- Thelonious Monk: [scribbles something on a piece of paper] Can you read that?
- Nica De Koenigswarter: A beautiful message.
- Thelonious Monk: If somebody can decipher that for you, you know, and say what it means, get what it means, it'll upset you. You'll flip, I mean flip for real!
- Thelonious Monk: I play the introduction and then he'll play the introduction, he play it, and then Rouse will play it with us, together, about two times. You know, we do the chorus. And, then, the band come in. Yeah.
- Thelonious Monk: I would like to play a little tune I just composed not too long ago, entitled "Pannonica". It was named after this beautiful lady here. I think her father gave her that name after a butterfly that he tried to catch. I don't think he caught the butterfly.
- Self (road manager): A reporter came in and asked him what kind of music he liked. And Thelonious, "Well, I like all kinds of music." Perfectly legitimate answer. And then the reporter said, "Well, do you like country music?" Thelonious didn't answer him. And then the reporter said, "Well, do you like country music?" And Thelonious didn't look at the reporter, he looked at me, and said, "I think the fellow's hard of hearing."
- Reporter: Mr. Monk, you always wear different hats and caps in your concerts. Do they have an influence in your music?
- Thelonious Monk: [laughs] No. Maybe they do. I don't know.
- Reporter: And do you think the piano has enough keys? Eighty-Eight, or do you want more or less?
- Thelonious Monk: I mean, it's hard work to play those eighty-eight.
- Narrator: Monk began playing piano without formal training. Later he took lessons and studied musical theory at the Juilliard School of Music. But, his real teachers were the master jazz men of his time: Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and Duke Ellington.
- Narrator: At 17 he toured the United States with a gospel group. Monk returned to New York and became the house piano player at Minton's Playhouse, the scene of a revolution in music. There, with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Monk joined the revolution. It was called: Bebop.
- Self (Thelonious Monk Quartet: We'd start out and we'd do a take. And usually we take the first take, sometimes we'd take the second, but, never the third. You see once you play it the first time - that's the way - the feeling and everything is - and, after that, it starts going downhill. So, it's more like a challenge when you do that, you know. You know that you got to play it correctly the first or second take or that's it. He would take it anyhow. If you mess up, well, that's it. You know, that's your problem. You have to hear that all the rest of your life.
- [laughs]
- Thelonious Monk: [to Nica] Ain't that right? The royal family came to your - eh - eh - grandfather and said - and cryin' the blues and all that, beggin'. And you said he laid the bread on him so he beat Napoleon. Right? They're sayin' that changed the world!
- Nica De Koenigswarter: I was living in the Stanhope and, you know, like, all musicians used to come up there; but, after Bird died there, they threw me out... So, then, I went to the Bolivar and that's when I got my piano. Thelonious and I got together. That's where he wrote, "Brilliant Corners", "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues." At night, we'd go out around the clubs. And then, all musicians would come back with us to the Bolivar and we'd have these fantastic jam sessions until 8 or 9 the next morning. So, of course, eventually, that caused trouble, and I was thrown out of there.
- [laughs]
- Nica De Koenigswarter: And then we decided I should get a house of my own.
- Self (personal manager): He saw himself as modern. He liked to use the word modern - a modern jazz player. Blacks who were listening to that music saw an expression of independence and pride and strength. Thelonious Monk just represented that. The earliest example of the black revolution - of black uprising, in a sense - was in music, was in the bebop period - were the musicians weren't obviously trying to please an audience; but, they were playing their music their way, It was a real independent expression.