The Great Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( ghih-LES-pee; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of early bebop styles. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality have made him an enduring icon.

In the 1940s, Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman.

He won several Grammy Awards. Critic Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time, Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up being similar to those of Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated [...] Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time".

== Biography ==

=== Early life and career ===

The youngest of nine children of Lottie and James Gillespie, Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. His father was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. James died when Dizzy was only ten years old.

Gillespie started to play the piano at age four; by the time he was 12, he taught himself how to play the trombone and the trumpet.

From the night Gillespie heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He won a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia in 1935.

Gillespie's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the orchestras of Edgar Hayes and later Teddy Hill, replacing Frankie Newton as second trumpet in May 1937. Teddy Hill's band was where Gillespie made his first recording, "King Porter Stomp". In August 1937, while gigging with Hayes in Washington, D.C., Gillespie met a young dancer named Lorraine Willis who worked a Baltimore–Philadelphia–New York City circuit which included the Apollo Theater. Willis was not immediately friendly, but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two married on May 9, 1940.

Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hill's band for a year, then left and freelanced with other bands. In 1939, with the help of Willis, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway's orchestra. He recorded one of his earliest compositions, "Pickin' the Cabbage", with Calloway in 1940. After an altercation between the two, Calloway fired Gillespie in late 1941.

The incident is recounted by Gillespie and Calloway's band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones in Jean Bach's 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway disapproved of Gillespie's mischievous humor and his adventuresome approach to soloing. According to Jones, Calloway referred to it as "Chinese music". During rehearsal, someone in the band threw a spitball. Already in a foul mood, Calloway blamed Gillespie, who refused to take the blame. Gillespie stabbed Calloway in the leg with a knife; Calloway had minor cuts on the thigh and wrist. After the two were separated, Calloway fired Gillespie. A few days later, Gillespie tried to apologize to Calloway, but he was dismissed.

During his time in Calloway's band, Gillespie began writing big band arrangements for Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey, and others. He then freelanced with a few bands, most notably Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of Chick Webb's band.

Gillespie did not serve in World War II. At his Selective Service interview, he told the local board, "in this stage of my life here in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?" and "So if you put me out there with a gun in my hand and tell me to shoot at the enemy, I'm liable to create a case of 'mistaken identity' of who I might shoot." He was classified 4-F.

In 1943, he joined the Earl Hines band. Composer Gunther Schuller said,

... In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings.

Gillespie stated, "[p]eople talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit."

Gillespie joined the big band of Hines's long-time collaborator, Billy Eckstine, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with fellow band member Charlie Parker. In 1944, Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo (which typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass, and drums). Dizzy recommended Fats Navarro for the job with Eckstine, who proved to be an ample replacement.

=== Rise of bebop ===

Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style, but was unpopular at its onset. In fact, bebop was not considered revolutionary at first, but was seen as an outgrowth of swing. Regardless, swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era, such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created. Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines. With Parker, Gillespie performed at famous jazz clubs including Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House.

Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody 'n' You", and "Salt Peanuts" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the swing popular at the time. "A Night in Tunisia", written in 1942 while Dizzy was with Earl Hines's band, is noted for its syncopated bass line—a feature common in today's music. "Woody 'n' You" was recorded in a session led by Coleman Hawkins with Gillespie as a featured sideman on February 16, 1944 (on Apollo Records), the first formal recording of bebop. Dizzy appeared in recordings by the Billy Eckstine band and started recording prolifically as a leader and sideman in early 1945. He was not content to let bebop sit in a niche of small groups in small clubs. A concert by one of his small groups in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, presented bebop to a broad audience; recordings of it were released in 2005. He began organizing big bands in late 1945.

In December 1945, Dizzy Gillespie and his Bebop Six, which included Parker, started an extended gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles. Reception was mixed and the band broke up. In February 1946, Gillespie signed a contract with Bluebird Records, gaining the distribution power of RCA for his music. He and his big band headlined the 1946 film Jivin' in Be-Bop.

Following his work with Parker, Gillespie led other small combos (including ones with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J. J. Johnson, and Yusef Lateef) and put together his successful big bands starting in 1947. Gillespie and his big bands, with arrangements provided by Tadd Dameron, Gil Fuller, and George Russell, popularized bebop and made him a symbol of the new music.

His big bands of the late 1940s also featured Cuban rumberos Chano Pozo and Sabu Martinez, sparking interest in Afro-Cuban jazz. Gillespie appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic.

Gillespie and his Bebop Orchestra was the featured star of the 4th Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on September 12, 1948. The young Gillespie had recently returned from Europe where his music was widely popular. The program description noted "the musicianship, inventive technique, and daring of this young man has created a new style, which can be defined as off the chord solo gymnastics." Also performing that day were Frankie Laine, Little Miss Cornshucks, The Sweethearts of Rhythm, the Honeydrippers, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Witherspoon, the Blenders, and the Sensations.

In 1948, Gillespie was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured and found he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1,000 in view of his high earnings up to that point.

In 1951, Gillespie founded his record label, Dee Gee Records; it closed in 1953.

On January 6, 1953, he threw a party for his wife Lorraine at Snookie's, a club in Manhattan, where his trumpet's bell was accidentally bent upward. However, he liked the sound so much he had a special trumpet made with a 45-degree raised bell, a customization that would become his trademark.

In 1956, Gillespie organized a band to travel on a State Department tour of the Middle East, which was well-received internationally and earned him the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz". During this time, he also continued to lead a big band that performed throughout the United States and featured musicians including Pee Wee Moore and others. This band recorded a live album at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival that featured Mary Lou Williams as a guest artist on piano.

=== Afro-Cuban jazz ===

In the late 1940s, Gillespie was involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms. Gillespie was introduced to Chano Pozo in 1947 by Mario Bauzá, a Latin jazz trumpeter. Pozo became Gillespie's conga drummer for his band. Gillespie also worked with Bauzá in New York jazz clubs on 52nd Street and several famous dance clubs such as the Palladium and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They played together in the Chick Webb band and the Cab Calloway band, where Gillespie and Bauza became lifelong friends. Gillespie helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style. Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance.

Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are the songs "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo" (both co-written with Chano Pozo); he was responsible for commissioning George Russell's "Cubano Be, Cubano Bop", which featured Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie met Arturo Sandoval during a jazz cruise to Havana. Sandoval toured with Gillespie and defected in Rome in 1990 while touring with Gillespie and the United Nations Orchestra.

=== Final years ===

In the 1980s, Gillespie led the United Nations Orchestra. For three years, Flora Purim toured with the orchestra. She credits Gillespie with improving her understanding of jazz.

In 1982, he was sought out by Motown musician Stevie Wonder to play his solo in Wonder's 1982 hit single "Do I Do".

He starred in the film The Winter in Lisbon that was released as El invierno en Lisboa in 1992 and re-released in 2004. The soundtrack album, featuring him, was recorded in 1990 and released in 1991. The film is a crime drama about a jazz pianist who falls for a dangerous woman while in Portugal with an American expatriate's jazz band.

In December 1991, during an engagement at Kimball's East in Emeryville, California, he suffered a crisis from what turned out to be pancreatic cancer. He performed one more night but cancelled the rest of the tour for medical reasons, ending his 56-year touring career. He led his last recording session on January 25, 1992.

Gillespie and his touring band performed at Jazz Alley in Seattle for several successive days, the final performance of his touring career being February 29, 1992.

On November 26, 1992, Carnegie Hall, following the Second Baháʼí World Congress, celebrated Gillespie's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Baháʼu'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included Jon Faddis, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. Gillespie was too unwell to attend, "But the musicians played their real hearts out for him, no doubt suspecting that he would not play again. Each musician gave tribute to their friend, this great soul and innovator in the world of jazz."

=== Death ===

A longtime resident of Englewood, New Jersey, Gillespie died of pancreatic cancer on January 6, 1993, at the age of 75. A private memorial service was held at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. A public memorial service was held on January 12 at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, with Roberta Flack singing "Amazing Grace". His grave in Flushing Cemetery, Queens, is unmarked.

== Politics and religion ==

In 1962, Gillespie and actor George Mathews starred in The Hole, an animated short film by John and Faith Hubley. Released the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis, it uses audio from an improvised conversation between the two debating the causes of accidents and the possibility of accidentally launching nuclear weapons. The short went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the following year.

During the 1964 United States presidential campaign, Gillespie put himself forward as an independent write-in candidate. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed the Blues House, and he would have a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Travelling Ambassador), and Malcolm X (Attorney General). He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. Campaign buttons had been manufactured years before by Gillespie's booking agency as a joke, but proceeds went to the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Martin Luther King Jr.; in later years they became a collector's item. In 1971, he announced he would run again but withdrew before the election.

Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker, Gillespie encountered an audience member after a show. They had a conversation about the oneness of humanity and the elimination of racism from the perspective of the Baháʼí Faith. Impacted by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he became a Baháʼí that same year. The universalist emphasis of his religion prodded him to see himself more as a global citizen and humanitarian, expanding on his interest in his African heritage. His spirituality brought out generosity and what author Nat Hentoff called an inner strength, discipline, and "soul force".

Gillespie's conversion was most affected by Bill Sears' book Thief in the Night. Gillespie spoke about the Baháʼí Faith frequently on his trips abroad. He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Baháʼí Center in the memorial auditorium. A concert in honor of his 75th birthday was held in New York City's Carnegie Hall, November 26, 1992, in conjunction with the second Baháʼí World Congress, however, he was too ill to personally attend.

== Personal life ==

Gillespie married dancer Lorraine Willis in Boston on May 9, 1940. They remained together until his death in 1993; Lorraine converted to Catholicism with Mary Lou Williams in 1957. Lorraine managed his business and personal affairs. The couple had no children, but Gillespie fathered a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson, born in 1958 from an affair with songwriter Connie Bryson. Gillespie met Bryson, a Juilliard-trained pianist, at the Birdland jazz club in New York City. In the mid-1960s, Gillespie settled down in Englewood, New Jersey, with his wife. The local Englewood public high school, Dwight Morrow High School, named its auditorium after him: the Dizzy Gillespie Auditorium.

== Artistry ==

=== Style ===

Gillespie has been described as the "sound of surprise". The Rough Guide to Jazz describes his musical style:

The whole essence of a Gillespie solo was cliff-hanging suspense: the phrases and the angle of the approach were perpetually varied, breakneck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he always took listeners by surprise, always shocking them with a new thought. His lightning reflexes and superb ear meant his instrumental execution matched his thoughts in its power and speed. And he was concerned at all times with swing—even taking the most daring liberties with pulse or beat, his phrases never failed to swing. Gillespie's magnificent sense of time and emotional intensity of his playing came from childhood roots. His parents were Methodists, but as a boy he used to sneak off every Sunday to the uninhibited Sanctified Church. He said later, "The Sanctified Church had deep significance for me musically. I first learned the significance of rhythm there and all about how music can transport people spiritually."

In Gillespie's obituary, Peter Watrous describes his performance style:

In the naturally effervescent Mr. Gillespie, opposites existed. His playing—and he performed constantly until nearly the end of his life—was meteoric, full of virtuosic invention and deadly serious. But with his endlessly funny asides, his huge variety of facial expressions and his natural comic gifts, he was as much a pure entertainer as an accomplished artist.

Wynton Marsalis summarized Gillespie as a player and teacher:

His playing showcases the importance of intelligence. His rhythmic sophistication was unequaled. He was a master of harmony—and fascinated with studying it. He took in all the music of his youth—from Roy Eldridge to Duke Ellington—and developed a unique style built on complex rhythm and harmony balanced by wit. Gillespie was so quick-minded, he could create an endless flow of ideas at unusually fast tempo. Nobody had ever even considered playing a trumpet that way, let alone had actually tried. All the musicians respected him because, in addition to outplaying everyone, he knew so much and was so generous with that knowledge...

