Danke für Deinen Bericht erstmal! Muss ich später mal komplett lesen, habe die Posts gerade erst überflogen.
Wie seriös ist das Buch insgesamt? Die Geschichte von Monk und Nellie habe ich etwas anders gehört – z.B.:
Of all the stories about jazz musicians who cannot quite handle worldly matters and the companions who manage their lives, the long love affair of Thelonious and Nellie Monk may be the most famous. Monk, a socially awkward eccentric who was absorbed in his art and lived through his imagination, depended on Ms. Monk and relished her company.
In 1957 Monk wrote one of his most beautiful ballads for her, “Crepuscule With Nellie,“ while Ms. Monk was undergoing surgery for a thyroid disorder.
In the early 1970’s, when Monk moved into the large Weehawken, N.J., home of his patron, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, Ms. Monk moved there with him.
Nellie Smith was born in 1921 in St. Petersburg, Fla. She and her family moved to New York City early in her life, first to Brooklyn and then to the San Juan Hill area of Manhattan, west of Lincoln Center, where Monk’s family lived. When she was about 14, she met Monk, who was three years older, on the neighborhood basketball court.
The Monks were together from around 1947 until his death in 1982. She provided financial as well as emotional support, working as a seamstress during World War II in a factory and sporadically making clothes thereafter for her husband and for friends. She never became Monk’s manager as such, but she collected money from promoters, paid musicians, made sure band members had airline tickets and even helped Monk get dressed. The 1988 documentary film “Straight, No Chaser“ showed proof of their mutual devotion, as Mrs. Monk shepherded her husband through airports and hotels.
von hier: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/27/arts/nellie-monk-80-wife-muse-and-mainstay-of-a-jazz-legend.html
Robin D.G. Kelley äussert sich hier ein wenig zu Nellie:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/03/the-secret-life-of-thelonious-monk/38128/
Was er in seinem Buch diesbezüglich schreibt, weiss ich nicht, bin da mit Lesen bisher nicht sehr weit gekommen, obwohl der erste Eindruck hervorragend war.
Noch was:
He already had a wife, to whom he dedicated Crepuscule with Nellie, the loveliest of his ballads. Somehow Monk, Nellie and Nica formed a ménage whose primary purpose was to sustain the great composer and bandleader’s ability to function in the face of problems that would probably be diagnosed today as the consequence of bipolar disorder. „Nellie needed Nica to help her cope with Monk’s mental instability,“ says an interviewee in the film. The question of what Nica needed is rather harder to answer, but she certainly responded to the puzzle of Monk’s music. „She got it,“ the pianist’s son, Thelonious Jr, tells Hannah Rothschild. „He loved her for that.“ The pair became a familiar sight in New York clubs, with her Bentley parked at the kerb outside.
von hier: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/22/jazz
V.a. erinnere ich mich – nicht mehr sehr präzise – an die Lektüre des „du“-Heftes über Monk, in dem die Familie auch zu Wort kommt. Sollte antiquarisch zu finden sein:
http://www.du-magazin.com/kiosk/detail/636
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #157: Benny Golson & Curtis Fuller – 12.11.2024 – 22:00 / #158 – 19.12.2024 – 20:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba