Thelonious Monk’s Advice

This batch of scribbly notes is actually a pretty awesome find. It’s a personal, handwritten how-to guide for playing with jazz great Thelonious Monk- a man who genuinely marched to his own beat.

Monk’s percussive, improvisational style and habit of deliberately playing off-time made an incalculably large impact on the jazz world. His use of silence and mastery of cognitive dissonance was far outside the playing field for many of his peers at the time, which might explain the content of these handwritten notes:

My favorite lines:

• What you don’t play can be more important than what you do
• Whatever you think can’t be done, someone will come along & do it
• A genius is the one most like himself

I was on a Monk kick earlier today and randomly stumbled across this fascinating bit of music history. It’s a glimpse inside the personality and performance philosophy of one of the greatest musicians this country’s ever produced.

While we’re talking inside glimpses, I should mention Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser. It’s a documentary about Monk’s life, pulling from a massive archive of material that was unearthed in the 80s. The Clint Eastwood-produced film features live performances by Monk and his group, as well as posthumous interviews with friends and family.

He was a stormy, very private man, and this intimate look into his life and mechanisms is a rare gift.