Whenever I told people I was writing a biography of jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Monk, even those with just passing knowledge of the music mentioned the iconic image on Monk on his Underground LP. Even folks who never heard the record could describe the bizarre picture of Monk playing an old upright piano with a machine gun strapped to his back, barricaded inside what was supposed to be a secluded haunt of the French underground. It is often assumed that Underground marked the height of Monk’s powers, his pinnacle of fame. On the contrary, it was Columbia records last-ditch effort to resurrect an artist whose dismal sales numbers had become a drag on the label. Behind the image and the label is a common yet no less dramatic story of a corporate giant attempting to turn vintage wine into pop.


Released in 1968, when jazz was being eclipsed by rock and roll, the Underground LP was Columbia records conscious strategy to remake Monk into an icon for the youth, and they hired the hip design team of John Berg and Dick Mantel to do it. It was always about the picture: they built an elaborate set that included a couple of chickens, a cow, the accoutrements of war, bottles of vintage wine, a slim young model dressed in the uniform of the French Resistance, and a Nazi prisoner of war tied up in the corner. This spectacular photo also tapped into contemporary images of revolutionary movements—the Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, etc.—but renders them benign by drawing on narratives of the “Good War” against fascism. The press release for Underground minces no words: “Now, in 1968, with rock music and psychedelia capturing the imagination of young America, Thelonious Monk has once again become an underground hero, this time as an oracle of the new underground.” Remarkably, the press release devotes more ink to the cover art than the music itself, predicting that Underground would become “the most provocative and talked-about album covers in the history of the phonograph record.” Even Gil McKean’s liner notes obsess over the image; he manufactures a fictional account of Monk as a WWII hero reliving his glory days (“With a cry of ‘Take that, you honkie Kraut!’ Capitaine Monk shot him cleanly and truly through the heart”).


When Underground hit the stores in late April 1968, Thelonious just happened to have been booked to play the University of California, Berkeley, followed by three nights at the Carousel Ballroom (it would later move and become the Fillmore West)—a San Francisco club better known for booking the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane than jazz artists. Monk played opposite the San Francisco-based rock group “The Charlatans” and Dr. John the Night Tripper, whose synthesis of psychedelic rock and New Orleans rhythm-and-blues attracted a young audience. Monk dug Dr. John, but did The Night Tripper’s followers felt the same way about the High Priest of Bebop? Columbia’s massive ad campaign tried to ensure they would, declaring “the beginning of a New Monk success. Because with great songs like “Raise Four” and “Easy Street” – plus another great cover photo that’s just out-of-sight, the Rock generation will be clamoring for more and more Monk.”


That the “Rock generation” did not run out to buy Underground surprised no one save Columbia’s marketing department. They mistakenly believed that selling Monk, or jazz for that matter, was all about packaging and the music was secondary. Monk fans and jazz lovers bought Underground not for the photo, but because he delivered four new compositions and it had been a while since he last recorded new music. And yet, while sales were respectable the reviews were mixed.


Monk’s producer at Columbia, Teo Macero, thought he might win crossover appeal by replacing his usual quartet format with a hip, extravagant big band record. He wanted a bigger sound and fresh charts, fused with a little rock and a little R&B. Columbia turned to arranger Oliver Nelson, a fine saxophone player and a band leader in his own right, who had a reputation for making hits. In 1966, he won a Grammy for arranging Wes Montgomery’s album, Goin’ Out of My Head, and in 1967 won the Down Beat poll for best arranger. In the mid-1960s, he turned his attention to scoring for film and television and moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote background music for the hit television show “Ironside.”


