T.S. Monk is the son of a legend, and music royalty Thelonious Monk, a musical genius, and pivotal figure in the world of jazz.
The elder Monk was an attentive and loving father who had the foresight to place his publishing rights in the name of his children, T.S. (Rootie Tootie) and Barbara (Boo-Boo). T.S. grew up in a world where Miles (Davis), (John) Coltrane, Art (Blakey) were just “Dad’s friends.” He realized later that he had personally witnessed the “Mount Rushmore” of jazz in his living room, on a daily basis.
T.S. is a methodical, thinking man, a drummer, who stepped out of the jazz world in 1980, with the memorable, classic R&B hit Bon Bon Vie (Gimme The Good Life). His is a story of being born into something great but feeling the responsibility to prove his worth. His is a story of connections, and how one relationship can lead to another, and yield spectacular results.
More than a good life, T.S. has led an amazing life. As a bandleader and musician, T.S. is the recipient of the New York Jazz Awards First Annual “Recording of the Year” award and Downbeat magazine’s prestigious 63rd annual Album of the Year Reader’s Choice Award for Monk on Monk, a tribute album to his father.
We caught up with T.S. at his home in New Jersey.
50BOLD: I imagine you’ve never done an interview without talking about your father.
T.S. Monk: That’s an interesting thing to say because what I experienced when I was a youngster…. Well, let’s go back to 1980, right. I was an R&B artist. I had a couple of hit records, right.
50BOLD: Right.
T.S. Monk: And at that point in life, my conversations had gone down from about 90% about my father and 10% about me. It moved through like 70% about my father and 30% about me.
50BOLD: Yeah.
T.S. Monk: And then in 1998, I had an album called Monk on Monk. And all of a sudden, my interviews went from like 30% about my father, to 70% about me, okay. [laughs]
50BOLD: Okay!
T.S. Monk: You know, so, I realized that there was a certain amount of validation that came with you know, Down Beat Record of the Year and just my, you know, total commitment to jazz, but either way, I have never had a problem talking about my father. As an African American, there are very few of us with a legacy that is roundly celebrated by both Black and white America.
50BOLD: Well, that brings up a point I wanted to ask you about.
T.S. Monk: Sure.
50BOLD: The Monk Musical Catalog in a righteous world, it should be worth millions of dollars. When I think about his composition ‘Round Midnight alone, I can’t even think about… how many people have recorded it! I ask the following only because this world is not righteous, and the music business has been built on exploitation, especially of Black people. Has the catalog been lucrative for you? Do you feel this?
T.S. Monk: The catalog has been extremely lucrative for me.
50BOLD: Oh, that’s good to know.
T.S. Monk: There was a guy back in the late 50s, a musician by the name of Gigi Gryce.
50BOLD: I know the name very well.
T.S. Monk: And Gigi to me was kind of like the Curt Flood of jazz. And that Curt Flood actually brought free agency to modern sports.
50BOLD: Major League Baseball, yeah.
T.S. Monk: Gigi was a good friend of my father’s. He and my father started telling the cats who were writers, that they needed their own publishing company. And at that juncture in my father’s career, he had several classic tunes that he did not own. But he wrote a whole bunch of other tunes that he did own. So, my father and mother set up a publishing company, put all the music that my father had in it and then, he put it in me and my sister’s name, the company itself.
50BOLD: Beautiful! That’s so smart.
T.S. Monk: So, no matter what happened to my parents, no one could say that me and my sister didn’t own the company, didn’t own the music. It was a brilliant move that was laced with so much love. I’ve been the beneficiary of the vast majority of my father’s catalog ever since the day he passed away. I feel very, very, fortunate in this regard.
50BOLD: That’s beautiful to hear, man. You always hear the horror stories about the abuse in the industry, but that’s really brilliant! I’m just really ecstatic to hear about this move. Now, can you please share with us the names of some of the jazz legends who were in your world growing up.
T.S. Monk: It’s crazy! One of the cats who comes to mind is the great Randy Weston, because I remember the first time I ever met Randy Weston. He came to the door and when my father opened it, I ran into the closet because he was six foot ten. [laughs] I’ve never seen anyone that big in my life. It was incredible!
50BOLD: He was a giant, yeah.
T.S. Monk: You know, Thelonious’ address and phone number was in the phone book his entire life. And so therefore, he was very extraordinarily accessible, not to the press, but to the other musicians. So, Miles was in our house all the time, and also Art Blakey, Max Roach, and Sonny Rollins. The list of musicians who would come over to our house goes on and on.
