50 Fun Facts About Thelonious Monk

During concerts, Thelonious Monk often left the piano while his band kept playing to do what?

Stand up and dance was Monk's habit: he would stop playing, rise and move to the music for a few moments, then return to the keyboard.

Thelonious Monk's Time magazine cover story was delayed for three months by which 1960s news event?

Kennedy's assassination bumped the story from November 1963, so Monk's portrait finally ran on February 28, 1964, with an article titled The Loneliest Monk.

Which Hollywood star was executive producer of the 1988 film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser?

Clint Eastwood, a jazz devotee, put his company Malpaso behind the documentary and supplied the budget its makers needed to finish it.

Which 2023 film, an Oscar winner for its screenplay, follows a novelist named Thelonious and nicknamed Monk?

American Fiction stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious Ellison, known to everyone as Monk; the film adapts Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure.

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was renamed in 2019 after which pianist, its longtime chairman?

Herbie Hancock had long chaired the institute, which the Monk family helped found in 1986 to bring jazz education to young people around the world.

Which famous honor did Thelonious Monk receive as a special posthumous citation in 2006?

Pulitzer Prize judges praised a body of distinguished and innovative composition, a citation that arrived 24 years after Monk's death in 1982.

Which Thelonious Monk ballad, written around 1940, is often called the most recorded standard by any jazz musician?

'Round Midnight was first put on record in 1944 by Cootie Williams's band, three years before Monk made a recording of it himself.

Which daring jazz style did Thelonious Monk help create at Harlem jam sessions in the early 1940s?

Bebop may even owe its name to him: Monk claimed the word came from Bip Bop, his own early title for the tune later known as 52nd Street Theme.

Who booked Thelonious Monk's quartet for a 1968 Palo Alto concert first released on record in 2020?

A 16-year-old student in charge of school events brought the quartet to Palo Alto High School, and the tape of the show surfaced as the album Palo Alto.

Which Motown star wrote the Thelonious Monk tribute Thelonius for Jeff Beck's 1975 album Blow by Blow?

Stevie Wonder gave Beck the tune and played clavinet on it uncredited, yet never released a recording of the piece under his own name.

Which instrument did Thelonious Monk briefly study as a boy before switching to the piano for good?

Trumpet lessons did not last: Monk soon moved to the keyboard, learning from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, and playing hymns for his mother to sing at church.

Thelonious Monk grew up in Manhattan, but in which Southern state, in the town of Rocky Mount, was he born?

North Carolina was home only until 1922, when the Monk family moved to New York City; the state's Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 2009.

Which geometric shape was Thelonious Monk's middle name, later adopted as the name of a tribute band?

Sphere came from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts, and the tribute band of that name cut its first album on the very day Monk died.

At which Harlem club was Thelonious Monk the house pianist in the early 1940s, playing after-hours cutting contests?

Minton's Playhouse let Monk sharpen his style night after night against the leading soloists of the day, in jam sessions that reshaped modern jazz.

Which tenor saxophonist joined Thelonious Monk's quartet for a landmark six-month run at the Five Spot Café in 1957?

John Coltrane's months with Monk at the Five Spot relaunched the pianist's New York career, yet contract problems meant very little of the group's music was recorded.

Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Thelonious Monk's devoted patron, was born into which European banking dynasty?

Rothschild wealth let the baroness pay Monk's bills and give him and his family a home; he named the ballad Pannonica for her.

Thelonious Monk said his patron Pannonica was named after a butterfly; her great-niece traced the name to which insect?

A moth, the rare species Eublemma pannonica, proved to be the real source of the name, correcting the butterfly story that Monk himself had passed along.

Which New York City permit did police take from Thelonious Monk in 1951, barring him from clubs that served liquor?

Cabaret card rules shut Monk out of Manhattan's clubs for years, so friends found him little-advertised, one-night engagements in bars across Brooklyn.

Which record label, co-founded by Alfred Lion, released Thelonious Monk's first recordings as a bandleader in 1947?

Blue Note kept recording Monk until 1952 even though the discs sold poorly; Lion felt he simply had to capture everything the pianist did.

Riverside Records bought out Thelonious Monk's contract with the Prestige label in 1955 for roughly how much money?

About $100 was all it took, $108.24 to be exact, because Monk's records were such poor sellers that his old label let him go for next to nothing.

Thelonious Monk's first Riverside album, made to win over wary listeners, featured the music of which bandleader?

Duke Ellington was one of Monk's stated influences, and the 1955 album of his familiar tunes was meant to raise the profile of a pianist thought too difficult.

Which Thelonious Monk album, recorded in 1956, has a title track so hard it was spliced together from many takes?

Brilliant Corners defeated the band through 25 incomplete takes, so producer Orrin Keepnews edited the released version together from the pieces.

The cover of a 1968 Thelonious Monk album shows the pianist dressed as which kind of wartime figure?

A Resistance fighter in wartime France is his role on the cover of Underground, a salute to his patron Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who served in the movement and is pictured too.

Which elite New York City public school for gifted pupils did Thelonious Monk attend without ever graduating?

Stuyvesant admitted him as a gifted teenager, but Monk left without a diploma, having formed his first band at 16 to play restaurants and school events.

As a boy taking classical lessons, Thelonious Monk counted Rachmaninoff and which other composer as his favorites?

Chopin and Rachmaninoff stood out among the Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt he learned in two years with the Austrian-born teacher Simon Wolf.

At 17, Thelonious Monk went on the road as an organist, accompanying which kind of traveling performer?

An evangelist took the teenage Monk on tour to play organ, and only in his late teens did he begin to find work playing jazz.