=== Bent trumpet ===

Gillespie's trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by the dancers Stump and Stumpy falling onto the instrument while it was on a trumpet stand on stage at Snookie's in Manhattan on January 6, 1953, during a birthday party for Gillespie's wife Lorraine. The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. He had the trumpet straightened out the next day, but he could not forget the tone. Gillespie sent a request to the Martin Band Instrument Company to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward played a trumpet with an upturned bell.

By June 1954, he was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a trademark for the rest of his life. Such trumpets were made for him by Martin (from 1954), King Musical Instruments (from 1972), and Renold Schilke (from 1982, a gift from Jon Faddis). Gillespie favored mouthpieces made by Al Cass. In December 1986, Gillespie gifted the National Museum of American History his 1972 King "Silver Flair" trumpet with a Cass mouthpiece.

In April 1995, Gillespie's Martin trumpet was auctioned at Christie's in New York City alongside instruments used by Coleman Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix, and Elvis Presley. An image of Gillespie's trumpet was selected for the cover of the auction program. The battered instrument was sold to Manhattan builder Jeffery Brown for $63,000, the proceeds benefiting jazz musicians with cancer.

== Awards and honors ==

In 1989, Gillespie received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The next year, at the Kennedy Center ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.

In 1989, Gillespie was awarded with an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.

In 1991, Gillespie received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, presented by Awards Council member Wynton Marsalis.

In 1993, he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden. In 2002, he was posthumously inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame for his contributions to Afro-Cuban music. He was honored on December 31, 2006, in "A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band" at the Kennedy Center. In 2014, Gillespie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

== In popular culture ==

Samuel E. Wright played Dizzy Gillespie in the film Bird (1988), about Charlie Parker. Kevin Hanchard portrayed Gillespie in the Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue (2015). Charles S. Dutton played him in For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000).

== List of works ==

== References ==

== External links ==

Dizzy Gillespie at AllMusic

Dizzy Gillespie at IMDb

Dizzy Gillespie Bands

Interview with Les Tomkins in 1973 (archived)

Articles at NPR Music

Short biography by C. J. Shearn

Source: Wikipedia ↗

Charles Henry Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist. He was among the first electric guitarists and was a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique, combined with early adoption of the electric guitar, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. For this, he is often credited with pioneering the development of the lead guitar role.

== Early life ==

Christian was born on July 29, 1916, in Bonham, Texas. His family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, when he was a young child. His parents were musicians. He had two brothers: Edward, born in 1906, and Clarence, born in 1911. Edward, Clarence, and Charlie were all taught music by their father, Clarence Henry Christian. Clarence Henry was struck blind by fever, and in order to support the family, he and the boys worked as buskers, on what the Christians called "busts". He would have them lead him into the better neighborhoods, where they would perform for cash or goods. When Charles was old enough to go along, he at first entertained by dancing. Later, he learned to play the guitar, inheriting his father's instruments upon his death when Charles was 12.

He attended Frederick A. Douglass High School in Oklahoma City, where he was further encouraged in music by instructor Zelia N. Breaux. Christian wanted to play tenor saxophone in the school band, but Breaux insisted he play the trumpet instead. As he believed playing the trumpet would disfigure his lip, he quit to pursue his interest in baseball, at which he excelled.

In a 1978 interview with biographer Craig McKinney, Clarence Christian said that in the 1920s and 1930s, Edward Christian led a band in Oklahoma City as a pianist and had a shaky relationship with the trumpeter James Simpson. Around 1931, Simpson instructed guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton to secretly school the younger Charles in jazz. Hamilton taught him to solo on three songs—"Rose Room", "Tea for Two", and "Sweet Georgia Brown". When the time was right, he took Charles to one of the many after-hours jam sessions along Deep Deuce (a district in Oklahoma City), where Edward's band was performing, and after some encouragement, Edward allowed Charles to play. Edward was surprised that Charles knew the tunes, which were well received by the club.

Charles soon was performing locally and on the road throughout the Midwest, including states as far away as North Dakota and Minnesota. By 1936, he was playing electric guitar and had become a regional attraction. According to the record producer John Hammond, Christian jammed with many of the big-name performers traveling through Oklahoma City, including Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Mary Lou Williams, the pianist for Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy.

== Career ==

=== National fame ===

In 1939, Christian auditioned for John Hammond, who recommended him to bandleader Benny Goodman, who was only the fourth white bandleader to feature Black musicians in his live band. Goodman had previously heard electric guitarists Leonard Ware and Floyd Smith, among others, and he unsuccessfully tried to buy Smith's contract from bandleader Andy Kirk.

There are multiple accounts of Christian and Goodman's first meeting. The former recalled in a 1940 article in Metronome magazine, "I guess neither one of us liked what I played." Despite this, Christian claimed that Goodman invited him to a show that evening. According to another account, Hammond decided to install Christian as the band's guitarist without consulting Goodman.

Goodman's band, including Christian on guitar, played that night at the Victor Hugo restaurant in Los Angeles. The bandleader called "Rose Room", a tune he assumed Christian did not know. However, Christian knew the tune and took an unprecedented twenty choruses of improvisation; Goodman hired him as a member of the band as a result. In the course of a few days, Christian went from making $2.50 a night to $150 a week.

Christian joined the newly formed Goodman Sextet in September 1939, which included Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Bernstein, and Nick Fatool.

Amateur recordings made in September 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Jerry Newman, a Goodman aficionado, capture the newly hired Christian while on the road with Goodman and feature Goodman's tenor saxophonist Jerry Jerome and then-local bassist Oscar Pettiford. Taking multiple solos, Christian shows much the same improvisational skills later captured on the Minton's and Monroe's recordings in 1941, suggesting that he had already matured as a musician. The Minneapolis recordings include "Stardust", "Tea for Two", and "I Got Rhythm", the latter a favorite of bop composers and jammers.

By February 1940, Christian dominated the jazz and swing guitar polls and was elected to the Metronome All-Stars. In the spring of 1940, Goodman laid off most of his band but retained Christian, and in the fall of that year Goodman led a sextet with Christian, Count Basie, longtime Duke Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams, former Artie Shaw tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld, and later drummer Dave Tough. This all-star band dominated the jazz polls in 1941, including another election to the Metronome All-Stars for Christian.

