

Monk: The High Priest of Jazz (1964) - cgtyoder
http://reprints.longform.org/monk-lapham#chapter-117307

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leephillips
In Robin Kelley's excellent recent biography of Monk, he discusses this
article: "for all his defense of Monk's sanity, Lapham fell for the oldest
myth of all: 'An emotional and intuitive man, possessing a child's vision of
the world'". I highly recommend the book if you like the music. The context is
a series of critics who failed to grasp Monk's sophistication and described
him, incorrectly, as an untutored musician who had some original improvisatory
talent. All these misapprehensions are almost comically reproduced in the Monk
entry in _Baker 's_ biographical dictionary, for example.

I consider Monk to be one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.

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keithpeter
_The Transformer_ is a double CD of Monk's home recordings of practice
sessions. He is iterating (I'm tempted to say _hacking on_ ) a 'standard' and
leading to recordings of three live performances of the piece with a quartet.
Taught me lots. A bit intense for non-pianists but will put paid to the
'random happy eccentric' stuff. This guy _worked_ in a systematic way and
_lead_ his bands.

Kelly's book is just required.

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wuliwong
Didn't expect to see a Thelonious Monk article on HN! He's my favorite piano
player, hugely influenced my own playing.

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agumonkey
And I'd to see more advanced music being discussed here. Just to see how
technical minded people are approaching music.

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baldfat
The issue for Thelonious and all people non-White was the weird things critics
would say to make them inferior to White players. "the elephant on the
keyboard" "... his music was still regarded as too 'difficult' for more
mainstream acceptance." His music didn't sell very well. "They said he was a
self-taught mad genius but had no interest in 'serious' music." "He was naïve,
brooding and primitive." "He was gifted with a childish vision but exiled from
reality."

If you play music you will find it funny how Thelonious would always play the
song in the hardest possible key. I found it almost impossible to play them.
He was smart.

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danieldk
And still, to my non-musicians ear, Monk sounds very sweet, gentle, and
melodic. I absolutely love Monk.

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andrewchoi
Doesn't Coltrane (as the most prominent musician to have a religious movement
inspired by him:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane#Religious_figure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane#Religious_figure))
qualify more so as the high priest of jazz?

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analog31
The article was written in 1964, and as noted in the post above about Robin
Kelly's book, is not uncontroversial. Today, a title like "high priest of
jazz" would probably elicit snickers from jazz lovers and musicians.

~~~
danieldk
Context:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_royalty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_royalty)

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afishisafish
Here's a nice comic by John Wilcock about Monk's arrest.

[http://boingboing.net/2013/02/01/john-wilcock-thelonious-
mon...](http://boingboing.net/2013/02/01/john-wilcock-thelonious-monk.html)