Thelonious Monk made his first commercial recordings in 1944 in the quartet of which tenor saxophone pioneer?

Coleman Hawkins was among the first established stars to champion Monk, who returned the favor by inviting the older man onto a 1957 session of his own.

T. S. Monk, the son who followed Thelonious Monk into a jazz career, became a professional on which instrument?

Drums caught his ear when Max Roach added a timpani to his kit for the tune Bemsha Swing; the boy's nickname, Toot, lives on in Little Rootie Tootie.

Crepuscule, in Thelonious Monk's love song Crepuscule with Nellie, is a French word for which time of day?

Twilight was in the working title, Twilight with Nellie, until Monk's patron Pannonica suggested the French word; he wrote the piece for his wife.

Thelonious Monk grew up in San Juan Hill, a Manhattan neighborhood later largely cleared to build which arts complex?

Lincoln Center rose where Monk's neighbors once lived, though the Phipps Houses on West 63rd Street, his family's home from 1922, were left standing.

In 1995 the United States honored Thelonious Monk, like Louis Armstrong that same year, by picturing him on which item?

A postage stamp pictured Monk in 1995, the same year that Louis Armstrong received a 32-cent commemorative of his own.

An object in space found in 1994 was named 11091 Thelonious after Thelonious Monk; what kind of object is it?

An asteroid found by astronomer Joe Montani carries Monk's name, and the same observer later named another one after a longtime member of the pianist's quartet.

In 1954 Thelonious Monk first visited which European capital, recording a solo piano session for radio there?

Paris also changed his life offstage: at a concert there he met Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, his close friend and patron for the rest of his days.

Which bandleader led Thelonious Monk's Christmas Eve 1954 session and later dismissed rumors that the two came to blows?

Miles Davis wrote in his autobiography that the famous quarrel was only rumor and misunderstanding; the date produced most of two classic albums.

Thelonious Monk's 1964 tune Children's Song, which he recorded only once, reworks which traditional counting rhyme?

This Old Man is so plainly the source that the original LP jacket listed the track as That Old Man rather than Children's Song.

Thelonious Monk named a 1953 tune after the day on which he wrote and recorded it; which title did it get?

Friday the 13th lived up to its name: a horn player booked for the November 13 session had the flu, so Julius Watkins stepped in instead.

Bandmate Art Blakey recalled that Thelonious Monk was an excellent player of checkers and which other board game?

Chess and checkers were both strengths of a man so quiet that bandmate Al McKibbon said he spoke about two words on an entire 1971 tour.

Thelonious Monk broke a basic rule of piano teaching by striking the keys with his fingers held in which way?

Laid out flat rather than curved, his fingers attacked each key afresh, yet he could play runs and arpeggios with great speed and accuracy.

Thelonious Monk's 1917 birth certificate records which detail differently from the way the world came to know it?

His first name appears on the certificate as Thelious, and the document leaves out his middle name altogether.

Which major label signed Thelonious Monk in 1962 and released Monk's Dream, the best-selling LP of his lifetime?

Columbia had the promotional muscle his earlier labels lacked, and within two years of signing Monk was on the cover of Time magazine.

A lost 1957 Carnegie Hall tape of Thelonious Monk's quartet was rediscovered in 2005 in which institution's collection?

Library of Congress staff came across it while digitizing a backlog of Voice of America recordings, and the benefit concert finally reached listeners as an album.

Thelonious Monk lost his right to play New York clubs in 1951 after refusing to testify against which fellow pianist?

Bud Powell was a close friend whom Monk had already saluted in the tune In Walked Bud, first recorded in 1947.

Kenny Clarke worked out the melody of Epistrophy, Thelonious Monk's first copyrighted tune, on which small instrument?

Ukulele fingerings gave Clarke the main theme and Monk supplied the chords; the piece went on to close nearly every set the pianist played.

Which Thelonious Monk tune's title evolved from the song Just You, Just Me by way of Just Us and then Justice?

Evidence sets a brand-new melody over the older song's chord progression and was first recorded in 1948 with vibraphonist Milt Jackson.

A neighbor, Alberta Simmons, taught the young Thelonious Monk which Harlem piano style associated with Fats Waller?

Stride never left his playing: unusually for a modern jazz pianist, Monk often used its left-hand pattern in solo performances and as an accompanist.

Which tenor saxophonist was a regular member of Thelonious Monk's quartet for more than a decade, from 1959 to 1970?

Charlie Rouse went on to co-found a band devoted to Monk's music with Ben Riley, another veteran of the pianist's 1960s group.

Bemsha, in the title of Thelonious Monk's tune Bemsha Swing, respells a nickname for which Caribbean island?

Barbados is nicknamed Bimshire, and it was the birthplace of the parents of Denzil Best, who wrote the tune with Monk.

Ugly Beauty, recorded by Thelonious Monk in 1967, is the only one of his compositions written as which kind of piece?

A waltz was the idea of bandmate Ben Riley, who suggested the three-quarter rhythm for a tune the quartet first taped for a television broadcast.

Which English poet, also a jazz critic, dismissed Thelonious Monk by likening him to an elephant at the keyboard?

Philip Larkin was not alone in doubting Monk's style, yet fellow pianist Billy Taylor insisted Monk had all the technique of the virtuoso Art Tatum.

Thelonious Monk recorded the score for a 1959 film version of Les Liaisons dangereuses made by which French director?

Roger Vadim got existing Monk tunes rather than new ones, since a tight schedule and a health crisis kept the pianist from composing; the tapes came out in 2017.