A Drink at Least.
As soon as he was released, the police cancelled his "cabaret card," a document required of all entertainers who appear in New York nightclubs. Losing the card cost Monk his slender livelihood, but he had a reputation as an oddball and the police were adamant. For six years Monk could not play in New York; though he made a few records and went out on the road now and then, he was all but silenced. "everybody was saying Thelonious was weird or locked up." Nellie recalls, "But they just talked that way because they'd never see him. He hated to be asked why he wasn't working, and he didn't want to see anybody unless he could buy them a drink at least. Besides, it hurts less to be passed over for jobs if you aren't around to hear the other's names called. It was a bad time. He even had to pay to get into Birdland." Monk was the man who was not with it, and jazz was passing him by. Miles Davis had come on with his "impressionist" jazz style - a rubato blowing in spurts and swoons, free of any vibrato, cooler than ice. The Modern Jazz Quartet was playing a kind of introverted 17th century jazz behind inscrutable faces, and Dave Brubeck (TIME cover November 8, 1954) introduced polished sound that came with the complete approval of Darius Milhaud. Suddenly jazz - one of the loveliest and loneliest of sounds, the creation of sad and sensitive men - was awash with rondos and fugues. The hipsters began dressing like graduate students.
© TIME magazine - 1964 |
Things were terrible until 1951, when they got worse. Monk was arrested along with Bud Powell when a packet of heroin was found in their possession. Monk had always been "clean" but he refused to let Powell take the rap alone. "Every day I would plead with him." Nellie says, '"Thelonious, get yourself out of this trouble. You didn't do anything" But he'd just say "Nellie, I have to walk the streets when I get out. I can't talk,"' Monk held his silence and was given 60 days in jail.