50BOLD: I read somewhere that Art Blakey gave you your first drum set. Is that true?
T.S. Monk: Art Blakey gave me my first drum set, and Max Roach gave me lessons.
50BOLD: Wow, just incredible!
T.S. Monk: and you know, I mean, it was just… and you know, the funny thing is that for a long time…. I knew Art. Eventually, he was Art Blakey. I knew Max. Eventually, he was Max Roach. I knew Sonny. Eventually, he was Sonny Rollins. I never heard my father call Coltrane, John. He just called him Coltrane. The interesting thing is that I was allowed to just be little Rootie-Tootie you know. So, I was not pressured, whatsoever, to become involved in music. When you’re growing up, your father has friends, and you might not even know their last names. You just know them by their first names. I don’t know if you’re aware, but you mentioned ‘Round Midnight. Did you know that Miles Davis recorded ‘Round Midnight 36 times.
50BOLD: I didn’t know.
T.S. Monk: Miles used to knock on the door and I was the ‘sufficient door opener.’ He’d say, ‘ Tell Monk, Miles is here!’ I’d go tell my father. Miles would come in and sit at the piano. Some days, my father would be lying in bed. Miles would lay his trumpet down and just wait until my father would get up and then, they’d get into it. And as far as Coltrane, I guess I must have been about 7 or 8 years old and my sister was about four. I was always in the room sort of babysitting my sister when Coltrane would come over. And I remember thinking to myself, why was Daddy always yelling at this young guy who’d come to the house every day. Daddy was schooling Coltrane, and he would say things like, ”Yo, man, you want to play two notes, play two notes. You want to play three notes, play three notes. Fuck them critics, they don’t know shit.”
50BOLD: Right.
T.S. Monk: I mean he was just pumping Coltrane up. You know Coltrane at that point in his life had a problem with drugs. He was coming out of that malaise, you know, and really becoming the Coltrane who we all love today. And the interesting thing about that relationship is that once Coltrane sort of hit the second phase of his career, the critics would ask him, what happened between the days with Miles and Coltrane. He would always respond with “Monk is what happened!”
50BOLD: Monk is what happened….
T.S. Monk: No one wanted to believe Monk is what happened because he was so low-key. Monk was so underground. For the majority of his career, Monk was really kind of an underground cat. The critics would say how Monk’s piano technique made no sense and how his songs were very simplistic, juvenile, blah, blah, blah!
50BOLD: It’s just so funny, you know, I studied your father’s music and continue to do so. And Monk’s harmony to me is like textbook perfection. And his note choice is because he knew what would work on certain harmony, but nothing about Thelonious Monk is out to me in terms of the music. But I wanted to ask you about something else.
T.S. Monk: Sure.
50BOLD: Your father had some well documented interesting behaviors. Some would say he was eccentric, for example, he would make these incessant 360° turns, or he would jump up from the piano and dance, while his band members were soloing. When we’re young, when we’re teenagers, we tend to be self-absorbed, perhaps not understanding, or sensitive to what others might be experiencing. Growing up, how did you feel witnessing these behaviors, or were you oblivious to them?
T.S. Monk: Well, no, I wasn’t oblivious to them, but let me explain two things. At a certain juncture, I knew that my father had some emotional issues, but they never interfered with his ability to take care of our family. Never. Never. What people don’t know is that when Thelonious would get up from the piano…. Well, he came from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the deep South. And like so many great musicians of the 30s, 40s and 50s, he traveled the South. They all saw the “strange fruit.” They were all children of either slaves or ex-slaves, right. And because of this, there were African traditions that had still been passed down no matter what the white overseers did. So, when Thelonious got up from the piano and did those spins, they were a variation on the most ancient of African dance steps.
50BOLD: That is so interesting.
T.S. Monk: White folks didn’t know what those spins meant and many Black folks didn’t either. But if you actually study African dance, and go all the way back, the moves he did were ancient dance steps. Thelonious grew up with the traditions of Africa embedded in him. People don’t know this. He wasn’t being eccentric; he was being respectful.
50BOLD: He was being connected.
T.S. Monk: Yes, connected to his ancestors.
50BOLD: Right, I dig! Okay, so for our readers who might not be clear, you are a drummer.
T.S. Monk: Yeah.
50BOLD: Was being left-handed an impediment, because most drummers are right-handed. So, in order to sit in at a jam session or gig, you had to physically rearrange the drum set.