Unfortunately, Macero and Nelson called all the shots, resulting in a disastrous LP titled Monk’s Blues. In Nelson’s hands Monk’s music was flattened out, the jagged edges smoothed over, and the record as a whole was overproduced. On tunes such as “Little Rootie Tootie,” “Trinkle Tinkle,” and “Let’s Cool One,” the ensemble passages are overwrought, and when Monk isn’t soloing his voice is practically drowned out. Worse, in an effort to appeal to young listeners, Macero included three of his own compositions written specifically for the pop and rock market, right down to the under-three-minute format. “Consecutive Seconds” sounds like it was pulled from a British mod movie soundtrack. A simple repeated phrase played over a “go-go” beat and blues changes, the song is an awkward vehicle for Monk. “Just a Glance at Love” is a simple ballad in waltz time, clearly meant for popular consumption. Monk stays true to the melody and his dissonant sound, but Nelson’s syrupy ensemble arrangement restores the tune to its intended realm of “easy listening.” The final track, “Thelonious Rock (Teo’s Tune),” was written expressly for the “turn on and tune out” generation. Mercifully, Monk sat out on this one and it was never released.


Macero desperately needed a hit. Columbia execs now considered Monk a liability and Macero hoped to prove them wrong. In an effort to save money, he completed the record under budget, but the costs still exceeded $6,000, with Oliver Nelson receiving a $2,300 arranger’s fee. When Columbia released Monk’s Blues in April of 1969, the A&R and sales departments had high hopes. It was universally panned. Nelson took the heat for Monk’s Blues, but privately jazz critics like Martin Williams blamed Macero and Columbia records. A couple of weeks before publishing his withering New York Times review, Williams penned a letter to Macero proposing that Monk move in the opposite direction, collaborating with artists from an earlier generation—such Milt Jackson or Lionel Hampton. Hollie West of the Washington Post echoed Williams, though she made her views public. She dismissed Monk’s Blues as a “venture in arid territory,” and suggested that Dizzy Gillespie or Lionel Hampton to make a record with Monk.


Macero heard the criticisms, but neither he nor his bosses were interested in nostalgic reunions. They wanted to expand Monk’s audience, and that meant more rock, more pop, more R&B. In fact, just days before the release of Monk’s Blues, Macero floated a plan for an LP with Monk and popular blues singer Taj Mahal. “In this way,” Macero wrote, “we could bring Monk into the current bag of soul/blues and Taj Mahal would have fabulous musical backing.” Although there is no evidence to suggest Monk opposed the collaboration, nothing ever came of it. A few months later, Columbia’s A&R department came up with another joint Monk project, this time with a hot new group called “Blood, Sweat and Tears.” A jazz-influenced rock group with strong instrumentals and a heavy brass sound, BS&T seemed like a likely choice for the kind of musical product Columbia was looking for. There was another incentive, however: the band’s drummer was Bobby Colomby, the younger brother of Monk’s manager, Harry Colomby. Macero got A&R to authorize nearly $3,500 for the session and even asked the design department to come up with an album cover, “something Psychedelic – way out.” But this idea, too, died on the vine, in part because Thelonious simply wasn’t interested. He tolerated rock and roll, but he was never a fan. When asked about the music in an interview a three years earlier, he replied, “Well, my wife tells me it gives her a stomachache. It don’t do that to me, I can listen to it, but as she explained it, it don’t have that tone and it don’t tell a story.”


The closest Monk and Blood, Sweat, and Tears came to a collaboration happened in March of 1971, when Monk’s quartet opened for BS&T at Lincoln Center and the Coliseum in Washington, D. C. While the audience appreciated Monk’s group, they came to see BS&T. So did the press; they completely ignored Monk.


Once Columbia’s execs discovered they could not turn Thelonious Monk into a Sly Stone, they quietly dropped him after ten years—but not before putting out Thelonious Monk’s Greatest Hits. After failing to refashion Monk into something different and then declaring him a financial liability, the ad promoting Greatest Hits read as bitterly ironic: “If you dig the cat in the hat, you probably look upon all Monk music as great, because it’s Monk and nobody comes close.”


Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Southern California. His books include Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.

Read and search book reviews and excerpts on SeeingBlack.com's Literature channel and archive.

Click here to post a comment on this excerpt or your own literature, reviews or news.

Do you shop at Amazon? Well shop through our link and support SeeingBlack.com!

© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com

Top of Page