Word: monke
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Monk's inimitable piano style is such an integral part of the music he has written that few jazz pianists have much luck with even the Monk tunes that have become part of the standard jazz repertory. Monk himself plays with deliberate incaution, attacking the piano as if it were a carillon's keyboard or a finely tuned set of 88 drums. The array of sounds he divines from his Baldwin grand are beyond the reach of academic pianists; he caresses a note with the tremble of a bejeweled finger, then stomps it into its grave with a crash...
...Monk's best showcase has always been a cafe on Manhattan's Lower East Side called the Five Spot, where he ended a highly successful seven-month engagement in January. The ambiance of the Five Spot is perfect for Monk's mood?dark, a little dank, smoke-soaked and blue. Night after night, Monk would play his compositions?the same tunes over and over again, with what appeared to be continuing fascination with all that they have...
Pretty Butterfly. At the piano, Monk is clearly tending to business, but once he steps away from it, people begin to wonder. Aside from his hat and the incessant shuffle of his feet, he looks like a perfectly normal neurotic. "Solid!" and "All reet!" are about all he will say in the gravelly sigh that serves as his voice, but his friends attribute great spiritual strength to him. Aware of his power over people, Monk is enormously selfish in the use of it. Passive, poutish moods sweep over him as he shuffles about, looking away, a member of the race...
Every day is a brand-new pharmaceutical event for Monk: alcohol, Dexedrine, sleeping potions, whatever is at hand, charge through his bloodstream in baffling combinations. Predictably, Monk is highly unpredictable. When gay, he is gentle and blithe to such a degree that he takes to dancing on the sidewalks, buying extravagant gifts for anyone who comes to mind, playing his heart out. One day last fall he swept into his brother's apartment to dance before a full-length mirror so he could admire his collard-leaf boutonniere; he left without a word. "Hey!" he will call out. "Butterflies faster...
...stays up for days on end, prowling around desperately in his rooms, troubling his friends, playing the piano as if jazz were a wearying curse. In Boston Monk once wandered around the airport until the police picked him up and took him to Grafton State Hospital for a week's observation. He was quickly released without strings, and though the experience persuaded him never to go out on the road alone again, he now tells it as a certification of his sanity. "I can't be crazy," he says with conviction, " 'cause they had me in one of those places...