on modern jazz. Thelonius is recognized as one of the most inventive pianists of any musical genre (Van der Bliek, 2001) and he has taken his place among the truly great jazz musicians of the 20th century–Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Mile Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and others like them, and yet even with such a distinguished list of talented musicians, none can claim a unique musical style of the nature truly unique to Thelonius Monk. (Gourse, 1997) His music and musical style, perhaps little known and long misunderstood initially, ultimately had a great influence on modern jazz. The unique musical style we know today as jazz grew out of ragtime in the 1890s and the marching band music of the early 1900s. Most music historians credit New Orleans at the city that gave birth to jazz as a combination of black and creole music during the period between 1910 and 1920, the period during which Thelonius Monk and a number of influential jazz musicians were born. The Jazz Age was born around the 1920s as Thelonius was growing up and by the 1930s swing became king followed in the 1940s by bebop to which Thelonius was one of the fathers. His piano style is considered perhaps the most original sound on the keyboard, a sound and style that even his most devoted followers have been unable to imitate. Both his playing and his compositions had a formative influence on modern jazz. He is viewed as one of the “avant garde” of his time and considered by some to be one of the greatest American composers of the 20th century.
References
Gourse, Leslie (1997). Straight, no chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonius Monk. New York, NY: Schrimer Books/Prentice Hall International.
Kelley, Robin D. G. (2005). Thelonius Spere Monk, May 27, 2007. <http://www.monkzone.com/silent/biographyHTML.htm>.
Van der Bliek, Rob (ed.) (2001). The Thelonious Monk Reader. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Williams, Jonathan (1979). Birthplace of Thelonius Monk on Red Row, Rocky Mount, N.C. Winston-Salem, NC: Mole Press.
