Shaffer: Thelonious Monk needs a statue in Rocky Mount, his hometown by the railroad

• The mind that wrote “Round Midnight” started out on Red Row
• His family is still around NC, and they’d like a statue for the jazz giant
• No word yet on whether the statue will include a bronze goatee

ROCKY MOUNT- In 1917, a gritty corner of Rocky Mount witnessed the birth of Thelonious Monk, perhaps the most eccentric giant of jazz, a goateed hipster in a skullcap and bamboo-framed shades. On the surface, nothing about this ragged railroad town suggests Monk or his music: off-kilter, strange yet effortlessly cool. But if you walk down what remains of Red Row, the alleyway of Monk’s birth, you can still hear the clatters and bangs as trains roll past on either side – sounds that filled Monk’s head as a boy.

Monk’s family fled those streets for New York before he turned 5, and the man who composed “Round Midnight” and “Straight No Chaser” never returned. But to hear his modern kinfolk tell it, Monk considered himself a Tar Heel first, his rhythms rooted in the Edgecombe County church that sustained his mother through Jim Crow. And for that reason, they’d like to see Monk’s statue along that same railroad, his flat fingers jabbing at the keys of a bronze piano. “He’s an American original, and there’s a lot of history here,” said his cousin Bobby Monk, who is leading the drive to raise $255,000. “His mother was from Rocky Mount, and his mother raised him. Hopefully, when people come through on the Amtrak, that statue will be there.”

Monk took his first steps in sight of the railroad, a citizen of the black neighborhood still known as “Around the Y” because it hugs an intersection of the Atlantic Coastline Railroad. In Monk’s time, its neighbors were poor, only a generation removed from slavery, trapped in a cruel era that saw the promise of emancipation run down by forced segregation. “They also heard the music,” wrote Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelly, “whether in church or a local juke joint or on the railroad or in the voices of street vendors in the early hours.”

I’m not sure I can go this far, but I’ve read critics who hear those train cars in Monk’s dissonant chords, which can sound to the unsophisticated ear like he struck a wrong note or let his piano go too-long untuned. I’ve read others who hear the church inside Monk’s jangled melodies, who find his compositions to be deeply spiritual, rooted in revivals and Psalms. No matter how much North Carolina Monk carried around the world, playing from stages from the Village Vanguard to Japan, he made his way to Raleigh in 1970, playing an astonishing 10 nights at The Frog & Nightgown in Cameron Village. A picture of the ailing jazz lion, then 52, appeared in The News & Observer under the caption “Star Returns.” Writer and documentarian Sam Stephenson wrote an excellent account of that night for Oxford American in 2007, in which he interviewed Bruce Lightner, an attendee and son of Raleigh’s first black mayor.

“The night I attended the band was on,” Lightner said. “Really on. I took a date and we got to shake Monk’s hand, and it was a thrill.”

To be honest, I only own one Monk album, and I hadn’t played it since college until I pulled it out this week – making me a dabbler by the most generous definition. But when I listen to “Manganese” or “In Walked Bud,” I hear an artist who is immensely playful, a grown kid with oversized rings on his fingers, getting up to twirl around the stage to his own music.

The state placed a historic marker near Monk’s birthplace in 2012, and a plaque describing “Around the Y” stands in Thelonious Monk Park on South Washington Street, where I watched tank cars roll past on Friday. But I think a statue would more than enhance Rocky Mount, much as John Coltrane’s has done for High Point.

So many musical notables started in North Carolina: Coltrane in Hamlet and High Point, Monk in Rocky Mount, Billy Strayhorn in Hillsborough. We don’t celebrate them, it seems, in the way that New Orleans does Louis Armstrong – even though Armstrong disowned his hometown for many years over segregation. Maybe it’s because these Tar Heel musicians split town so quickly. Maybe it’s because their music outlived its audience and has grown harder to hear. But I encourage donations to Bobby Monk’s statue fund to let a new century know about the sharp-dressed luminary who walked the same streets, saw the same scenery, heard the same racket and turned it all into music.

News and Observer columnist Josh Shaffer says it's time for a statue in Rocky Mount, NC for Theolonious Monk, perhaps the most eccentric giant of jazz, a goateed hipster in a skullcap and bamboo-framed shades.

Click here to read Josh Shaffer original article on Thelonious Monk

- Josh Shaffer jshaffer@newsobserver.com

Photo of Bobby Monk Sr.

What the world needs is a statue of Thelonious Monk, says jazz giant’s cousin

Thelonious Monk, circa 1947. A cousin wants to erect a statue of the jazz legend in the musician’s birthplace of Rocky Mount, N.C. (William P. Gottlieb Collection/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS & PHOTOS)

It was around 1981 when Bobby Monk got into his Dodge Coronet and pointed it north toward New York City. There was no guarantee he would get a face-to-face meeting with his famous cousin, Thelonious, and tell him of his dream, but he went anyway. Bobby came from a musical family. Thelonious — jazz pianist and composer extraordinaire — was the most celebrated member, but music permeated Bobby’s upbringing. “It’s in the blood,” Bobby would say of melody, rhythm and the Monks, descendants of slaves who worked at the Monk Plantation in Newton Grove, N.C. “It’s in the blood. It’s born.”

Bobby, 66, lives in Upper Marlboro, Md., but he grew up in Goldsboro, N.C., where his father, Raymond, played gospel piano. The senior Monk had started out as a ragtime piano player. He’d even toured the South with a burlesque show. “They talked him into doing that,” Bobby said. “He told them as long as the women didn’t strip down, he would play for them.” One night, two months into the gig, the women started drinking. And then they started stripping. “In the middle of the show, he got up from the piano, went into a church and never looked back,” Bobby said.

