Thelonious Monk Plays Rock and Roll?

The Failure of Monk's Forced Transformation

 

You don’t have to know Thelonious Monk to know the Underground LP. Over the past few years, whenever I mentioned to anyone that I was writing a biography of the jazz pianist and composer, even those who had never heard the music knew the iconic and bizarre cover image on Underground: Monk playing an old upright piano with a machine gun strapped to his back, barricaded inside what was supposed to be a secluded haunt of the French counterculture. It’s often assumed that Underground marked the height of Monk’s powers. …