The Card
For sixteen years the New York police decided who was allowed to play jazz in a room that served liquor. Thelonious Monk lost that permission for nearly six years, and the reason everybody knows is not the reason the records show.
LioraA saxophone record out of South Africa. A 1957 session where Thelonious Monk sits down at the piano. And a festival that bills itself the largest free jazz festival on earth, opening today. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, September 4th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead
LioraDetroit opens today, and Detroit doesn't do small. The Detroit Jazz Festival runs through Monday at Hart Plaza, free, and it bills itself as the largest free jazz festival in the world. Tonight is Coltrane 100: Joe Lovano, Melissa Aldana, Nduduzo Makhathini, Linda May Han Oh, and Jeff "Tain" Watts, playing for John Coltrane, whose hundredth birthday falls on September 23rd. Nineteen days. The countdown is on.
Meanwhile, Chicago rolls on through Sunday: Robert Glasper, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Miles Electric Band in Millennium Park.
Labor Day weekend. Two cities. Zero dollars. The music is doing its part. Your part is a car.
Two. Listen to This
LioraToday's record is out this morning, and it's the one I'd put on before the day gets loud. Linda Sikhakhane, "LINDA," on Blue Note. A saxophonist from South Africa, fifth album, and Blue Note calls it a meditation on love and belonging. If you like where Nduduzo Makhathini has taken the piano on that same label, this is the horn from the same neighborhood. Put it on early. Thank me at lunch.
Also out today, and this one's a thread. Blue Note's Tone Poet series reissues "Sonny Rollins, Volume 2," from 1957, in mono. J.J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Paul Chambers, Art Blakey... and on two tracks, "Misterioso" and "Reflections," Thelonious Monk sits down at the piano. Sekou, you've heard it. One line.
SekouMonk sits down for two tunes, and you can hear the whole band lean in.
LioraRemember that name. It's the Bridge, in a minute. And Woody Shaw's 1973 album "Song of Songs" comes back to vinyl in an all-analog reissue, with Bennie Maupin and George Cables.
Three. The Bridge
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou, what have you got?
SekouA piece of paper. About the size of a driver's license. From 1940 until 1967, if you wanted to work in a New York nightclub that served liquor, you needed one. The police issued it. And the police could take it away.
LioraA license to play the piano.
SekouIn those rooms, yes. It was called the cabaret card. New York passed a cabaret law in 1926. By 1943 that firmly included musicians. Billie Holiday lost hers in 1947. She never got it back. For about twelve years, no New York nightclub serving liquor could legally book her.
And in August of 1951, the card caught Thelonious Monk.
LioraWhat happened?
SekouHere's the version you'll hear in every jazz bar in the world. Monk is sitting in a parked car with his friend Bud Powell. Police find heroin. It isn't Monk's. They ask him whose it is, he says nothing, and he takes the fall to protect his friend.
LioraThat's the story I know.
SekouIt's the story everyone knows, and it came from Monk's own family. But researchers went back to the records. August 8th, 1951. Five people in that car, not two. Police saw heroin thrown from the car and arrested everyone. Whose it was, the surviving records do not establish. Monk pleaded not guilty. And Bud Powell was not spared by anyone's silence. He was sent to an institution.
LioraSo the legend is... a legend.
SekouThe legend is a legend. What isn't in dispute is what it cost. Monk sat in jail about sixty days, got a sixty-day sentence credited as time served... and lost his cabaret card. For nearly six years, the most original piano player in New York could not hold a steady job in Manhattan's major nightclubs. The rooms where reputations were made.
LioraSix years. What did he do?
SekouHe was not silent. He played neighborhood rooms in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem, where the card didn't reach. He gave concerts, turned up on television, and recorded: Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, including "Brilliant Corners" in 1956. His wife, Nellie, held the household together. She called that stretch "the un-years."
LioraThe un-years.
SekouHer words. And into those years walks Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Born a Rothschild, a baroness by marriage, she became Monk's close friend and one of his important supporters.
In 1957 the card came back. With help from her, from Monk's manager Harry Colomby, who fought the appeal, and from a club owner named Joe Termini, who vouched he would put Monk to work.
LioraSo where does he play?
SekouTermini's club. A small room on the Bowery called the Five Spot. He opened there on July 4th, 1957, with a trio. Two weeks later, on July 18th, a tenor player joined the band. A young man named John Coltrane.
LioraOh.
SekouYes. Coltrane said of playing with Monk, "You have to be awake all the time. You never know exactly what's going to happen." The run lasted to about Christmas. One of modern jazz's celebrated engagements, and it happened because a piece of paper came back.
LioraAnd the card itself?
SekouMayor John Lindsay signed the repeal on September 25th, 1967. Monk was 49. Billie Holiday had been gone eight years. And the cabaret law underneath it? New York didn't repeal that until 2017.
LioraSo the famous story is that he lost six years for keeping quiet. The real one is that whatever happened in that car, a piece of paper decided where Thelonious Monk was allowed to play. I think the real one is heavier.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road
LioraTonight, coast to coast. Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's New Orleans: Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band at Snug Harbor at seven thirty. Traditional New Orleans jazz, in the city that invented it, in a small room. That's not a night out. That's a pilgrimage.
LioraNow the sweep. In Detroit, the festival: Hart Plaza, all weekend, free. In Chicago, day two in Millennium Park, and at the Green Mill, Juan Pastor's Chinchano from eight until midnight, then Marquis Hill's jam session at one in the morning. In Oakland, saxophonist Kirk Whalum is at Yoshi's tonight and tomorrow. In Baltimore, Jeff Bradshaw and Friends, with trumpeter Tom Browne, at Keystone Korner at six and nine. And in New York, the John Patitucci Trio with Chris Potter and Brian Blade holds the Village Vanguard through Saturday, Greg Osby's Ellington night "Dancing with Duke" is at Birdland at eight thirty and ten thirty, and Ghost-Note is at the Blue Note.
Five. One More Note
LioraHere's a tune that lived two lives. In 1939, the bandleader Charlie Barnet had a hit with "Cherokee." Six years later, Charlie Parker took its chords and built "Ko-Ko" on top of them, one of bebop's defining early recordings. Barnet died on this day in 1991. One more thing worth remembering about him: he was among the early white bandleaders to feature Black musicians in his orchestra.
So tonight, a double feature. "Cherokee," then "Ko-Ko," back to back. About six minutes, total. The hit, and what it became. You'll never hear either one the same way again.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
Have a loud weekend. I'm Liora. See you next time.
← All episodes