Bobby’s instrument was drums — and his voice. He carried a machine gun with the 173rd Airborne in Vietnam, then was transferred to Okinawa to work in the mess hall. “I’m back there cooking, singing and carrying on,” said Bobby. “My voice is nice and high, singing ‘Love on a Two-Way Street.’ ” Bobby had the good fortune to be overheard by a captain who ran Okinawa’s only soul band, Sounds East. Bobby spent the rest of his tour opening for USO shows. When he got back to the States, he moved to the District and took a job helping to dig the tunnels for Metro, and he sang on the side.

Bobby married his childhood sweetheart, Gloria, and they had four sons. (Bobby had a son from an earlier relationship, Bobby Jr.) The house was full of musical instruments, cheap things Bobby had picked up at yard sales and flea markets. When the boys — Edward, Gregory, Marcus and Michael — started coaxing music from this ramshackle collection, Bobby knew they had the family gift, too.

The result was the Famous Monk Family, the District’s own Jackson 5, who performed at the Million Man March, “Amateur Night at the Apollo” and on “CBS This Morning.” All that was after Bobby’s 1981 trip to New York. When he arrived, he went straight to Thelonious’s apartment, only to find the jazz great wasn’t there. Bobby told Monk’s wife, Nellie, why he’d come: He wanted to build the Thelonious Monk Cultural Center in Rocky Mount, N.C., Thelonious’s birthplace.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but this man needs a physical building to remind people who he was.’ ”

Bobby said Nellie agreed. She dialed a number in Weehawken, N.J., and put Bobby on the line. “He might speak with you,” she said. “Laconic,” is the word Bobby uses to describe Thelonious: a man of a few words. “But when he did speak, it had a lot of wisdom,” Bobby said. Bobby explained who he was and what he wanted to do. Thelonious said: “That sounds good. Talk to Nica. You talk to Nica about it. Love you.”

That would be the Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica “Nica” de Koenigswarter, the Rothschild heiress who left her family and devoted herself to the man who wrote “Round Midnight,” living with him in her Weehawken manse. Thelonious died in 1982. Bobby never did meet him in person. The Famous Monk Family allowed Bobby to mingle with the District’s music community, including, somewhat incongruously, Maria Fisher, a German-born former opera singer and founder of the Beethoven Society. Bobby said Maria —who died in 1991 — was supportive of his dream, but instead she helped create the District-based Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which sponsors jazz education and competition. Bobby still wants to see a cultural center built in Rocky Mount. But first, he wants to erect a bronze statue there. He has a design, by well-known sculptor Ed Dwight. It will cost about $255,000. “The funds have started trickling in,” Bobby said. Thomas R. Carter, president of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, said he’s in favor of anything that helps spread the legacy of the institute’s namesake. Said Bobby:

“The statue is going to bring people from around the world to come to where this man was born, to be able to take pictures with this statue, touch it, have something tangible.”

Click here to read John Kelly original article on Thelonious Monk

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. The Monk U.S. Memorial Foundation is hosting a fundraising concert from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 ISt. SW. Performers include the Eddie Anderson Project, featuring Michael Monk on saxophone and 11-year-old “Mike Mike” Monk (Bobby’s grandson) on drums. Tickets are $10, $3 for children. For more information, call Bobby at 240-765-9471 or email bmonkster@aol.com. To donate to the statue, write to the Monk U.S. Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 1041, Washington, D.C. 20013.

Photo of Statue

Fundraising ongoing to erect Monk statue

Plans are still in the works for the unveiling of a bronze statue of Rocky Mount native Thelonious Monk. Bobby Monk a cousin of the renowned jazz composer and piano player, said plans are for the life-sized statue to be showcased to the public on Oct. 8 outside the Rocky Mount train station as a part of Monk's 99th birthday and musical celebration in Rocky Mount to honor Thelonious Monk. Bobby Monk said a fundraising campaign to continue raising the $255,000 for the statue and also help fund the project for a cultural center is ongoing. Monk is asking residents of Thelonious Monk's hometown to help donate funds, whether large or small, for the statue. All donations are tax deductable, he said.

Monk said contributed funds also will go into helping build Thelonious Monk cultural center in Rocky Mount. Monk said that the future project is aimed to be a learning spot for people especially the younger generation - to learn about jazz or black classical music, Monk said. In addition, the cultural center would focus on artifacts and collections of the acclaimed jazz artist, Monk added. "We just feel like creating a statue in the place where Thelonious Monk was born is something very historical and important," Monk said. "I feel it's significant for the people of Rocky Mount to get involved because this is going to benefit the city and the citizens from revenue standpoint and also a tourism attraction for the city due to the fact of what we believe is going to bring, people from around the world coming to see the statue. We're hoping with the visibility this could bring, that this will be a precursor to the cultural center".

Sculptor Edward Dwight Jr. is still working with Monk on creating the statue. Monk said Dwight is likely to start sculpting the statue in April. Dwight, a former test pilot and the first black to be trained as an astronaut, is also known for sculpting more than 100 public art sculptures. Dwight's most notable designs include the African American History Mounument in South Carolina, the Alex Haley and Kunta Kinte Memorial in Maryland, Hank Aaron in Georgia, Frederick Douglass in Washington D.C., Rosa Parks in Michigan, Underground Railroad Memorial in Michigan and several Dr. Matin Luther King Jr. sculpyures in different cities.

Dwight said the design of the Thelonious Monk statue will show him sitting at the piano, black arched and his head turned slightly toward the audience. Also, Monk is going to be dressed in a suit with his signature hat on top of his head. "I am hoping this will spark people in Rocky Mount community to get excited about helping us in him (Thelonious Monk) in a very positive and deserving light". People looking to donate can send donations to The Monk US Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 1041, Washington D.C. 20013. Make checks payable to The Monk US Memorial Foundation.