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Jazz Loft Project News and Multimedia Gallery

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Jazz Loft Project News and Multimedia Gallery


CDS RADIO PODCAST
Digging Up Thelonius Monk's Southern Roots
Produced by John Biewen of CDS Radio
Edited by Tom Cole

Listen to the broadcast (8:05 minutes)

The jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk would have celebrated his 90th birthday on October 10, 2007. Monk died in 1982. Besides his penchant for odd hats and other eccentricities, Monk is usually remembered as a hip New Yorker. He was a pioneer of Bebop who lived most of his life on Manhattan’s West Side. But Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and raised by his mother, a native of that tobacco and railroad town. Some scholars and fellow musicians say Monk’s Southern roots had an overlooked but important influence on the man and his music. Our story was produced by John Biewen of CDS Radio.

Visit All Things Considered's Web site for their broadcast of "Digging Up Thelonius Monk's Southern Roots"




Green Street, later renamed Red Row, the Rocky Mount, North Carolina road on which Thelonious Monk's family lived, from his birth in 1917 until 1922. Photo by Jonathan Williams, 1970, Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.



PHOTO GALLERY



Click the image above to view a portfolio of images from the "Jazz Loft Project."



PRESS
Key Jazz Loft figure and legendary drummer Ron Free shares memories of his extraordinary life on the national radio program "The Story" (March 7, 2008)

A Round of Applause for Duke Perfomances [editorial] (The Chronicle, October 25, 2007)

Jazz Loft Director Sam Stephenson writes about Thelonious Monk's connections to North Carolina in The 9th Annual Music Issue (2007) of the Oxford American

Thelonious Monk focus of 6-week, 18-event tribute at Duke University (International Herald-Tribune, August 6, 2007)

Festival to honor Monk (News and Observer, August 5, 2007)

"Documenting an Underground New York Loft Scene" (Document, Winter/Spring 2005)





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Railroad tracks of the "Around the Y" neighborhood, approximately 200 yards from Thelonious Monk's birth home, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, May 2007

Photo by Sam Stephenson and Frank Hunter, made with W. Eugene Smith's original Sinar 4x5 view camera