His work on the Goodman sextet sides "Soft Winds", "Till Tom Special", and "A Smo-o-o-oth One" show his use of few well-placed melodic notes. His work on the Sextet's recordings of the ballads "Stardust", "Memories of You", "Poor Butterfly", "I Surrender Dear", and "On the Alamo" and his work on "Profoundly Blue" with the Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet (1941) show hints of what was later called cool jazz. Although credited for very few, Christian composed many of the original tunes recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet.

=== Bebop and Minton's Playhouse ===

Christian was an important contributor to the music that became known as bebop. Some of the participants in early after-hours affairs at Minton's Playhouse club at 210 West 118th Street in Harlem credit Christian with the name "bebop", citing his humming of phrases as the onomatopoeic origin of the term.

Examples of Christian's bebop playing can be heard in a series of recordings made at Minton's Playhouse by Jerry Newman, a student at Columbia University, on a portable disk recorder in 1941, in which Christian was accompanied by Joe Guy on trumpet, Kenny Kersey on piano, and Kenny Clarke on drums. Christian's use of tension and release, a technique employed by Lester Young, Count Basie, and later bop musicians, is also present on Newman's recording of "Stompin' at the Savoy". Further recordings were made in 1941, shortly before Christian's illness and death, at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, another late-night jazz haunt in Harlem, with Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Other recordings include the tenor saxophone player Don Byas. Beboppers Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk were regulars at the jam sessions, with Monk a regular in the Minton's house band.

Kenny Clarke claimed that "Epistrophy" and "Rhythm-a-Ning", both credited to Monk, were actually written by Christian. The "Rhythm-a-Ning" line is heard on "Down on Teddy's Hill" and behind the introduction on "Guy's Got to Go" from the Newman recordings. It is also a line from Mary Lou Williams's "Walkin' and Swingin'". Clarke further commented that Christian first showed him the chords to "Epistrophy" on a ukulele.

The Minton's and Uptown House recordings have been packaged under a number of different titles, including After Hours and The Immortal Charlie Christian. On the recordings, Christian can be heard taking multiple choruses on a single tune, playing long stretches of melodic ideas with ease.

== Personal life ==

Christian fathered a daughter, Billie Jean Christian (December 23, 1932 – July 19, 2004) by Margretta Lorraine Downey of Oklahoma City.

In the late 1930s, Christian contracted tuberculosis, and in early 1940, he was hospitalized for a short period in which the Goodman group was on hiatus because of Goodman's back trouble. Goodman was hospitalized in the summer of 1940 after a brief stay at Santa Catalina Island, California, where the band stayed when they were on the West Coast.

Christian returned home to Oklahoma City in late July 1940 and returned to New York City in September 1940. In early 1941, Christian resumed his hectic lifestyle, heading to Harlem for late-night jam sessions after finishing gigs with the Goodman Sextet and Orchestra in New York City. In June 1941, he was admitted to Seaview Hospital, a tuberculosis sanatorium on Staten Island. He was reported to be making progress, and DownBeat magazine reported in February 1942 that he and Cootie Williams were starting a band.

After a visit to the hospital that same month by a "musician friend", Christian declined in health. He died of tuberculosis on March 2, 1942, at the age of 25. He was buried in an unmarked grave in his hometown of Bonham, Texas. A Texas State Historical Commission Marker and headstone were placed in Gates Hill Cemetery in 1994. The location of the historical marker and headstone was disputed, and in March 2013, Fannin County, Texas, recognized that the marker was in the wrong spot and that Christian is buried under a concrete slab, as claimed by his brother Clarence.

== Style and influences ==

Christian is widely regarded as one of the most influential pioneers of jazz guitar. His solos are frequently described as "horn-like", and in that sense, he was more influenced by horn players such as Lester Young and Herschel Evans than by guitarists like Eddie Lang or Lonnie Johnson. Christian himself stated that he wanted his guitar to sound like a tenor saxophone. The pioneering French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt had little influence on him, but he was familiar with some of Reinhardt's recordings. Guitarist Mary Osborne recalled hearing him play Reinhardt's solo on "Saint Louis Blues" note for note, but then following it with his own ideas.

By 1939, there had already been electric guitar soloists—Leonard Ware; George Barnes; Eddie Durham, who had recorded with Count Basie; Floyd Smith, who recorded "Floyd's Guitar Blues" with Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy in March 1939, using an amplified lap steel guitar; and the western swing pioneer Eldon Shamblin, who was playing with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. However, Christian paved the way for the modern electric guitar sound that was followed by other pioneers in jazz and rock, including T-Bone Walker, Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup, Scotty Moore, Franny Beecher, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix. For this reason, Christian was inducted in 1990 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Christian's exposure was so great in the brief period he played with Goodman that he influenced not only guitarists but other musicians as well. The influence he had on Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Don Byas can be heard on their early bop recordings including "Blue 'n' Boogie" and "Salt Peanuts". Miles Davis also cited Christian as an early influence. Christian still reigned supreme in the jazz guitar polls for up to two years after his death. Black Sabbath's first manager Jim Simpson described the band's first song, "A Song for Jim", as an "absolute Charlie Christian takeoff."

== Instruments ==

Epiphone Deluxe guitar (an acoustic archtop guitar), 1934–1937

Gibson ES-150 guitar (sunburst finish, with dot inlays on the fingerboard), and EH-150 amplifier, 1937 or 1939 – April 1940

Gibson ES-250 guitar (custom built by Gibson with a natural finish, a Super 400 tailpiece, and bowtie inlays on the fingerboard), April 1940 – February 1941. This instrument was re-discovered in 2002.

Gibson ES-250 guitar (custom built by Gibson with a natural finish, an L-7 style neck, and custom inlays on the fingerboard), February 1941 – March 1942

Gibson L-5 guitar (custom built by Gibson with a "Charlie Christian pickup" instead of a P-90). This guitar was delivered to Christian just prior to his death in March 1942. It was later owned by Tony Mottola.

