Jersey History: Thelonious Monk

Photo Credit: Bernard Gotfryd

Thelonious Monk [1917-1982] was born in North Carolina and died in New Jersey. He revolutionized jazz with his oddball rhythmic thrust, his percussive way of playing where he’d oftentimes karate-chop the piano keys, his penchant for dancing around the piano while his band took solos, and, of course, his writing of some of the genre’s most beloved anthems—“’Round Midnight,” “Blue Monk,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Ruby, My Dear,” “In Walked Bud” and “Well, You Needn’t.” But he had to retire at 58 due to health problems. He moved to Bergen County in Englewood into the mansion of Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild where he lived out the last six years of his life under mysterious circumstances.

Baroness Rothschild [1913-1988] was the British-born youngest daughter of Charles Rothschild, one of the richest men in the world. She was a patron-of-the-arts, a photographer, writer and she housed numerous jazz stars in her Englewood home. Monk was one.  He and his wife Nellie moved in with her and the two women cared for him while he stayed silent. No gigs. No compositions. Few visitors. He had not performed in three years. Withdrawn, frail, paranoid, he would pace up and down mumbling to himself. He was already on bi-polar meds, had suffered a stroke, and never once spoke publicly about his condition.

Yet his influence has cast a mighty shadow over every generation of jazz artist since, no matter what instrument they play. There are those who say his body of work is the most influential in all of jazz. His genius is unassailable and he is still looked upon today as definitely the most enigmatic and arguably the greatest jazz musician of all-time. Robin D. G. Kelley’s brilliant biography, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, came out in 2009, and is wholeheartedly recommended.