"On Thelonious Monk’s birthday, I’ll share the advice he gave saxophonist Steve Lacy, who wrote it down in 1960 . . . .

 On Thelonious Monk’s birthday, I’ll share the advice he gave saxophonist Steve Lacy, who wrote it down in 1960 . . . . 

• Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time.
• Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.
• Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!
• Make the drummer sound good.
• Discrimination is important.
• You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
• All reet!
• Always know:
• It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.
• Let’s lift the band stand!!
• I want to avoid the hecklers.
• Don’t play the piano part, I am playing that. Don’t listen to me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!
• The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
• Don’t play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.
• What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.
• A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
• Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
• When you are swinging, swing some more!
• (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!
• Always leave them wanting more.
• Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.
• Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!
• You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn’t want to solo).
• Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

and finally 

• They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil 

Simon Alexander Besteman on Flikennabok ·

Dr John and Thelonious Monk! - [MoJo interview Michael Simmons]

Photograph: Alan Messer/Rex

"A crowning moment came when Dr. John shared a bill with bebop’s high priest Thelonious Monk – a devotee of hip chapeaus – at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. Monk was quoted as digging Mac’s piano playing and saying of the DJTNT sobriquet: “That name is a motherf*cker!”

“He came up to the band room,” remembers Mac, “and put a hat on my head. It was a hat from Africa. And I thought, Wow, I’m honoured, ’cos it was from Monk and I loved that cat! [As part of the show] I walked through the audience – same thing every night – and it was took off my head. Somebody just snatched it. They musta recognised Monk had that brim on. I went and apologised to Monk after the gig.”

Monk wasn’t the only jazz giant Mac met, although one time he was greeted with more than a hat. “I met Art Blakey back in the game, sneakin’ through his pad. I kicked over a metal wastebasket and he cocked a gun. It was a 9mm Walther. I remember his daughter sayin’, ‘You gonna shoot him, Daddy?’ He said, ‘Not yet.’” [sic!]

Rebennack was in Blakey’s apartment with a couple of other junkie musicians, looking to score from a neighbour. Years later he made an album, Bluesiana Triangle, with Blakey and David ‘Fathead’ Newman. Blakey was kind enough not to mention the incident. And 24 years ago Mac Rebennack got clean and has remained clean ever since.

Interview by Michael Simmons / Mojo, 2013