Robin Kelley has written what, without any trace of hyperbole, can be called the definitive biography of Thelonious Monk (Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, 2009). Stripping bare the many apocryphal stories which surrounded this eccentric genius, the reader is left with a compelling and accurate account of an important original. The following interview with Kelley tells the story of the biographer as well as his subject. 

MC: When did the idea to write a book on Monk come about, and how long after you had the idea did you start? 

RK: I've loved Monk's music since my teenage years.  My step-father at the time was a jazz musician and I was pretty much a self-taught piano player.  He introduced me to Monk, and with that a life-long fascination with the man and his sound.  I never thought I'd actually write anything about him until 1995, when I came down with some mysterious virus and had to be hospitalized over a weekend.  The shock of that experience made me think about my own mortality and what I really want to do before I expire, as it were.  I had already written two books about social movements in the U.S., inspired by critical political questions I and perhaps my generation were concerned about.  But in my hospital bed I asked myself, if I had one more book to write, something for me, what would it be?  Thelonious Monk.  So the seeds of the actually book go back fifteen years. 

MC: You were given full and often first-time access to papers and documents by the family and close associates. Had you had this in mind from the initial conception of how you would write the book? 

RK: Not exactly.  When I first decided I'd write about Monk, I really did not consider a full-length biography.  I first contacted my friend, the late Marc Crawford, who was exceedingly encouraging and very pro-active.  (As some of your readers may know, Marc was a veteran jazz writer and teacher originally from Detroit, a real pioneer in this field but, in my view, unsung.)  He gave me Toot's (Thelonious Monk, Jr.) phone number and even made a call on my behalf.  It took some time before he got back to me, and when he did it was to tell me--in a kind, sympathetic manner--that I can write what I write but they're not cooperating.  I then conceived of a very different book, one that looked at how Monk was understood, as composer, musician, icon, symbol, etc.   

Thelonious Monk©David Redfern

But jump forward, about five years later, when Thelonious Records was launched and Toot and his brother-in-law, Peter Grain, were putting together a website. Somehow we reconnected and I shared several boxes of research I had accumulated during that time.  This was also an opportunity for a face-to-face encounter and a very long conversation which convinced Toot that I was for real and he could trust me with his father's story and the rare materials they had in their possession. 

MC: Would you have written it even without the access you had? 

RK: I would have written something, but I can tell you I would not have been happy with it.  Indeed, I think I would have inadvertently reproduced many of the same myths my book tries to counter.  The key "access" however was more than just photos, a few homemade tapes, disparate documents and Monk's high school composition books.  It was the people, the family and friends who would not speak to me without Nellie's permission.  And Nellie.  She is central in all this, both her stories and her blessings.  She did not share everything and that was deliberate, but what she did share was incredibly important.  And the rest of the family, the stories, were pure gold.  Sadly, I could only use about 15% of all the stories I collected because of space issues.  Indeed, the first draft of the book ran nearly 2,000 pages! 

MC: Thelonious's son T.S Monk, Jr. said to you, “Write a biography but not an authorized one,” sort of granting you permission to portray an artist who was a hero to many, warts and all. Were there any scenes in your book you had trepidations about including?  

RK: Well, I was the one who insisted that it not be authorized because, usually, that is the death of any biography.  It implies that the estate had a hand in the telling and thus it is little more than hagiography.  Toot understood this and agreed.  At the same time, he was unique in that he was always honest about his father's mental and physical condition.  In fact, he'd gotten a lot of flak from other musicians and Monk defenders when he testified in "Straight, No Chaser" that sometimes his dad just wasn't there.  This was a breakthrough because Toot's honesty also helped remove the stigma placed on mental illness, especially bipolar disorder.  

This empowered me.  I had no trepidations whatsoever about revealing difficult and problematic episodes, or making critical statements about Monk or anyone else, for that matter.  Even Toot isn't blemish-free in my account; like everyone, he was a young musician who paid dues, learned his craft and developed over time.   

MC: Over the course of writing the book you interviewed two hundred people. Did you come across any conflicting accounts of incidents and how did you get to the non-subjective truths in those cases? 

RK: I had to navigate many conflicting accounts, even within the family.  Some were small, like dates.  I cross-referenced just about everything and sometimes used related incidents from their memories to mark time.  The famous "stoop" incident, when Monk, Elmo Hope, and other musicians were standing on a stoop on Lyman Place in the Bronx and the whole thing collapsed: It took a good two years to figure out when it happened and going back and forth with my informants and digging through alternative sources.  Also, not every source panned out.  Indeed, I would say of all the stuff I dug through, maybe three out of ten sources/documents were of any value.   

Thelonious Monk: The Complete Blue Note Recordings

MC: How long did it take you to create this biography and did it change at all from its initial conception or as you worked on it?  

RK: It changed every day.  I was discovering new things even as I was reading the copyedited manuscript.  In fact, the paperback edition, coming out in November, has changed some from the cloth edition!!  The overall conception of the book did not take shape until a year before I submitted the manuscript. 