T.S. Monk: Yeah, this was a problem. But I don’t think that I would have ended up as good a drummer as I have ended up, had it not been for Max Roach. I was caught-up in that netherworld of drummers who are left-handed, who change to play left-handed with their hands, and right-handed with their feet.
50BOLD: Well, yeah…
T.S. Monk: And I was about to get on that train. But when I went to Max Roach’s house and began moving drums around, he said, “Don’t move no drums around, man. Just look in the mirror. Look at the set in the mirror and set up as if you’re in a mirror. Set your drums up exactly like the way I do, except the opposite. So, instead of your hi-hat on the left, put your hi-hat on the right. Instead of your snare drum on the left, put your snare drum on the right.” And that solved so many problems for me, you know. It was just fabulous. Now, I did learn, I’d have to move a few drums around to accommodate myself when I was sitting in.
50BOLD: It’s 1980. You’re 29 years old. You record an album, not a jazz record, but R&B/soul/dance/ funk record entitled House of Music. By the time you’re 30, you have a smash hit single, Bon Bon Vie (Gimme The Good Life), which incidentally, that is you singing lead on that recording, right?
T.S. Monk: Yes, it is!
50BOLD: It’s a huge record, first time out. You’re barely out your 20s, what happens next?
T.S. Monk: You know…. First of all, it was odd, because I grew up wanting to be Art Blakey and Max Roach. And all of a sudden, I have all of this attention on me as a singer. And I’m saying, I ain’t no singer, but I have got to go with the flow, okay. My father was delighted.
50BOLD: I was going to ask you about that. What did he think about the whole thing?
T.S. Monk: He was delighted because it was me and my sister and we had figured it out. My mother told me we had figured out a way to be successful in music, that really didn’t have anything to do with him. I had to bring it. I was able to do it and he was delighted. Since I had played with my father, there were a lot of people in jazz who were upset because he wasn’t upset.
50BOLD: Really?
T.S. Monk: The mid-70s was a low point in jazz history. It was during a time when many jazz clubs were closed. The only people really working were my father, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and the giants. The giants were working, but there weren’t a whole lot of gigs available for a guy who was 25 years old. People like myself, people like Bobby Watson, people like Wallace Roney, all these cats were youngsters at the time, right? When we would speak to each other, we’d say, “What you doing man? What you doing this weekend?” We knew there weren’t any gigs. Birdland was closed. Every place was closed except the damn Village Vanguard, right? And so we’d say, “Well, I got to take this boogaloo gig.” Well, this was code for “I got to play this funk gig, so I can make some money!”
You had this generation of young jazz musicians who went into R&B and this gave us that golden era of music between ‘75 and ‘85 that gave us the likes of Donald Byrd and the Blackbyrds, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Commodores, the Gap Band, and Con Funk Shun. All these bands. All of these badass bands were full of these young jazz players who didn’t have nowhere else to go. And what we brought was a consciousness of production. We brought harmonics and instrumentation. We brought the electric piano. We brought the open and closed hi-hat which was something that Art Blakey used to do.
50BOLD: Right.
T.S. Monk: We poured all this music into R&B, and that’s why when the young hip hoppers sample music, they don’t run to the 60s, they run to all that music between 75 and 85. It’s jazz. And this is where you’ll find the meat and potatoes. That was my generation of young jazz musicians. We went to R&B.
50BOLD: You know, this is so funny. You’re answering my questions before I ask them. [laugh] But this interview is so great. The information you are giving me, I really appreciate it. Bon Bon Vie is a great record to this day. I mean, when you hear it you can’t help but love it.
T.S. Monk: To this day I make money. I didn’t write the song, but I make money off it and every DJ in the country, every Black DJ in the country has Bon Bon Vie in their collection.
50BOLD: Oh yeah.
T.S. Monk: And they all love it. It gets played on the radio all over the country every day and it is now 43 years old! I feel very, very, humbled.
50BOLD: Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I especially like the title cut, House of Music. You have lyrics like “we grew up in The House of Music, the House of Love” I was like, wow, we get an insight into his like real life in these records.
T.S. Monk: Bon Bon Vie is really a pop song. And my voice, I didn’t grow up in the church. I didn’t sound like Teddy Pendergrass or Stevie Wonder. I sounded like a Black kid from New York City who went to private school in Connecticut. [laughs] You know, that’s who I was and that’s the kind of song it was, but I’m very, very, very grateful.
50BOLD: Absolutely!