The bar-style pickup used on the ES-150 and ES-250 became known as the "Charlie Christian pickup".

== Legacy ==

John Hammond and George T. Simon called Christian the best improvisational talent of the swing era. In the liner notes to the album Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1972), Gene Lees wrote that "Many critics and musicians consider that Christian was one of the founding fathers of bebop, or if not that, at least a precursor to it."

In 1966, 24 years after his death, Christian was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1989, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame created its first seven inductions, which included Christian.

In 1990, Christian was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the "Early Influence" category.

In a 1985 interview with Frets magazine, Jerry Garcia named Christian and Django Reinhardt as the two guitarists who most inspired his awe and emulation.

In 2006, Oklahoma City renamed a street in its Bricktown district "Charlie Christian Avenue".

== Discography ==

Christian never recorded as a leader. Compilations have been released of his sessions as a sideman in which he is a featured soloist, of practice and warm-up recordings for these sessions, and some lower-quality recordings of Christian's own groups performing in nightclubs, by amateur technicians.

With Benny Goodman

Charlie Christian with the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra (Columbia, 1955)

Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1972)

The Genius of the Electric Guitar, 1939–1941 recordings (Columbia, 1987)

The Benny Goodman Sextet Featuring Charlie Christian 1939–41 (Columbia, 1989)

Solo Flight, with the Benny Goodman Sextet (Vintage Jazz Classics, 1991)

Guitar Wizard (Le Jazz / Charly, 1993)

Complete Studio Recordings (Definitive, 2000) 4-CD box set

Complete Live Recordings (Definitive, 2001) 4-CD box set

Radioland 1939–1941 (Fuel 2000 / Varèse Sarabande, 2001)

The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy, 2002) 4-CD box set

First Master of the Electric Guitar: Selected Broadcasts & Jam Sessions, Remastered (JSP, 2002) 4-CD box set

Charlie Christian – The Original Guitar Genius (Proper, 2005) 4-CD box set

The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Definitive, 2005)

Solo Flight: Live! with the Benny Goodman Sextet (Definitive, 2008)

On the Air (Fuel 2000 / Varèse Sarabande, 2009)

Yale University Archives, Vol. 5: NBC Broadcast Recordings 1936–1943 (Nimbus, 2010)

Electric, with the Benny Goodman Sextet and the Charlie Christian Quartet (Uptown, 2011)

With Lionel Hampton

The Complete Lionel Hampton 1937–1941 (Bluebird, 1976) 6-LP box set

With others

From Spirituals to Swing – Carnegie Hall Concerts 1938/39 (Vanguard, 1959) 2-LP

== Filmography ==

2005: Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian

2007: Charlie Christian – The Life & Music of the Legendary Jazz Guitarist (Grossman Guitar Workshop)

== References ==

=== General reference ===

Broadbent, Peter (2002). Charlie Christian, Solo Flight: The Story of the Seminal Electric Guitarist. Hal Leonard. ISBN 978-1-872639-21-5.

Centlivre, Kevin (1994). "Interview with Jerry Jerome"[link removed]

Centlivre, Kevin (1999). "Revisiting Charlie Christian".

Feather, Leonard (reprint, 1977). Inside Jazz. Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-80076-4.

Goins, Wayne E.; McKinney, Craig (2005). A Biography of Charlie Christian, Jazz Guitar's King of Swing. ISBN 0-88946-426-X.

Lee, Amy (1940) "Charlie Christian Tried to Play Hot Tenor!" Metronome.

Marshall, Wolf (2002). "The Best of Charlie Christian" signature licks. Hal Leonard. ISBN 0-634-02182-6.

McKinney, Craig. Charles Christian: Musician.

Savage, William W., Jr. (1983). Singing Cowboys and All That Jazz: A Short History of Popular Music in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 48–51. ISBN 0-8061-1648-X.

Spring, Howard (1980). The Improvisational Style of Charlie Christian. York University.

Valdes, Leo (1997). Solo Flight: The Charlie Christian Newsletter. Leo Valdes.

== External links ==

"Charlie Christian". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Charlie Christian, style analysis and solo examples at Jazz Guitar Online

Deep Deuce history and photos

Charlie Christian biography by C. J. Shearn

Gates Hill Cemetery, Bonham, Texas

Source: Wikipedia ↗

Thelonious Sphere Monk ( October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. 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". As of 2009, Monk was the second-most-recorded jazz composer in history, after Duke Ellington.

Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodies, often using flat ninths, flat fifths, unexpected chromatic notes, low bass notes and stride, and fast whole tone runs. His playing style combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations.

His distinctive look included suits, hats, and sunglasses. He also had 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, along with Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Wynton Marsalis.

== Biography ==

=== 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 Monk family moved to the Phipps Houses at 243 West 63rd Street in San Juan Hill, Manhattan, New York City. (Subsequent redevelopment displaced the residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and Lincoln Center, 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 in Manhattan, 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 ended 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 as an organist with an evangelist, 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 in Harlem. Much of Monk's style was developed while he performed at Minton's, where he participated in after-hours cutting contests which featured many leading jazz soloists of the time. Monk's musical work at Minton's was crucial in the formulation of bebop, which would be furthered by musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Monk is believed to be the pianist featured on recordings Jerry Newman made around 1941 at the club. Monk's style at this time was later described as "hard-swinging", with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences included Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists. According to the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser, Monk lived in the same neighborhood in New York City as Johnson and knew him as a teenager.

In March 1943, Monk reported for his Army Induction physical, but was labeled by the Army psychiatrist as a "psychiatric reject" and did not serve.

Mary Lou Williams, who mentored Monk and his contemporaries, spoke of him in this period: "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."

In 1944, Monk cut his first commercial recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was one of the earliest established jazz musicians to promote Monk, and the pianist later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on a 1957 session with John Coltrane.

=== 1947–1952: Lorraine Gordon ===

In 1947, Ike Quebec introduced Monk to Lorraine Gordon and her first husband Alfred Lion, co-founder of Blue Note Records. Gordon preached Monk's genius to the jazz world with unrelenting passion. Shortly after meeting Gordon and Lion, Monk made his first recordings as a leader for Blue Note (later anthologized on Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1). The Monk Blue Note Sessions were recorded between 1947 and 1952.

Monk married Nellie Smith in 1947, and on December 27, 1949, the couple had a son, T. S. Monk (called Toot), who became a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born on September 5, 1953, and died of cancer in 1984.

In her autobiography, Gordon wrote of the lack of interest in Monk's early recordings. "I went to Harlem and those record stores didn't want Monk or me. I'll never forget one particular owner, I can still see him and his store on Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. 'He can't play lady, what are you doing up here? The guy has two left hands.' 'You just wait,' I'd say. 'This man's a genius, you don't know anything.'"

For Lion, sales were a secondary consideration. Producer Michael Cuscuna relates that Lion once told him that there were three people in his life that when he heard them he felt had to record everything they did: Monk, Herbie Nichols, and Andrew Hill.

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 club in Greenwich Village, and secured Monk his first gig there. Monk was showcased at the club for a week, but not a single person came.

In August 1951, New York City police searched a parked car occupied by Monk and his friend Bud Powell. They found narcotics in the car, presumed to have belonged to Powell. Monk refused to testify against his friend, and so the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card. Without this, Monk was nominally unable to play in any New York venue where liquor was served. Although this severely restricted his ability to perform for several years, a coterie of musicians led by Randy Weston introduced Monk to Black-owned bars and clubs in Brooklyn that flouted the law, enabling the pianist to play little-advertised, one-night engagements throughout the borough. Monk spent most of the 1950s composing and performing at theaters, outer borough clubs and out-of-town venues.

=== 1952–1954: Prestige Records ===

After intermittent recording sessions for Blue Note from 1947 to 1952, Monk was under contract to Prestige Records for the following two years. With Prestige, he cut several highly significant, but at the time under-recognized, albums, including collaborations with the saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. In 1954, Monk participated in a Christmas Eve session, which produced most of the albums Bags' Groove and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants by Davis. In his autobiography, Miles, Davis claimed that the alleged anger and tension between them did not take place and that the claims of blows being exchanged were "rumors" and a "misunderstanding".

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 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."

=== 1955–1961: Riverside Records ===

By the time of his signing to Riverside Records, Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for mainstream acceptance. Indeed, with Monk's consent, Riverside had managed to buy out his previous Prestige contract for a mere $108.24 ($1,273.44 in 2024). He willingly recorded two albums of jazz standards as a means of increasing his profile: Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington (1955) and The Unique Thelonious Monk (1956).

On Brilliant Corners, recorded in late 1956, Monk mainly performed his own music. The complex title track, which featured Rollins, was so difficult to play that the final version had to be edited together from multiple takes. The album was largely regarded as Monk's first commercial success.

After having his Cabaret Card restored, Monk relaunched his New York career with a landmark six-month residency at the Five Spot Café beginning in June 1957, leading a quartet with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. Little of this group's music was documented owing to contractual problems: Coltrane was signed to Prestige at the time, but Monk refused to return to his former label. One studio session by the quartet was made for Riverside, three tunes which were not released until 1961 by the subsidiary label Jazzland along with outtakes from a larger group recording with Coltrane and Hawkins, those results appearing in 1957 as the album Monk's Music. An amateur recording from the Five Spot (a later September 1958 reunion with Coltrane sitting in for Johnny Griffin) was issued on Blue Note in 1993; and a recording of the quartet performing at a Carnegie Hall concert on November 29 was recorded in high fidelity by Voice of America engineers, unearthed in the collection of the Library of Congress and released by Blue Note in 2005.

"Crepuscule with Nellie", recorded in 1957, was referred to by biographer Robin D. G. Kelley as Monk's "only through-composed composition, meaning that there is no improvising. It is Monk's concerto, if you will, and in some ways it speaks for itself. But he wrote it very, very carefully and very deliberately and really struggled to make it sound the way it sounds. ... it was his love song for Nellie".

The Five Spot residency ended on Christmas 1957; Coltrane left to rejoin Miles 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 with Griffin (later replaced by Charlie Rouse) on tenor saxophone, 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, 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 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 John F. Kennedy. According to biographer Kelley, the 1964 Time appearance came because "Barry Farrell, who wrote the cover story, wanted to write about a jazz musician and almost by default Monk was chosen, because they thought Ray Charles and Miles Davis were too controversial. ... [Monk] wasn't so political. ... Of course, I challenge that."

Monk continued to record studio albums, including Criss Cross (1963) and Underground (1968). By this time, however, his compositional output was limited, and only Underground featured a substantial number of new compositions, including his only 34 time piece, "Ugly Beauty".

As had been the case with Riverside, his period with Columbia contains multiple live albums, including Miles and Monk at Newport (1963), Live at the It Club, and Live at the Jazz Workshop, the latter two recorded in 1964, the last not being released until 1982. After the departure of Ore and Dunlop, the remainder of the rhythm section in Monk's quartet during the bulk of his Columbia period was Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums, both of whom joined in 1964. Along with Rouse, they remained with Monk for over four years, his longest-serving band.

In 1968, Monk, Gales, Rouse, and Riley played a concert at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California, at the invitation of a 16-year-old student charged with organizing school dances. This resulted in the quartet's final recording, Palo Alto (released in 2020).

=== 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 also included Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon, and Art Blakey. McKibbon, who had known Monk for over twenty years, recalled that "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.