Initially, I thought the heart of the story rested on the early, formative years, and the period after 1964 was just one long downward descent.  It wasn't that simple and, in fact, the last part of the book became much more interesting to me as I got into the commercial matrix he was caught up in with Columbia Records, the way the journalists (here and abroad) shifted the ground underneath him, the impact of rock and popular music, the precise story of his mental and physical ailments, and Nellie's increasing burden. 

Overall, beginning to end, the book took about fourteen years.  But that's not accounting for a range of personal challenges that slowed me down (I was hit by a car in Newark--lost two years of work; divorced then remarried and moved cross country; college tuition to pay for my daughter; not to mention the initial five years it took just to build a relationship with the Monk family, among other things….) 

MC: What did you learn in the course of your research that surprised you about Monk? 

RK: Everything felt surprising, but here are some of the main things:  I was surprised by the extent to which he was committed to family (both immediate and extended), to his community in San Juan Hill, especially the community center that helped shape him.  I was surprised by the depth of his musical education, discovering his various teachers--formal and informal.  And by extension, he himself was quite the educator.  This was perhaps one of the most consistent themes most musicians echoed--just how much they learned from Monk. 

I was shocked and saddened by the depths of his suffering as an artist; even after he achieved his “fame” in the 1960s, he really never made that much money.  I think it is important for all biographers, all writers of this music, to take the time to follow the money.  There is a tale there that has yet to be fully told. 

One big surprise wasn't about Monk but about his incredible wife and partner, Nellie.  What I found and tried to convey in the book is that Nellie Monk was a fully realized, complex human being rather than just the helpmate.  She had opinions and desires and she sometimes pushed back.  Unfortunately, most accounts of Monk place greater emphasis on the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter and pay little attention to Nellie, mainly because the former is presumably more interesting, more exotic.  But she wasn't more important.  To understand Monk, one must take the time to understand Nellie. 

The amazing, surprising and even shocking thing to me about Monk is how many times he didn't miss a gig, and how many times he did arrive on time.  That is a story that doesn't get told as much because, you know, being consistent is not as interesting as being absent or being wild.  So one of the things I try to do in the book wherever possible is document what his schedule was like, especially during the 1960s when he was on tour all the time.  It was grueling, and sometimes you are exhausted from reading about it, but that is exactly the point - I want you to feel exhausted because Monk was exhausted.  Once you experience what it means to play in twenty cities in thirty days, and to be on the road living in hotels, you see just how rough it was.  On top of that, here is a man taking prescription drugs, who is having issues with sleep but still has to make the gig, and you can see that he led a hard life.  

MC: Were any of the facts you uncovered in your research definitively proven yet unpopular or contested by others? 

RK: This is hard to answer because many of the "facts" I uncovered were simply not known and thus could not be contested--e.g., his appeals to Local 802's Trial Board in the early 1940s; the role Alberta Simmons, one of his teachers, played in his development; the dates of his marriage; his early arrests on drug charges and the first time he lost his cabaret card; his leadership role in helping to shape Hall Overton's big band arrangements; I could go on.  What has been contested, I think, are things like Monk's reliability on a job, the extent to which his playing was instinctive rather than rooted in a deep knowledge of music, or the varying diagnoses put forth by armchair psychiatrists.  On the latter, I still receive letters from people contesting what Monk's own doctors concluded.  There are those who don't believe bipolar disorder exists; others who have come up with other explanations for his behavior.  And then there are the critics and fans who are still convinced that Monk's mental illness explains the nature and character of his music. I offer the evidence to put these claims to rest, but they will never die. 

MC: Did working on the book change in any way how you heard his music? As you worked on the book, did you have any special listening habits or rituals?  

RK: Yes, it did, especially as I listened to everything in strict chronological order.  This is how I wrote the book, beginning to end.   So I would spend a month on, say, just 1941 and Minton's, listening constantly (office, at the gym, on the subway when I lived in N.Y.; in the car in L.A.), jotting down copious notes.  Then I would sit at the piano and transcribe key passages or quotes.  I would write that chapter and then move on, through each period.  What I found striking was, on the one hand, the degree to which he repeated certain phrases in some songs, not for lack of ideas but because they functioned as "shout choruses."  Like Tadd Dameron and Basie and others, he included passages in his solo that were always played, as if they were part of the composition.  These remained until he stopped playing in the 1970s.   

On the other hand, I noticed how, over time, he began to return to his stride roots almost as a foil to the avant-garde.  This period, after 1959, he also played more solo piano.  Then when we jump into the 1970s, his solos tended to get longer and he played differently, yet never really lost his chops.  I might also add that for all the complaints about Monk's repetition in the mid to late 60s and how the critics started to tire of him, when you listen to the concerts back to back, all the live recordings, each one is unique.  Stanley Crouch was the first person to sit me down and show me this.  To say he was playing the same thing over and over isn't really true. 

