Thelonious Monk

USA, 1944–1973

American jazz pianist and composer (1917–1982), one of the founders of bebop and among the most singular voices in jazz. His angular, dissonant harmonies, percussive touch and space-filled phrasing, and a songbook of standards ('Round Midnight', 'Blue Monk', 'Straight, No Chaser'), reshaped modern jazz.

MusicRoots documents 3 artists who influenced Thelonious Monk and 5 artists Thelonious Monk influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Thelonious Monk?

• Duke Ellington — Duke Ellington was one of Monk's stated influences — Ellington's rich, unconventional harmony and orchestral colour shaped Monk's chord voicings and pianistic touch.
• James P. Johnson — Monk grew up in the same New York neighbourhood as stride pioneer James P. Johnson and knew him as a teenager — the stride tradition is a foundation of Monk's rhythmic, percussive piano.
• Art Tatum — Art Tatum's virtuosic runs and harmonic sophistication were absorbed into Monk's playing — 'Monk came directly out of Tatum', though he disguised it in his own angular style.

Which artists did Thelonious Monk influence?

• Cecil Taylor — Monk's angular, dissonant phrasing and percussive attack are audible throughout Taylor's playing and were named by early critics as one of its components.
• Wayne Shorter — Monk was in that same first batch of records, and his angular, space-filled writing is the closest ancestor of Shorter's own oblique compositions.
• John Coltrane — Coltrane spent six months in Monk's quartet at the Five Spot in 1957, after Miles Davis had fired him, and came out of it a different player.
• Alice Coltrane — Monk is the other pianist she named as an important influence on her work.
• Bud Powell — Monk found him at fifteen and mentored him — the friendship that put Powell inside bebop as it was being invented.