How did thelonious monk die
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He was only the fourth jazz musician to be so featured, and unlike his predecessors, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Duke Ellington, he was unknown to the public at large. Clearly, she saw her life with Thelonious as a life-long relationship, which required her to look down the road and see the future benefits of the union _ even when he saw only notes on a music sheet.In 1964 a pianist with the unusual name of Thelonious Monk appeared on the cover of Time. Nellie Monk was selfless, strong and wise. She always will be the embodiment of true black love, the kind that I see in my own mother. And when children were involved, nothing except death could pull them away.
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Even when the man was less than honorable or even lazy, these women hung on. My interest in Nellie Monk is the same as it was in 1987: Her example, at least to me, represents a generation of black women who put their families first no matter what. Thelonious' affection for Nellie is best expressed in his famous ballad Crepuscule With Nellie, which he wrote in 1957, when Nellie underwent surgery for a thyroid ailment. Those who knew the couple said theirs was a genuine love affair grounded in mutual respect and a shared history of hardship. He was the epitome of social dysfunctionality. As Jet magazine points out, Nellie was never his official manager, but she paid her husband's musicians, "collected money from promoters, and made sure band members had plane tickets." She literally had to lead Thelonious through airport terminals and hotel lobbies. She supported both of them as a seamstress during World War II in a factory, and continued to make clothes for Monk and their friends.Įven in jazz musician terms, Thelonious was a living, breathing mess. When Nellie met Thelonious, he was financially struggling to get his music to catch on outside New York. Nellie Monk, who married Thelonious in 1947 and lived with him until his death, was one such saint. Nellie Monk was an inspiration unto herself.Īll who follow the lives of jazz musicians have tales of self-absorbed artists who live in their imaginations, who cannot tie their own shoes, let alone pay their bills and otherwise handle their daily affairs. Mainly, though, I never lost the awe for Nellie Monk, the glue that held "the onliest Monk's" fragile life together. I never outgrew my love of Monk's sound, even after joining the Marine Corps. To be perpetually "askew," as we called the condition, I wore bell bottoms, a smudged wife-beater and old sandals every day, everywhere I went. My schoolmates and I, even nonmusicians, faked all manner of Monk-like eccentricities to prove that we were "heavy" and "brainy." The ladies on campus seemed to love the big charade, so we indulged them. To be "a real down dude," you had to read every issue of Downbeat and love, or pretend to love, Monk's piano, his special rhythm, his urgent beat and unpredictability of line. When I was in college, brothers were "square" if they were not "in to "the onliest Monk,' " as Birdland town crier Pee Wee Marguette nicknamed the piano great.