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Richards discusses his book – a long overdue history of Prestige Records that draws readers into stories involving its visionary founder Bob Weinstock, the classic recording sessions he assembled, and the brilliant jazz musicians whose work on Prestige helped shape the direction of post-war music.
...October 3rd, 2025
“What’s in a name?”
she asked,
the first
four syllables
slipping off
her tongue,
September 20th, 2025
Maybe it happened this way. Jayne Cortez
sitting at the Five Spot, scribbling in her notebook.
July 19th, 2025
Poets write about Thelonious Monk – inspired by William Gottlieb’s photograph and Rhonda R. Dorsett’s artistic impression of it.
...July 8th, 2025
Thelonious Monk tune
borrowed
Epistrophe
A bit of a mystery
A turn that twists
and turns
Yeah
fly right
fly bright
love in sight.
January 18th, 2025
When he entered a club ‘round midnight,
all 88 keys would break into a grin
and the stool would slide out from under
to invite him to sit down and play.
September 28th, 2024
Scattered discordant
Symbols woven into lines
Across blank white pages
August 16th, 2024
In this edition of extensive jazz playlists, the award-winning jazz producer and scholar Bob Hecht focuses his attention on solo piano performances, including those by artists such as Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum, Tommy Flanagan, Cedar Walton, Bill Evans, Jaki Byard, Keith Jarrett.
...August 1st, 2024
When he plays he wears invisible glasses
picks his keys with patience and purpose
a tornado with time on his hands
while in walks light
July 13th, 2024
washes up
on the keyboard.
Bill Evans’ glasses too.
I put Monk’s hat on
and suddenly feel
like the captain of a ship.
March 30th, 2024
Marginalized, itinerant
Brilliance barely compensated
You want to save them all; you
Particularly want to save him
February 22nd, 2024
Takes on love and loss, and memories of Lady Day, Prez, Monk, Dolphy and others…
...January 10th, 2024
The former Village Voice writer Gary Giddins, who was prominently featured in Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz, and who is the country’s preeminent jazz critic, joins us in a December 23, 2002 conversation about jazz legend Thelonious Monk.
...November 10th, 2023
La La Love,
even when the cold raindrops
pounded against the window,
we snuggled close like fuzzy cats,
purring with Thelonious Monk
as we drank our Guinness.
October 29th, 2023
. . photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Library of Congress/PDM 1.0 Thelonious Monk, 1968 . ___ . Thelonious Monk and Mama Thelonious Monk paints a picture of Mama with his piano, the way Monet or Matisse would, with paint: loud, bright colorful notes that are a Rorschach test, screaming on the page. Perhaps, Mama would’ve modeled … Continue reading ““Thelonious Monk and Mama” – a poem by Erren Kelly”
...September 30th, 2023
. . “Modus Dualis,” by Martel Chapman . . Riff ‘n’ Tiff There was no time signature to save Louis Armstrong from the shivery brine. Monk volunteered to heave his piano overboard to give the lifeboat more zest but it wouldn’t budge or stay in tune for that matter. Moisture had initiated a rift between … Continue reading ““Riff ‘n’ Tiff” – humor by Dig Wayne”
...April 12th, 2023
In this excerpt, Aidan Levy describes how a 16-year-old Sonny Rollins caught the ear of the 29-year-old Thelonious Monk, a man Rollins looked up to “as a father figure – a guru, really,” whose musical principles “deeply informed his artistic development.”
...December 1st, 2022
hands do talk
to me they do
& after shaking his
some years back
clasping those long digits
expecting ivory key smoothness
I was stopped short by
their cement block
& long handle roughness
February 12th, 2022
We’re going through Security at Dublin airport, headed to Philadelphia, thinking about what’s ahead of us. There’s something sinister about lines of people queuing up to be processed. Nobody likes it. Belt, jacket, phone, laptop, wallet. Do they need my shoes? Everyone feels displaced, dehumanized somehow.
...February 10th, 2022
It was probably Dean who was responsible for him being where he was right now, he thought as he sat across the table from his fiancée listening to her talk about the wedding and the gifts they were registered for and the reception. He had discovered an album he didn’t approve of – Barbra Streisand – among Dean’s records when he went to stay with him shortly after he got married to a woman from Cleveland.
