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7 unusual facts about Thelonious Monk


Benny Harris

A self-taught musician, in the mid-1930s Benny Harris was already playing with Thelonious Monk.

Dick Guindon

There, in the Jazz Lab, we were introduced to Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, Thelonious Monk and other greats of jazz through their LP recordings.

Go Together

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album 4 stars and stated "A melodic but explorative player, Bley (whose use of space sometimes recalls Thelonious Monk) interacts closely with the electric bass of Steve Swallow on this excellent duet session".

Kōjō no Tsuki

A jazz arrangement was recorded by Thelonious Monk under the title "Japanese Folk Song" on his 1967 album Straight, No Chaser.

Meddling Monk

Calling himself Thelonios, he used the illuminated art skills of the other monks to create a circuit to repair his TARDIS.

Roksan Xerxes

He became dissatisfied with the state of the audio arts when he heard his little television set reproduce Thelonious Monk in a more musically satisfying way than his hi-fi, and this led him to began experimentation.

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser

Produced by Clint Eastwood, Bruce Ricker, and directed/co-produced by Charlotte Zwerin, it features live performances by Monk and his group, and posthumous interviews with friends and family.


Barney Wilen

He wrote a soundtrack for Roger Vadim's film Les Liaisons Dangeureuse two years later, working with Thelonious Monk.

Black and Tan Fantasy

Thelonious Monk covered the song in 1955; his cover was sampled by the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan in their 1993 song "Shame on a Nigga".

Cascais Jazz Festival

Miles Davis performed at it—making his first appearance in Portugal—as did Dexter Gordon, Phil Woods, and The Giants of Jazz (Thelonious Monk, Kai Winding, Art Blakey, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon and Dizzy Gillespie).

Django Haskins

His family's love for music exposed him to the likes of Cole Porter, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Motown, Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, The Replacements and Elvis Costello, familiarising him with pop music and its many forms.

Dockery Plantation

Today the site hosts a small number of private tours, lectures, and events in partnership with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Delta State University, and other academic and cultural institutions.

Frank Giasullo

He recalls an earlier pivotal moment when he was, at the age of 15, attending a concert with his piano teacher and his father, of being impressed by Jimmy Smith on organ, and both Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk on pianos, leading him to add the jazz idiom to his classical repertoire.

Grafton State Hospital

In 1957, noted Jazz musician Thelonious Monk was briefly held for observation at the Grafton State Hospital after a State Trooper found him at Logan Airport acting erratically and then becoming unresponsive to questioning.

Hammer Klavier Trio

The Hammer Klavier Trio (HKT) has been founded in 2002 and their music has been described as “Straight-Ahead Jazz, somewhere between Monk and The Bad Plus.

I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

The song was a staple of Thelonious Monk's live sets from the early 1950s, and he recorded it a number of times Thelonious Himself (1957)

Jazz Loft Project

Smith wrote 139 names of jazz musicians on his partial, haphazard tape labels: famous stars like Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Roy Haynes, and Lee Konitz, along with underground legends like drummer Ronnie Free, bassist Henry Grimes, drummer Edgar Bateman, multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart, and saxophonist Lin Halliday, as well as many unknowns.

Lil Hardin Armstrong

At that time, her favorite living pianists were Thelonious Monk and Billy Taylor, which helps to explain why, when Riverside producer Chris Albertson approached her about these recordings, her immediate reaction was, "Who's going to listen to that old stuff?"

National Jazz Museum in Harlem

Based at 104 East 126th Street, the museum emphasizes the role Harlem has played in the nurturing and cultivation of jazz as a home to legends such as Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, John Coltrane, and Billie Holiday.

Orrin Keepnews

Their most significant early move came in 1955, when they were made aware of the availability of Thelonious Monk, who was able to terminate his contract with Prestige Records and became Riverside's first major artist.

Pee Wee Russell

In his last decade, Russell often played at jazz festivals and international tours organized by George Wein, including an appearance with Thelonious Monk at the 1963 Newport Festival, a meeting which has a mixed reputation (currently available as part of the Monk 2-CD set Live at Newport 1963–65).

Ruby Vroom

It also features guitar-based tunes like "Janine", "Moon Sammy", and "Supra Genius" and jazzy, upright-bass-fueled songs that often slyly quoted other material—the theme from Courageous Cat on "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago", Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso" on "Casiotone Nation", and Bobby McFerrin's cover of Joan Armatrading's "Opportunity" on "Uh, Zoom Zip".

Saetia

(This is similar to fellow screamo band Joshua Fit For Battle, whose name was a corruption of the traditional American spiritual song "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho"; other members of Saetia later formed Off Minor, which is the title of a Thelonious Monk composition.)

Sharon Freeman

Freeman was nominated for a Grammy for her arrangement of “Monk's Mood” for five French horns and rhythm section for Hal Willner’s album, “That’s the Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk”.

The Brilliant Corners

The group formed in 1983, taking their name from a Thelonious Monk jazz album.

Thelonious in Action

Thelonious in Action: Recorded at the Five Spot Cafe is a 1958 album by jazz musician Thelonious Monk.

Thomas Blackshear

Other U.S. postage stamps with Blackshear illustrations include portraits of Joe Louis, Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk for the Jazz Series, and illustrations for stamps commemorating James Cagney, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Beau Geste and Stagecoach for the Classic Hollywood Movies series, as well as several stamps for Classic Movie Monsters.

Wizard of the Vibes

The sessions were the work of The Thelonious Monk Quintet (the July 2, 1948 and July 23, 1951 sessions) and The Modern Jazz Quartet plus Lou Donaldson (a 1952 session).


see also

Jason Goldman

In 1999, Goldman was selected by jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter to be a member of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz where he toured the world and performed with a who’s who list of jazz icons (Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, Christian McBride, Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Roy Haynes, Kenny Barron, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Watson, to name a few).

San Juan Hill, Manhattan

In addition to the significant African American community, there was also an Afro-Caribbean community there, which has left its traces in Bye-ya and Bemsha Swing compositions of Thelonious Monk, co-written much later with Denzil Best, who also grew up in this neighborhood.

The Sound of Jazz

Blue Monk - Thelonious Monk (p); Ahmed Abdul Malik (b); Osie Johnson (d) (does not appear on 2003 idem DVD release)

Thelonious Monk Nonet Live in Paris 1967

Recorded at "Salle Pleyel", Paris, France, November 3, 1967, Thelonious Monk Nonet Live in Paris is a concert recording of a rare large group that Monk assembled for the European tour, which featured the addition of some of the top horn players in jazz.