Location: US 64 Business (East Thomas Street) at North Washington Street in Rocky Mount
County: Edgecombe
Original Date Cast: 2011
Thelonious Monk lived most of his life in Manhattan, but his North Carolina roots run deep. His ancestors lived in Sampson County, near Bentonville Battleground. His father (also Thelonious), moved to Rocky Mount, to the "Around the Y" community alongside the Atlantic Coastline Railroad where he worked. There he married in 1914 Barbara Batts, who grew up in Edgecombe County. She and her children left for New York when young Monk was four and settled near San Juan Hill. Monk attended but did not graduate from Stuyvesant High School.
The third composition he copyrighted (first as sole composer) was also his best-known, “’Round Midnight.” According to the website www.jazzstandards.com, it is the most recorded jazz standard of all time. Monk’s style was original and unorthodox, incorporating elements of stride piano and gospel to create a “rhythmic virtuosity,” striking dissonant notes and playing skewed melodies. He collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie (widely credited like Monk with being an architect of bebop), Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane. A drug conviction in 1951 (he took the fall for the drugs in the car belonging to Bud Powell) led to loss of his cabaret card for seven years, a period when his acclaimed recordings fixed his reputation in the jazz pantheon.
Personally, Monk had a reputation as the ultimate hipster, with his goatee, skullcap, and bamboo-rimmed sunglasses. He was a large man, given to leaving the keyboard to dance while onstage and, at random moments, on the street or in public spaces, twirling for several minutes. Viewed by some as temperamental, eccentric, and even childlike, he is described by his biographer Robin Kelley as essentially rebellious. Kelley documented that Monk suffered from bipolar disorder most of his adult life.
In 1972 Monk withdrew from public appearances and was hospitalized intermittently until his death. Among his last extended stands was a week at the Frog and Nightgown in Raleigh’s Cameron Village in 1970. A park in his hometown has carried his name since 2000.
references:
Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009)
Sam Stephenson, “Thelonious Monk: Is This Home?” Oxford American, Issue 58 (2007): 112-117
Stanley Crouch, “Thelonious Monk,” in Jack Newfield, ed., American Rebels (2003)
Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition (1970)
Joe Goldberg, Jazz Masters of the Fifties (1965)
1920 United States Census, Population Schedule
Sanborn Maps of Rocky Mount
Edgecombe County Birth Certificates, North Carolina State Archives
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV, 287-289—sketch by Marcus B. Simpson