...December 9th, 2021
On my walks alone lately I fantasize
that I’ll come across a woman my age
give or take a few years.
She’ll be listening to Miles, or Monk,
or Horace Silver, and reading
one of my poetry books.
October 29th, 2021
He hovers,
flesh and presence,
round the story of midnight jazz….
a single note hangs, suspended
in a cigarette-whiskey haze
as ears perk open, anticipate
the pleasure of surprise
June 24th, 2021
An interview with The Art of Jazz author Alyn Shipton, whose book is an exploration of how jazz influenced sheet music art, album art, posters, photography, and individual works of fine art.
...April 25th, 2021
He drove uptown on Riverside Drive, the motor noise magnificent. Traffic increased as he approached Harlem. Other drivers jostling to get ahead noticed the car first. A red Ferrari was not subtle in gray Manhattan, and the engine roared money and power and European elegance. Then neighbors would study the man in outsized sunglasses. Some recognized him, smiling or shaking their heads in disbelief. Others looked aggrieved, even outraged that a person like him could be driving a vehicle like that. Ferrari only built three-hundred of their 275 GTB.
...March 12th, 2021
The poets Terrence Underwood and George Held write about the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk
...March 7th, 2021
Imagine the ocean
and holding it
Back
with only two hands,
and one outsized mind.
Only God,
or the moon,
can move the tides.
December 9th, 2020
The evidence against Monk was overwhelming. As he spun in circles, his beard greeted all the be-boos and scat tops with a whiff of singular restraint, knowing the blue minor chord could only hold so much dissonance before the black harmonies started some fragile shite.
...November 19th, 2020
In this edition of photographs and stories from Mr. Oakland’s book, Thelonious Monk, Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are featured.
...October 17th, 2020
“Nah,” Mucka says to the guy in the funny hat, a couple of seats down. “We’re from Massachusetts, an hour or so from here. My friend here….” He leans back so the guy can look around him to see me….”he wanted to come down, see if we could, you know, the whole jazz thing . . . . festival …. thing.”
...October 8th, 2020
Charles Ingham’s “Jazz Narratives” connect time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history. This edition’s narratives are “”The Artists Salute Each Other”, “Monk’s Mood at the It Club” and “Communing with Ghosts”
...May 1st, 2020
These photo-narratives are provocative, meaningful and brilliant – connecting time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history.
...February 17th, 2020
Mosaic Records co-founder Michael Cuscuna shares news concerning the availability of previously unreleased photographs of Blue Note Records sessions taken by Francis Wolff
...August 8th, 2019
Oh Lord
I was thinking is there anything better
than chorus girls dancing in unison to Thelonius Monk
I beseech thee Lord on my deathbed kick my
June 15th, 2018
This pianist was a founding member of the Jazz Epistles, and was nicknamed “South Africa’s Monk”? Who is he?
Phineas Newborn
Ahmad Jamal
Randy Weston
Albert Ammons
Dollar Brand
Roland Hanna
Go to the next page for the answer!
...
October 12th, 2017
We have stood over record bins, thumbing through his records, moved by his breathtaking originality and creativity.
We have made friends over his music, made love to it, cruised in the car to it, introduced our children to it, and defended it against those who don’t quite comprehend his genius.
We love the emotions his music brings out in us – joy, tears, humor, inspiration.
We continue to sit up when we hear “Straight, No Chaser,” marvel at the brilliance of
...October 10th, 2017
Them knees,
full of bees again,
two gates
flapping in a stuttering breeze,
hands rapping
tables, thighs,
high up on
...June 12th, 2017
In the circus mind of my dying spirit
I listen for the tinkling keys of Monk-
Yeah, Monk Mingus moonlight madness
I long to be, though tonight it’s a new
moon, meaning no moon and my madness
May 19th, 2017
I awoke to the very sad news that a prominent figure in the history of jazz music has died. Orrin Keepnews, whose work as co-founder of Riverside Records forever connected him to the lives and spirits of Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley, and so many other great jazz musicians of mid-century America, died in California at the age of 91 (a day shy of his 92nd birthday).
