Monk was sustained during much of this bleak time by his friend, mascot and champion, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, 50. The baroness had abandoned the aseptic, punctual world of her family* for the formless life of New York's night people. In 1955 she acquired undeserved notoriety when Charlie Parker died in her apartment ("BOP KING DIES IN HEIRESS' FLAT") She had merely made an honest stab at saving his life with gifts of money and medicine in his last few days. From then on, though, Nica cut a wide swath in the jazz world. She is, after all, not a Count Basie or a Duke Ellington, but an honest-to-God Baroness, seeing her pull up in her Bentley with a purse crammed with Chivas Regal, the musicians took enormous pride in her friendship.

Monk was her immediate fascination, and Monk, who only has eyes for Nellie, cheerfully took her on as another mother. She gave him rides, rooms to compose and play in, and, in 1957, help in getting back the vital cabaret card. The baroness, along with Monk's gentle manager, a Queens high school teacher named Harry Colomby, collected medical evidence that Monk was not a junkie, along with character references by jazzmen and musical scholars. The cops gave in, and for the first time in years Monk began playing regularly in New York. The music he made at the Five Spot with Tenorman John Coltrane was the talk of jazz.

Monk was making a small but admired inroad into the "funk" and "soul" movements that had superseded the "cool." Funk was a deeper reach into Negro culture than jazz had taken before, a restatement of church music and African rhythms, but its motive was the same as bop's - finding something that white musicians had not taken over and, if possible, something they would sound wrong playing.

Then Monk lost his card again. Monk, the baroness, and Monk's present saxophonist were driving through Delaware for a week's work in Baltimore. Monk stopped at a motel for a drink of water, and when he lingered in his imposing manner, the manager called the police. Monk was back in the Bentley when the cops arrived, and he held fast to the steering wheel when they tried to pull him out - on the Monkish ground that he had done nothing to deserve their sttention. even though the baroness shrieked to watch out for his hands, the furious cops gave his knuckles such a beating that he bears the lumps to this day. The baroness took the rap for "some loose marijuana" found in the trunk, but after three years legal maneuvering she was acquitted. No narcotics charges were placed against Monk, but because of the scandal the police again picked up his card.

(*She is the daughter of the late British banker Nathaniel Charles Rothschild and the sister of the 3rd Baron Rothschild, but she takes her title from her marriage to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, a hero of the French Resistance who is presently French Ambassador to Peru.)

© TIME magazine - 1964