THELONIOUS MONK: The Life and Times of An American Original ~ Robin D.G. Kelley
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Nellie clicks
© David Gahr |Time
NELLIE SMITH MONK (1921-2002)
The Women Who Made Thelonious Monk
~ Walter Ray Watson
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Read an excerpt
© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
THELONIOUS MONK: The Life and Times of An American Original. Robin D. G. Kelley, Free Press, October 2009, 608 pages, hardcover, Â ISBN: 0684831902 2009, $30.
Photo © Don Schlitten 
L-R: John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Shadow Wilson, drums; Thelonious Monk, piano; and Ahmed Abdulmalik, bass ~~ the Five Spot, NYC, 1957
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From the publisher’s site:
“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes!” So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk’s hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.
In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as on a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly different Thelonious Monk — witty, intelligent, generous, politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father and husband. Indeed, Thelonious Monk is essentially a love story. It is a story of familial love, beginning with Monk’s enslaved ancestors from whom Thelonious inherited an appreciation for community, freedom, and black traditions of sacred and secular song. It is about a doting mother who scrubbed floors to pay for piano lessons and encouraged her son to follow his dream. It is the story of romance, from Monk’s initial heartbreaks to his lifelong commitment to his muse, the extraordinary Nellie Monk. And it is about his unique friendship with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, a scion of the famous Rothschild family whose relationship with Monk and other jazz musicians has long been the subject of speculation and rumor. Nellie, Nica, and various friends and family sustained Monk during the long periods of joblessness, bipolar episodes, incarceration, health crises, and other tragic and difficult moments.
Above all, Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos,Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.
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© Lisa Gay Hamilton
Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor of history and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2003-2006, he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia Univeristy. From 1994-2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University as well the chairman of NYU’s history department from 2002-2003.
One of the youngest tenured professors in a full academic discipline — at the age of 32 — Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history with a particular emphasis on African-American musical culture, including jazz and hip-hop.
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Photo © Scott Friedlander
Robin D. G. Kelley, piano; Christine Bard, drums; Ras Moshe, pocket trumpet; Roy Campbell, Jr., tenor saxophone ~~ Thelonious Monk Book Party, The Brecht Forum, New York City, October 8, 2009
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Praise for Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
“Robin Kelley’s new biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is a breath of fresh air among the biographies of our legendary jazz musicians. This book is thorough, detailed, and written with a true affinity for Monk’s humaneness and creative musical output. It fills in the missing pieces about the growth of the jazz scene in New York through the forties, fifties, and sixties, detailing each step of Monk’s development — who passed through his bands, what gigs he played, and what happened on those scenes. It’s an invaluable and close look at the center of the world’s most important creative musical developments in those decades: New York City.”
– CHICK COREA
“Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is one of the most anticipated books in jazz scholarship, and well worth the wait. Robin D. G. Kelley represents one of this generation’s most important voices equipped with the knowledge, passion, and respect for both jazz and jazz musicians required to interpret the many details and nuances of Thelonious Monk’s life. This compelling book will both challenge old assumptions and inspire new assessments of the life and legacy one of the world’s greatest musicians.”
– GERI ALLEN, pianist, composer, and Associate Professor of Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation, University of Michigan
“Powerful, enraging, and enduring. … In Robin Kelley’s finely grained and surely definitive life-and-times study, Thelonious Monk, an American original, has found an original biographer.”
– DAVID LEVERING LEWIS, biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois and Pulitzer Prize winner
“An honest and eloquent treatment of one of our most important artists, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is a stunning tour de force! It is the most comprehensive treatment of Monk’s life to date. Furthermore, in Monk’s story, Kelley has found the perfect medium to shed light on a nation’s, and a people’s, history and persistent quest for freedom. In so doing he has given us a book that is as bold, brilliant, and beautiful as Monk and his music.”
– FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN, author of If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday
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Kelley signing at City Light Bookstore, San Francisco,. 3 November 2009
Photo: Chuleenan
Kofi Natambu: Interview with Historian and Scholar Robin D. G. Kelley on Thelonious Monk, Jazz History, and the Cultural Politics of American Art ~ The Panopticon Review, 28 February 2010
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The Transcendental Thelonious Monk: Christopher Lydon of ‘Open Source’ Radio interviews Robin D.G. Kelley
December 23, 2009
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JazzTimes editor Lee Mergner reviews Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
December 17, 2009
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Robin D.G. Kelley in conversation with Terry Gross at NPR’s Fresh Air
December 8, 2009
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The Jazz and Justice Interview (with Jarrett Ball)
WPFW-FM, 89.3 ~ Washington, DC
October 29, 2009
“In what he called ‘the best interview I’ve done so far’ Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley joined Jazz and Justice this week to help us successfully reach our final week’s pledge goals. Kelley’s latest book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, was our point of departure for a discussion covering Monk’s life, music and the history which shaped him and which he indelibly shaped in return.”
– voxunion.com
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Courtesy PBS.org
Watch, listen and read what Robin D.G. Kelley and Tavis Smiley talked about during the author’s visit to Smiley’s TV show to promote his monumental Thelonious Monk biography
October 26, 2009
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Monk in 1967 (photo source in research)
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original is the topic of broadcaster Justin Desmangles’ December 22, 2009 interview with Robin D.G. Kelley. This interview took place “live” as part of a continuing series of broadcasts, New Day Jazz, on KDVS, 90.3 FM, UC Davis (California). The transcription is “raw” and unedited.
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Courtesy photo
Covers clickable 
In Walked Bud
© Photos Kasparian ~ Thelonious & Nellie Monk; Orly Airport, Paris, March 1963; a still from STRAIGHT NO CHASER, the 1988 documentary directed by Charlotte Zwerin, and produced by Clint Eastwood
Pannonica & Monk
[photographer unknown]
— from the HBO movie THE JAZZ BARONESS
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Jazz Profiles: THELONIOUS HIMSELF ~ 54 minutes
(excellent NPR audio-bio narrated by Nancy Wilson)
October 2007
Courtesy photo
Abide with Me {sample}
Mahalia Jackson’s Abide with Me
“Abide with Me,” composed and arranged in 1847 by Henry F. Lyte & William H. Monk, opens Monk’s Music — the celebrated 1957 album produced by Orrin Keepnews for Riverside — with Monk’s sparse, haunting instrumental arrangement of this enduring hymn.
The exquisite Newport Jazz Festival concert ~ July 3, 1959
Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Sam Jones, bass; Arthur Taylor drums
Festival founder-producer George Wein introduces
Courtesy of Wolfgang’s Vault
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Monk and Monk on Monk — and more
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© David Gahr | Time
The Monks at home in New York City ~ November 1963
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AlYoung.Org recognizes and commends the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for its far-reaching support of music education and the performing arts, a contribution that continues to humanize the United States and nourish creativity worldwide.
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January 16th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Prof. Kelley: Thank you for the book. I am a jazz musician/bassist/bass-maker. Hometown: Chicago. I spent time in N.Y. and Chicago with Wilbur Ware and Johnny Griffin (Griff). There were so many recollections in your book about my time in N.Y. and many of the cats I knew. Beaver Harris, a lot like Art Blakey, I would say. Wil and Alvin Jones told me to not get too involved in N.Y. ’cause I really liked that stuff. So, I left for Italy, studied violin-making instead. I saw Wilbur and Alvin many times afterwards. That’s the short version. I think most people, when thinking about discrimination, think of the cats at a lunch counter, but this country is and has been terrible in the arts, too. Your book shows this, and I am thankful. — Bob
January 16th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Thank you, Bob. Your thoughtful, nostalgic comment has been posted at AlYoung.org for the world to behold. Your comment will find its way to Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley, author of this valuable, ground-breaking biography of Thelonious Monk. — Al Young