Keepnews was a transcendent figure in jazz music, excelling as a journalist, entrepreneur, and producer. The recordings he produced were among the very first to
...March 2nd, 2015
The Five Spot Café, a club located in New York City’s Bowery neighborhood, was the site of a six month gig for the quartet of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, drummer Shadow Wilson, and bassist Wilbur Ware. This engagement — coming on the heels of Monk’s cabaret card reinstatement — marked the merging of two of the most original voices in American music, Monk and Coltrane, in a space where cheap beer and good music attracted some of the city’s most influential artists and writers. Regulars included Larry Rivers, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg.
In Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, author Robin D.G. Kelley quotes Five Spot co-owner Joe Termini remembering the impact Monk’s quartet had on his club: “Once we hired Monk, all of a sudden the place was crowded every night. And frankly, in the beginning, I just didn’t understand any of it.”
...October 30th, 2014
You Can Be A Genius And Be Sane
Watching Monk and watching self,
One senses that one can have genius
And be sane.
You can
Be odd,
The brain its own,
To nail the themes
Your thought-extremes deem right.
Monk plays and pounds
In rhythmic spasms;
March 30th, 2014
50 years ago this week, Time magazine – at the time a critical weekly linking Americans to news and features of the world – had planned to run a cover story on jazz music, with the cover devoted to pianist Thelonious Monk. Instead, the events in Dallas on November 22 caused Time to shelve the story until February 28, 1964, and they ran a cover of Lyndon Johnson on November 29, 1963 instead. Reportedly, this decision, according to Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley, caused Time to destroy “the three million copies they had already printed bearing [Boris] Chaliapin’s portrait of Monk.”
This discussion about the Time article appears in our December, 2009 interview with Kelley:
...November 22nd, 2013
“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes!” So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk’s hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.
...April 15th, 2013
So Much To Do, So Little Time To Do It In
For Michel Petrucciani
A little man, glass bones disease.
A la Lautrec: two prodigies.
At thirty-six his lungs gave out.
We cried, we would not be consoled.
April 6th, 2013
Although it only encompasses about six square miles, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem has played a central role in the development of American culture. Originally rural farmland, then an affluent suburb, since 1911 Harlemhas been predominantly an African American community. Its residents havehad a disproportionately large impact on all aspects of American culture,leaving their mark on literature, art, comedy, dance, theater, music, sports, religion and politics.
...March 18th, 2013
Footprints ( for Wayne Shorter )
you speak no evil
when you talk about the miles
you traveled, the
way your sax sounded
like a thunderstorm
or spoke like a child
November 22nd, 2012
MONK WAS RIGHT
( A letter to Thelonius Monk )
Dear Thelonius,
I first heard you
In the darkness of stinky music rooms, toe-tappers’ tombs
where out-of-tone tunes played,
and where you prayed to the God of old blue smoke
to please choke the life out of those who said jazz was a joke,
February 22nd, 2012
Pondering the Musical Style of Thelonious Monk
The-
lon- i-
us-
Monk- plunk!
makes- one-
think-
plink!
his-
next-
note-is-
sunk-
January 4th, 2009
S’monka Tetes
These sounds forever
begin with a few off key
notes. A funny dance
and like Joseph’s coat many
September 22nd, 2005
Village Voice writer Gary Giddins, who was prominently featured in Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz, and who is the country’s preeminent jazz critic, joins us in a December 23, 2002 conversation about jazz legend Thelonious Monk.
...December 23rd, 2002
For many of us, the photography of Herman Leonard is our first link to jazz culture. Ellington in Paris, Dexter with a Chesterfield, a youthful Miles, Satchmo in Birdland…These images, in some cases more so than the music, are responsible for our devotion to preserving and protecting the art the musicians of mid 20th Century America created, and Herman Leonard reported on.
...March 6th, 2000
T.S. Monk has done what few children of cultural genius’ have done before him….forge a successful, highly respected career of his own. His current release, the enhanced CD “Monk on Monk”, is not only one of the best Monk tribute albums ever recorded, critics have mentioned it as among the best jazz releases of 1997.
...February 9th, 1998
Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.
”Never Again (Working Poems for JD Allen)” by Sean Howard
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
Sean Howard introduces and reads his poem
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
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