MONK DID NOT “TAKE THE RAP” FOR BUD POWELL

One of my biggest frustrations in my many years of researching and teaching about jazz is that most people hold on to their ”good stories” even after they have been proven false.  So I will be pleased, but also surprised, if this post results in ending one of these falsehoods.

I mentioned that my goals for this newsletter include not only publishing my own research, but bringing attention to deserving research by others that has not received enough notice.  In this case the research is by Peter Pullman, from his thorough and well-researched book on Bud Powell:

https://www.wailthelifeofbudpowell.com/

We are lucky to have Peter’s book, and Robin Kelley’s comprehensive book on Monk:

https://www.amazon.com/Thelonious-Monk-Times-American-Original/dp/1439190461

And the forthcoming authoritative book on Rollins by Aidan Levy:

https://www.amazon.com/Saxophone-Colossus-Music-Sonny-Rollins/dp/0306902796

These are among the best-researched books ever devoted to jazz.

Now, here’s the point of this post: It is commonly stated that when Monk and Bud were arrested for possession of drugs, Monk “took the rap” (the punishment) for Bud. It is said that Monk passively allowed the police to charge him with possession of drugs and said nothing, even though the drugs were not his, so that his good friend Powell, who did own the drugs, would be released. This story is false.

Pullman looked at surviving police records and other sources, and he provides a detailed report. I based the following mostly on pages 162-6 of his book, and I consulted with Peter before posting this. I also compared with Kelley’s book, pages 155-7. But I am fully responsible for this brief summary. Here is my understanding of what happened:

On the evening of August 8, 1951, the police came upon a parked car near Monk’s apartment building on West 63rd Street, and caught Powell, Monk, and three other people trying to dispose of heroin. After an arraignment (that is, an initial hearing) at a police precinct (which concluded after midnight and therefore was dated August 9), Monk, Powell, and at least one of the others spent the night in downtown Manhattan at a detention center known informally as The Tombs. The next morning, an authority declared that Powell was “mentally ill” and sent him to a psychiatric hospital. As far as I can tell, before Bud was taken away, there was no moment when Monk could have gotten him released--and in any case, as I just said, Bud was not released. In fact he remained incarcerated for about eighteen months!

If it’s true the heroin was Bud’s, which is not at all certain—there is good reason to think it was brought by one of the others in the car—one could still argue that Monk resisted telling the police that it was Bud’s. I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t see how that amounts to Monk “taking the rap” for Bud. Furthermore, on the advice of his lawyer, Monk in fact pleaded that he was Not Guilty! He did not passively accept the charge. Nevertheless, he ended up waiting sixty days in jail, and then, since it was only a misdemeanor, the judges set his sentence at sixty days, which was the time he had already served. So Monk was allowed to go home.

But Monk was famously impacted for the next six years, because his criminal record meant that he could not get the “cabaret card” that was then required of anyone who worked in an establishment that served liquor in New York City. This was a serious handicap, although, as Kelley documents, Monk was ingenious at getting around it. The rule was mostly enforced at Manhattan nightclub engagements lasting more than two nights—so a week at the Village Vanguard was not possible for Monk. But between 1951 and 1957, he played at neighborhood clubs in Brooklyn (including five months playing every weekend at a place called Tony’s), the Bronx, and Harlem, gave a few concerts at Town Hall and elsewhere, took gigs outside New York City, performed and recorded in Paris, made important recordings for the Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside labels, and appeared on the nationally televised Tonight Show, thanks to its host, Steve Allen. So, when he regained his license in 1957, he was more than ready for the groundbreaking stint of almost six months at the Five Spot, with Coltrane on tenor sax.

But—to get back to our main point--how did the false tale originate that Monk took action that ended up with Bud being set free and himself punished? It appears that it came from his devoted wife Nellie, and first appeared in a newspaper article by their friend Maely Dufty years later, July 2, 1960. (Maely was also friends with Billie Holiday, which led to her husband William working with Billie on her autobiography. Not much is known about Maely’s early life, except that she was a Jew born in Europe.) Clearly, that part of Nellie’s story is not true, but it’s understandable that she would “spin” it in a way that favored her husband. I imagine that Nellie proposed the piece to Dufty in response to something that had been written about Thelonious.

(UPDATE: Thanks to Robin Kelley, THAT ARTICLE is now available for paid subscribers:

https://lewisporter.substack.com/p/the-rarest-article-about-monk-for

Now that I’ve read it, I see that it was indeed written in response to something recently published in another paper, which Dufty calls “the local liberal daily”—that’s The New York Post, which believe it or not was known for liberalism before Rupert Murdoch bought it in 1976. And the article does not actually say that Monk took the rap instead of Bud—only that Monk himself was totally innocent, according to Nellie and Maely.)

Details varied in other printed stories. For example, England’s magazine Melody Maker said, in an article published the month of the arrest, that the police approached the car after seeing a packet of heroin thrown from the car. And that article identified the car as Monk’s, which is unlikely. This article was also sent to paid subscribers:

https://lewisporter.substack.com/p/monks-1951-arrest-as-reported-in

Bottom Line: Let’s see if people now stop saying that Monk “took the rap” for Bud. I’m an optimist—but I’m not holding my breath.

P.S. This post is not about the cabaret card laws, but I had to mention their impact on Monk, in passing. The cabaret law is a study in itself. There are books and articles on it—for example Paul Chevigny, Gigs: Jazz and the Cabaret Laws in New York City, and a book by a lawyer who helped to win the fight against cabaret cards: https://www.amazon.com/Police-Card-Discord-Maxwell-Cohen/dp/0810826380

And of course Wikipedia has some info, with good links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Cabaret_Card