T.S. Monk: In 1982, we were working on our second record. My partners in T.S. Monk were my sister Boo-Boo, Barbara Evelyn Monk, and my girlfriend of nine years, Yvonne Fletcher. In October 1983, Yvonne died from breast cancer. And in the beginning of February of 1984, my sister died from breast cancer. And that’s why T.S. Monk disappeared off the map. I felt like we had had a train crash and my life was over. My R&B career was over. There was nothing to do but go the hell home and say, “Fuck it!” So, this is what I did.
50BOLD: So, that’s what happened?
T.S. Monk: In 1984, I made a recording with Manhattan Records with a good Canadian brother who just passed away recently.
50BOLD: Sorry to hear…
T.S. Monk: But that record didn’t really go anywhere because we were the first artist on a new label, Manhattan, and they didn’t quite know how to market us. So, I just shut it down and stopped playing drums. I stopped playing music from 1984 to 1991.
50BOLD: Plus, you lost your father in 1982, right.
T.S. Monk: And I lost my father in 1982.
50BOLD: That’s a lot. Oh my God!
T.S. Monk: I was cooked, I was cooked. But my life has been such a carpet ride man. So, dig this. I’m living in Brooklyn, I’m married to my wife, Gail and have two kids. My cousin’s husband had been an executive assistant to a gangster who had been our last manager. [laughs] This is so funny; my life is so bizarre man, I’ve got to tell you this stuff!
So, my manager got indicted and went to jail for like 30 years. I just saw him like 6 months ago for the first time in 30 years! So, my cousin’s husband comes to me one day, and says listen, “I’ve got a friend and he’s got a problem. He’s got some kids, you know, they’ve got a group. But the guy needs somebody to school them, to teach them about production, to teach them how to put their songs together, all this kind of stuff.” I said, “Well what’s his name?” He said his name is Denroy Morgan and he had a hit record called, I’ll Do Anything For You. And I said, “Oh, I know that record.” The guy goes on to say, “He lives around the corner from you out here in Brooklyn.” So, I say “Well how many kids does he have?” He says, “Well he’s got 27 kids.” I said, “27 kids! Are you joking?” There were really only nine of them in the group. So, I asked to be introduced to Denroy. When I meet Denroy, I say, “Hey man, you know, send the kids up to my house.” What the hell! I had a little studio in my basement. I wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t play drums anymore. I didn’t do anything.
Denroy passed away in 2022.
50BOLD: I didn’t know he had passed. Wow….
T.S. Monk: So, anyway, Denroy sends the kids over and I spent the next year just tutoring them on production, you know, on how to make a record, the difference between the sound of a tape and the sound of a record, and all that kind of stuff.
50BOLD: Okay….
T.S. Monk: Well, today, those kids are probably one of the biggest acts in Jamaica.
50BOLD: That’s wonderful and to your credit for sure!
T.S. Monk: They performed in New York City’s Central Park not too long ago. You’ve probably heard of them; the group is called Morgan Heritage.
50BOLD: I don’t know them, but this is an amazing story.
T.S. Monk: It’s amazing and one of the highlights of my life, tutoring these kids who went on to become huge stars. They’ve recorded with Mick Jagger and all these super white rock stars, and Jamaica just loves them. But that was all I did, for 6 years. After my sister and Yvonne died, I didn’t pick up a drum stick. But in 1987, we formed the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
50BOLD: Which I was also going to ask you about. Go ahead. Tell us about it, please.
T.S. Monk: A few cousins down in Rocky Mount, South Carolina had never met my father but wanted to do something in his name. They contacted me and the philanthropist, Maria Fisher, God bless her soul. She was the founder of the Beethoven Society of America. And at my father’s funeral, the great jazz promoter, George Lee had mentioned how Thelonious Monk had been the ‘Beethoven of Jazz’ and Maria was told this as well.
Well, we formed the Monk Foundation and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. And there were people within the organization who knew I had played jazz before my R&B career. And so, we held functions with cats like Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton. And one day, I was told how I was a really good spokesperson for the organizations and how I should also perform. I was taken aback. I was told that I should play with the likes of performers like Dizzy and Lionel when I had not played drums in six years!! Right? But it was all for the cause, so I would just have to go and practice. [laughs]
50BOLD: When I saw you in the 90s at one of those gigs, one thing stood out and this is going to sound funny. You were clearly spending a lot of time in the gym. I mean, you looked like a superhero, man, talk about your physical regimen. What got you into that?
T.S. Monk: Oh man, it’s funny you should say that. It’s 1973, and I’m working with my father. And we had a gig in California and we were staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. We’re eating breakfast and waving at people going by. Those were the days when it didn’t rain in California. LA got no rain!
