'His Rambunctious Iconoclasm'

On this date in 1964, Thelonious Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine. People then paid attention to such things. It was deemed an honor. Only five jazz musicians have been thus displayed. The previous year, Thomas Pynchon had published his first novel, V., in which the jazz saxophonist McClintic Sphere appears. The character is usually understood as a nod to Ornette Coleman, but it’s useful to remember that Monk’s middle name was Sphere -- “not Square,” he would explain. The Time editors may have chosen Monk for their cover as much for his oddness of manner and dress as for his music. When Monk died in 1982, Whitney Balliett wrote in The New Yorker:

 

“The pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, who died last week, at the age of sixty-four, was an utterly original man who liked to pretend he was an eccentric. Indeed, he used eccentricity as a shield to fend off a world that he frequently found alien, and even hostile. A tall, dark, bearish, inward-shining man, he wore odd hats and dark glasses with bamboo frames when he played.”

 

The distinction between originality and eccentricity is critical. The latter often implies affectation. Unforgivably, some critics and listeners patronized Monk.  

 

Today we look back and see 1964 as an ominously transitional time for popular music. During the week of February 29, the Billboard Top 100 found The Beatles holding the first and second spots, followed by the Four Seasons, Al Hirt, The Rivieras and The Beatles again at No. 6. For fourteen weeks starting that month, The Beatles held the No. 1 spot. On May 9, Louis Armstrong, age sixty-three, briefly interrupted their supremacy with “Hello, Dolly” -- not jazz but performed by one of its masters. Monk never hit the pop charts.

 

His playing was percussive and spare. He had more in common with Count Basie than Errol Garner – no filigree, no arabesques. He left plenty of space between notes and wasn’t afraid of a little dissonance. When Philip Larkin reviewed his album Criss Cross in March 1964, Philip Larkin praised his “frequent and impressive lacunae.” Monk once said there was no such thing as a wrong note – a recipe for disaster if followed by a mediocrity. Now we judge him one of the premiere jazz composers, up there with Morton, Ellington and Mingus. His songs are standards: “Round Midnight,” “Well, You Needn’t,” “Epistrophy,” "Crepescule with Nellie." In 1958, reviewing three albums by Monk, Balliett writes:

 

“His compositions—with their bristling discords, unexpected notes, and coded titles . . . are often no more than old blues, harmonically remodeled and infused with a melodic sense as original and lyric as Ellington’s. A diffident, evasive performer, whose feet sometimes flap about like fish while he plays, Monk invariably manages either to thoroughly imbue his co-workers with his rambunctious iconoclasm or, once in a while, to make them as awkward as wallflowers at their first dance.”