As his health declined, Monk's last six years were spent as a guest in the Weehawken, New Jersey, home of de Koenigswarter, who nursed Monk during his final illness. She proved to be a steadfast presence, as did his own wife Nellie, as his life descended into further isolation. 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 at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey. His funeral was held at the Sanctuary of St. Peter's Church in Manhattan; he was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery (Grave 405, Hillcrest 1 section) in 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 in New York City, an error that continues to be disseminated online. 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 "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 myth may originate in the fact that Monk's sister Marion erroneously 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. Monk biographer Laurent de Wilde believed that the apocryphal Juilliard story may have stemmed from Monk's late 1950s collaboration with Juilliard instructor Hall Overton. The main source of the Juilliard misunderstanding is probably that Monk participated in a music contest c. 1942–1943 at the Columbus Hill Community Center in his neighborhood, which had a Juilliard scholarship as the first prize. Monk entered the contest but placed second and thus failed to get the scholarship. According to Monk's wife Nellie, when the prize winner later encountered Monk during a 1958 engagement and told him that Monk should rightfully have been awarded the Juilliard scholarship, Monk replied: "I'm glad I didn't go to the conservatory. Probably would've ruined me."

== Technique and playing style ==

Monk once said that "The piano ain't got no wrong notes."

According to Bebop: The Music and Its Players author Thomas Owens:Monk's usual piano touch was harsh and percussive, even in ballads. He often attacked the keyboard anew for each note, rather than striving for any semblance of legato. Often seemingly unintentional seconds embellish his melodic lines, giving the effect of someone playing while wearing work gloves. ... He hit the keys with fingers held flat rather than in a natural curve, and held his free fingers high above the keys. ... Sometimes he hit a single key with more than one finger, and divided single-line melodies between the two hands.Despite this unorthodox approach, he could play runs and arpeggios with great speed and accuracy. He also had strong finger independence, allowing him to play a melodic line and a trill simultaneously in his right hand. According to jazz pianist, educator and broadcaster Billy Taylor, "Monk could really play like [Art] Tatum. He really had all the technique and he could really play like Art."

Monk's style was not universally appreciated. Poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin described him pejoratively as "the elephant on the keyboard".

Monk often used the whole-tone scale, played either ascending or descending and covering several octaves. He also had extended improvisations that featured parallel sixths (he also used these in the themes of some of his compositions). His solos also feature space and long notes. Unusually for a bebop-based pianist, as an accompanist and on solo performances he often employed a left-hand stride pattern. A further characteristic of his work as an accompanist was his tendency to stop playing, leaving a soloist with just bass and drums for support. Monk had a particular proclivity for the key of B-flat. All of his many blues compositions, including "Blue Monk", "Misterioso", "Blues Five Spot", and "Functional", were composed in B-flat; in addition, his signature theme, "Thelonious", largely consists of an incessantly repeated B-flat tone.

== Tributes ==

Music in Monk Time is a 1983 documentary film about Monk and his music that was widely praised by music and film critics.

Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy performed as Monk's accompanist in 1960. Monk's tunes became a permanent part of his repertoire in concert and on albums. Lacy recorded many albums entirely focused on Monk's compositions.

Gunther Schuller wrote the work "Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss-Cross)" in 1960. It first appeared on Schuller's album Jazz Abstractions (1961) and was later performed and recorded by other artists, including Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Bill Evans.

Avant-garde jazz multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy's 1964 album Out to Lunch! includes the Monk tribute "Hat and Beard"; Dolphy wrote in the album's liner notes that Monk was "so musical no matter what he's doing, even if he's just walking around."

Round Midnight Variations is a collection of variations on the song "'Round Midnight" premiered in 2002. Composers contributing included Milton Babbitt, William Bolcom, David Crumb, George Crumb, Michael Daugherty, John Harbison, Joel Hoffman, Aaron Jay Kernis, Gerald Levinson, Tobias Picker, Frederic Rzewski, Augusta Read Thomas, and Michael Torke.

"Thelonious" Repertory Ensemble: Buell Neidlinger's tribute band (1981–1989).

Stefano Benni's 2005 Misterioso, A Journey into the Silence of Thelonious Monk was staged as a theatre production featuring Monk's music, directed by Filomena Campus, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008, at the Riverside Studios in 2009, and at a variety of venues in the following years. In 2017, an Arts Council England-sponsored international Monk Misterioso Tour was launched at the British Library in October, culminating with a new dramatised production of Misterioso: A Journey into the Silence of Thelonious Monk at Kings Place to close the London Jazz Festival's celebration of the centenary of Monk's birth, featuring Campus alongside Cleveland Watkiss, Pat Thomas, Rowland Sutherland, Orphy Robinson, Dudley Phillips and Mark Mondesir.

John Beasley founded the big band group MONK'estra, which celebrates Monk's and other classic compositions with a contemporary twist incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythms, modern jazz playing, hip hop and traditional big band instrumentation, along with originals by Beasley.

Jeff Beck's 1975 album Blow by Blow contains the track "Thelonious", a tribute to Monk written by Stevie Wonder.

=== Tribute albums ===

The following tribute albums to Monk have been released:

Reflections (1958) by Steve Lacy

Lookin' at Monk (1961) by Johnny Griffin and Eddie Lockjaw Davis Quintet

Evidence (1962) by Steve Lacy and Don Cherry

A Portrait of Thelonious (1965) by the Bud Powell Trio

Evidence (1981) by Steve Khan (B-side is "Thelonious Monk Medley," nine tunes)

Bennie Wallace Plays Monk (1981) by saxophonist Bennie Wallace

Four in One (1982) by Sphere: features former Monk sidemen Charlie Rouse (ten sax), Ben Riley (drums), Buster Williams (bass) and Kenny Barron (piano).

Sings Thelonious Monk (1982) by singer Soesja Citroen, featuring the Cees Slinger Octet

Thelonica (1983), by pianist Tommy Flanagan

Light Blue: Arthur Blythe Plays Thelonious Monk (1983) by saxophonist Arthur Blythe

That's The Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk (1984), an album featuring different groupings of rock and jazz musicians on each song including Steve Lacy, Donald Fagen, Todd Rundgren, Peter Frampton, Carla Bley, Joe Jackson, Gil Evans and Was Not Was.

Monk Suite: Kronos Quartet Plays Music of Thelonious Monk (1985) by Kronos Quartet with Ron Carter on bass.