50BOLD: They wrote songs about it.
T.S. Monk: So, I go to buy some cigarettes. And I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, I walk by this mirror. As I’m walking by the mirror, a bunch of California white girls walk by me and they look so damn healthy. And I looked in the mirror at myself. At that time, I was the same height I am today, 5’11” and weighed 122 pounds. Well, these girls did not even look at me! I looked like a fucking pretzel! When I get to a newsstand there’s a magazine with Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover and underneath his photo is a banner that read, ‘Gain 30 pounds in 30 days.’
50BOLD: Oh wow! Man, those magazine coverlines!
T.S. Monk: Right? I thought to myself, well, holy shit, I can gain 30 pounds in 30 days? Well, I bought the magazine and took it back to the hotel. I began reading it. The article provided info about all these supplements and shit and weight training too. I went to my father to get an advance. I then went to an army and navy store and bought a 110-pound set of weights and a giant duffel bag. I started lifting weights. I dragged that duffel bag and those weights for the next three months all over the country as I toured with my father.
50BOLD: You took the weights on the road?
T.S. Monk: Took those weights along with my drum set.
50BOLD: That’s crazy. Wow.
T.S. Monk: It was totally insane. You know, dragging all this crazy shit into a hotel room. We had a suite, I’d have one room and he’d have another. The bathroom would be fucked up with all these powders and shit. [laughs] And in those days you didn’t have all of those wonderful drinks that you have now for weight gain or weight loss. I had like these crazy protein powders and they all tasted like shit. And I’d drink them all! And when I came off the road, I had gained about 10 pounds. And then I went up to about 180 pounds. In fact, by the time I went on the road with my R&B group, it was in my rider that wherever we stayed had to have a gym. I became a maniac. So yes, I was a diesel in them days.
50BOLD: Well, this has been an amazing interview. It’s incredible to hear things from your perspective, and to see how you’ve viewed yourself. It’s very interesting how you’ve been able to step outside of yourself to look at the big picture. So, next month you’ll be 75?
T.S. Monk: I’ll be 75!! [laughs] I can’t believe it!
50BOLD: Time is certainly moving on.
T.S. Monk: I can’t even believe it. I’ve got work. I’ve still got work to do.
50BOLD: So, everyone talks about your father’s legacy, but you’ve done so much in your life. How would you like to be remembered?
T.S. Monk: Listen I would like to be remembered…well, you know, this is kind of an emotional question for me. When I got into the music, my goal was to earn my way into the club of jazz musicians, legitimately. I didn’t want to get in just because I was Monk’s son. Being Monk’s son has been fantastic but I wanted to get into the club, so that one day, when I’m gone, people will say, “Oh yeah, T.S. Monk, that’s Monk’s son. Yeah, man, he could play. You should listen to his records. He made some great, great fucking records.” This means more to me than anything. My award is to gain the respect of my peers because so many of us children-of-the-greats don’t really, we don’t pan out. We just don’t pan out. I’m proud of myself. And I’m very proud of Ravi Coltrane.
50BOLD: Oh absolutely!
T.S. Monk: Ravi has even more guts than we do because he picked up the damn tenor saxophone.
50BOLD: Check that out.
T.S. Monk: You know, check that out, and made good on it, made good on it! He’s a legitimate badass on that tenor, and that’s what it’s all about for me. I want to be remembered for being able to speak about my father, and about his generation in a way, that the common man on the street can understand. I have always said, you give me a white man who is unfamiliar with jazz and put him in a room with me for two hours. I’ll have that motherfucker buying a Charlie Parker record in two hours, because I know how to explain, what this music is all about in a way that can be understood. I respect the likes of intellectuals like Wynton who can also explain what the music is all about in very lofty terms. The same ingredients that make you love the Temptations are the same ingredients that will make you love Coltrane, Rollins or Blakely. It’s the same shit!
50BOLD: Or T.S. Monk. I’m just saying, it’s the same thing that will make you love T.S. Monk.
T.S. Monk: And T.S. Monk, yeah man! You know, Duke said it nearly 100 years ago, “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.” That’s the bottom line. That is really the bottom line. And it sounds colloquial, and it sounds cliche, but….
50BOLD: It’s the truth.
T.S. Monk: And that’s what really good jazz is all about, whether you’re talking about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter, you know, right on down to the likes of Christian McBride, and Roy Hargrove. They’re all swinging their asses off, and this is what counts.
