Thelonious Monk Biography

[David Houck]

I recently finished reading Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelley.  It's long, 624 pages, and very detailed.  The author is a historian at UCLA, and glosses over nothing.  It seems that everything he was able to track down was included in the book.

Despite its length, I enjoyed reading it.  I was already familiar with Monk's story and music, but this book gave me a deeper appreciation of both.  And while the detail sometimes seemed a bit extraneous to the story of Monk, it was always something else interesting to learn.

For those of you unfamiliar with Thelonious Monk, he is considered one of the most important jazz composers.  He was one of the founders of bebop and of the harmonic innovations that came with it.  Many of his compositions are now standards.

For those of you who enjoy reading biographies of musicians, I highly recommend it.

[edwardofhuncote]

Thanks Dave, will forward word to an old buddy who is quite the disciple of his work. 

[rv_bass]

Thanks, David, sounds good, I love Monk’s music, I will look for it.  I’m on a weekly jazz history discussion group and I’ll mention it there too

[edwardofhuncote]

Thanks Dave, will forward word to an old buddy who is quite the disciple of his work. 

*Left him a message. Haven't talked to ol' Been-Fried in a while. Jon has my very first prototype guitar. (seen here right after he got it, probably August, 1992) Dangit.

[StephenR]

Thanks for the review David. Huge Monk fan so I will definitely give this one a shot.

Okay...  just hit the Oakland Public Library site and put in a request for the book, should be available for pick up later in the week.