Six Monk's Compositions (1987) (1987) by Anthony Braxton

Only Monk (1987) by Steve Lacy

Carmen Sings Monk (1988) by Carmen McRae

Rumba Para Monk (1988), by Jerry Gonzalez

Monk in Motian (1989) by Paul Motian, featuring Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell, Geri Allen and Dewey Redman

Thelonious Sphere Monk: Dreaming of the Masters Series Vol. 2, by Art Ensemble of Chicago with Cecil Taylor

Epistrophy (1991) by pianist Ran Blake

We See (1993) by Steve Lacy

Monk's Modern Music (1994) by pianist Rick Roe with Rodney Whitaker on bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums

The Fo'tet Plays Monk (1995) by Ralph Peterson, Jr.

e.s.t. Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk (1996) by e.s.t.

Monk on Monk (1997) by T.S. Monk, featuring Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Grover Washington Jr., Roy Hargrove, Clark Terry, Geri Allen and others

Brilliant Corners: The Music of Thelonious Monk (1997) by Bill Holman

Thelonious: Fred Hersch Plays Monk (1997) by Fred Hersch

Interpretations of Monk Vol. 1 (1997) by Muhal Richard Abrams and Barry Harris

Interpretations of Monk Vol. 2 (1998) by Anthony Davis and Mal Waldron

Green Chimneys: The Music of Thelonious Monk (1999) by Andy Summers

In the Key of Monk (1999) by Jessica Williams (musician)

Standard Time, Vol. 4: Marsalis Plays Monk (1999) by Wynton Marsalis

School Days (2002), recorded in 1963, by Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd, with Henry Grimes and Dennis Charles

Thelonious Moog (2003) by Steve Million and Joe "Guido" Welsh

Monk's Casino (2005) by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach; a triple CD set that includes every composition by Monk. According to the album's liner notes by critic John Corbett, this is the first comprehensive recording of all Monk's songs.

An Open Letter to Thelonious (2008) by Ellis Marsalis

Monk (2008) by Peter Bernstein

Bobby Broom Plays for Monk (2009) by Bobby Broom

In Monk's Mood (2009) by John Tchicai

Friday the 13th: The Micros Play Monk (2010) by The Microscopic Septet

Melodious Monk: A New Look at An Old Master (2011) by Kim Pensyl and Phil DeGreg

The Monk Project (2012) by Jimmy Owens

Baritone Monk (2012) by The Claire Daly Quartet

Talk Thelonious (2015) by Terry Adams

Joey. Monk. Live! (2017) by Joey Alexander

John Beasley presents MONK'estra vol. 1 (2016), by John Beasley

John Beasley presents MONK'estra vol. 2 (2017) by John Beasley

Duck Baker Plays Monk (2017) by Duck Baker, featuring solo fingerstyle acoustic guitar arrangements of Monk's work

The Monk: Live at Bimhuis (2018) by Miho Hazama and Metropole Orkest Big Band

Work: the complete composition of Thelonious Monk, solo guitar (2018) by Miles Okazaki

Thelonious Sphere Monk (2018) by MAST

Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk (2018) by Frank Kimbrough

Monks (2019) by Borah Bergman, Wilber Morris, and Sunny Murray

Monk: fifteen piano reflections (2020) by Stefano Travaglini

Steelonious (2016) by Mike Neer featuring Monk compositions played on lap steel guitar

== Other references to Monk ==

Comedian Felonious Munk and music producer Thelonious Martin both adopted stage names based on Monk's name.

Other things named after Monk include punk rock band Thelonious Monster and the 2021 novel Felonious Monk by William Kotzwinkle. Footballer Thelo Aasgaard is also named after Monk, as his father, cellist Jonathan Aasgaard, is a fan.

The protagonist of the 2001 novel Erasure and its 2023 film adaptation American Fiction is named Thelonious and nicknamed "Monk".

The character of McClintic Sphere in Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. is based on Monk and Ornette Coleman. In Pynchon's 2006 novel Against the Day, a quote from Monk serves as the opening epigraph: "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."

Rapper Common and producer/rapper J Dilla collaborated on the track "Thelonius" on the former's 2000 breakout album Like Water for Chocolate. The song makes no direct reference to Monk's career.

== Discography ==

== Awards and accolades ==

In 1993, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for "a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz".

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was established in 1986 by the Monk family and Maria Fisher. Its mission is to offer public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the globe, helping students develop imaginative thinking, creativity, curiosity, a positive self-image, and a respect for their own and others' cultural heritage. In addition to hosting an annual International Jazz Competition since 1987, the institute also helped, through its partnership with UNESCO, designate April 30, 2012, as the first annual International Jazz Day. It was renamed the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in 2019.

Monk was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.

== References ==

== Bibliography ==

Daoudi, Youssef (2018). Monk: Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution. First Second. ISBN 978-1-62672-434-1.

Fitterling, Thomas (1997). Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music. Berkeley Hills Books. ISBN 978-0-9653774-1-6.

Giddins, Gary (2018). Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation. Hachette. ISBN 978-0-306-80987-3.

Gordon, Lorraine (2006). Alive at the Village Vanguard: My Life in and Out of Jazz Time. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-61774-916-2.

Gourse, Leslie (1997). Straight No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk. Books with Attitude. ISBN 978-0-02-864656-5.

Kelley, Robin D. G. (2010). Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4391-9046-3. OCLC 180755951.

Mathieson, Kenny (2012). Giant Steps: Bebop and the Creators of Modern Jazz, 1945–65. Canongate Books. ISBN 978-0-85786-617-2.

Owens, Thomas (1996). Bebop: The Music and Its Players. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510651-0.

Porter, Lewis (1998). John Coltrane: His Life and Music. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10161-7.

Solis, Gabriel (2007). Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94096-3.

van der Bliek, Rob (2001). The Thelonious Monk Reader. Oxford University. ISBN 978-0-19-028396-4. LCCN 00-037475.

== External links ==

Official website

Thelonious Monk's birth certificate

Thelonious Monk at All About Jazz

"Not So Misterioso": Robert Christgau on Monk

Thelonious Monk discography at Discogs

Thelonious Monk at IMDb

Source: Wikipedia ↗