MC: In some ways the book is also about the recording business (for jazz). While all the labels Monk recorded for believed in him to varying degrees, it is amazing to read about how the bottom line eventually won out every time. Many of his producers come across as one half booster, one half exploiter. Was this the nature of the business at that time for most jazz artists? 

RK: I believe it was and still is.  Of course, every label, every producer is different.  Blue Note was more or less a family affair and, at least in the 1940s, money seemed less important.  Prestige was full of jazz lovers and wonderful producers like the young Ira Gitler, but Bob Weinstein wanted to make money by saving money.  Everything just seemed nickel and dime.  Columbia was corporate in the true sense of the word.  So each story needs to be situated in time and place.  And keep in mind that in every instance, Monk was never seen as the great money-maker.  Nor can we look to Monk's experiences in the business and generalize too much.  There is a huge difference between someone like Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Oliver Nelson, etc. who made a lot of money, or someone like Gigi Gryce who was always battling the industry.  I really appreciate Michael Fitzgerald and Noal Cohen's book on Gigi Gryce, Rat Race Blues, because they get into a lot of these issues with depth and sophistication.   

MC: In reading about Monk's overall finances over the course of the book, it is often shocking how little he was making even late in his career. During some of the same time, in the 1960s Miles Davis seemed to have far more artistic control over his projects and the (far larger) money he was commanding. Was this a matter of a difference in personalities/business acumen or because Miles was embracing the rock culture which made him more commercially viable?  

RK: This is an excellent question.  I don't think it's business acumen because in both cases, Monk and Miles had representative negotiating on their behalf.  Monk's manager, Harry Colomby, was no slouch when it came to fighting for his client.  While it is true that Miles embraced the rock culture, I'm still unsure if it made him commercially viable.  A lot of that music during the so-called "electric" period wasn't always electric nor was it rock.  It was experimental music with a pulse and I think sales were mixed.  Funny how his best selling record was/is Kind of Blue.  I do think he was a great showman and he worked hard, and he knew that appearances, live performances, sell records.  By the time Monk got to Columbia, his output slowed, he was writing less and less, his format hardly changed (quartet), and by the end of the decade he pretty much stopped recording and was often canceling gigs for health reasons.  All these things were factors.  The story with Miles, as John Szwed's book [So What? The Life of Miles Davis] shows, is that the 70s were kind of productive but he also underwent a slow decline and ultimately disappeared until he made his comeback, I believe in 1981. 

MC: What would be the one thing you would like people to know or understand about Monk from your book?  

RK: It's hard to limit my answer to one thing. I think there are four things I want readers to take away.  First, I want them to know how Monk was made, what the context was that produced this genius.  He didn't come out of thin air - he came out of a close-knit, deeply cultural and intellectual community of working class people.   

Second, I want readers to know just how difficult it was for Monk to create his music, his sound.  As I say over and over again in the book, for Monk to sound like Monk, it was hard work that required practice, study, and relentless experimentation.  It wasn't simply personal quirkiness translated to the keyboard.   

The third thing is to really understand his suffering.  This is a story about a man who produced music that was so irreverent and humorous that you can't help but laugh when you listen to it, but, he also had so many hurdles to jump over, like so many other musicians have had to.  It is important to understand the number of gigs he had to play without making much money, his grueling schedule, the disappointment, the back pedaling - just following the money really teaches us what musicians were up against.  I am just amazed that they were able to create this music under those conditions.  Monk was actually one of the lucky ones.  It is the ones we don't know about who probably suffered just as much if not more than Monk who we need to pay attention to as well. 

MC: Was the reception of the book different in Europe than America? 

RK: It's hard to tell now, but a UK edition came out in May and it has gotten excellent reviews.  At the same time, my publisher there, JR Books, could not get a single bookstore or venue interested in organizing a reading or signing.   

MC: The book's packaging is great--did you have any say in its design? It is about to come out in soft cover. Will there be anything different in the soft cover version? 

RK: The design will be pretty much the same, but I've made some revisions of the text and lots and lots of corrections.   I had quite a few small, embarrassing errors, due mainly to not having a copy editor.  I guess the Free Press is under financial strain like everyone else so don't think the in-house copy editor had much time with the manuscript, and the proofreader was terrible.  But all of this is my responsibility, no one else's.  I'm pleased with the outcome and wrote a new Foreword to the paperback explaining what's different, what I learned from the thousands of emails and letters I received from people all over the world (some of the information compelled me to make some revisions), and I used the opportunity to respond to some critics who I thought misunderstood the book. 

MC: Do you already know what your next project will be?  

RK: The most immediate project, which is almost done, is a small book for Harvard University Press tentatively titled, Africa Speaks, America Answers:  Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.  I focus on five artists active during the 1950s and '60s who sought ways to draw connections between jazz and modern Africa in the era of decolonization and independence -- notably Randy Weston, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba), Kippie Moeketsi, and Sathima Bea Benjamin (the latter from South Africa). 

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