Tiny Room Inner Sanctum of Be-Bop School of Jazz -- March 21, 2024

Tampa Tribune, 25-March-1949

Newspaper and magazine writers liked to play up the exoticism of bebop, but Thelonious Monk was eccentric and he was one of the creators of bebop.  Most of his compositions were not meant to be played at "breakneck pace."  Personally, I can dig bebop and the old masters like Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet, or Louis Armstrong.

Tiny Room Inner Sanctum of Be-Bop School of Jazz

New York, March 24. -- (AP) -- The spark that ignited the be-bop school of jazz music is a lonely and rarely seen pianist who lives in the San Juan Hill section of New York -- a Negro tenement neighborhood in which all the dime novel plots you ever saw about the joys and sorrows of jazz musicians are continually going on.

The pianist's name is Thelonious Sphere Monk. Not for one minute does he consider himself eccentric. But: 

He wears a thin and scraggly goatee because he hates razors. He wears blue berets because he hates hats. He is partial to green knit neckties, and he wears gorgeous spectacles of gold and silver whose ear-hooks are half-inch wide. 

Despite a history that is as mixed and varies as a mythical Balkan country with a dozen claimants to the throne, jazz historians and critics are pretty well agreed that Thelonious is the true originator of be-bop. 

This form of music an offshoot of swing with twitching rhythms and unmelodic harmonies which began to make itself felt 10 years ago and has grown into a recognizable movement only in the last two years.

Orrin Keepnews, a current jazz writer, credits Monk with being "One of the very first to play this style."

Monk says flatly that he is originator of the school. Such be-bop greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker and others say they gathered at Monk's feet 10 years ago to "hear the new sounds" as he worked out the chords in after-hour sessions in Minton's Playhouse in West Harlem.

Great Imagination

They found Monk a man with "great musical imagination," whose piano has been likened to the surrealism of Dali. In the little seven by eight room where Monk broods and culls his mystical rhythms there is a photograph inscribed "To Thelonious, my first and only inspiration -- Your Boy Dizzy." Gillespie is a talented trumpeter whose band is billed "King of Be-Bop."

Technically, be-bop is characterized by the accenting of passing notes, especially flatted fifths and ninths. It is a dissonant and staccato spasm, played at breakneck pace. As boogie-woogie went back to Bach, be-bop must have some kind of kinship with Stravinsky, for nearly all be-boppers are Stravinsky fans.

Aside from occasional professional appearances and in record cutting sessions at Blue Note Records, Thelonious is rarely seen.

He was born in the same small shabby apartment on San Juan Hill where he lives today with his mother.

So peculiar in habit is this brooding musician he has been known to refuse jobs which were sorely needed, preferring to remain in the little room which some call the inner sanctum of be-bop. Here the initiate gather from time to time to hear him play. On occasion they bring food.

Photo on Ceiling

This room is lighted by a single dim bulb. In addition to the scarred piano there is a single couch and a chair. Plastered to the ceiling is a photograph of Billie Holiday, Negro night club singer.

"When Thelonious closes his eyes and leans back," says a friend "Billie smiles down on him."

Though Thelonious at 30 is heavy with inspiration, he doesn't work much at commercializing his wares -- a circumstance that makes his mother unhappy.

"Thelonious lacks push," she has said to friends. 

His behavior at the piano is similar to his life -- he broods and composes for two days and nights without pause. He is as likely to eat four or five meals in a few hours and sleep for two days.

"I get my rest," says Thelonious.

There is seldom a casual acceptance of be-bop. It is all the way, or not at all. Some critics refer to it as evidence of a neurotic world.

But its communicants can tolerate no other. To hear straight swing or jazz causes them acute physical distress. The New Yorker magazine wrote recently: "Upon hearing the solos of Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet, or even Louis Armstrong, regarded by their admirers somewhat as the cathedral of Chartres is my medievalists, the be-boppers shudder convulsively, as if someone were rasping a fingernail down a blackboard...'How can they play that square stuff,' they ask?"