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"I'm sure it'll make Monk fans like me very happy." - Chick Corea "Many of the compositions have never been published before, which makes the book an important contribution to an understanding of Monk's music." - Jazz Educator's Journal Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982) was one of the most creative figures in the history of jazz. His music is a mixture of the complex and the simple. Monk was delighted by almost inanely rudimentary melody lines and hokey old standards; the same man reveled in highly chromatic melodic lines and difficult chord changes. People accordingly responded to his music by labeling it hopelessly inaccessible or easy to like. Monk's piano playing had features of the student jazz pianist in his seeming inability to play smooth passages in the Oscar Peterson style; at the same time, his pianistics were supported by a sophistication of musical thought which helped him outdo the jazz virtuosos of the world. In Monk the person, there was the same combination of the easy to like and the inaccessible. He was a private person whose life was restricted to his family and a few friends in his midtown Manhattan neighborhood. His wife Nellie, the central person in his life, often acted as a conduit between him and the rest of the world. Although Monk went through periods when he went without sleep and did not speak to anyone for days, at other times he was open and personable. One club owner who knew Monk in his twenties described his personality as follows: Monk is definitely a character. he's the type of fellow who thinks an awful lot but doesn't have much to say....He just doesn't seem to be present unless he's actually talking to you and then sometimes all of a sudden in the middle of a conversation his mind is somewhere else. He may still be talking to you but he's thinking about something else... I always used to be so disgusted with him for being late, and yet you never knew such a likable guy.
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