Various mental and physical ailments began to take an even greater toll [on Monk], exacerbated by poor medical treatment, an unhealthy lifestyle, the daily stresses of a working jazz musician, and an unending financial and creative battle with the music industry. Some writers romanticize manic depression and/or schizophrenia as characteristics of creative genius, but the story of Monk’s physical and mental ailment is essentially a tragedy, a story of his slow decline and the pain it caused to those closest to him. Its manifestations were episodic, so he continued to function and make incredible music up until the day of his retirement in 1976. During these nearly twenty years, his ability to lead a band and to dig out fresh interpretations of compositions he had been playing for decades, in spite of his illness and protracted struggle with the industry, is astonishing.24
Though Kelley says this of Monk, it surely describes Powell as well, although the latter’s ailments were a more constant specter and played a larger and disruptive role in his life and in the tales surrounding him.
Monk introduced Powell to the jam sessions at Minton’s.25 But Powell was not immediately accepted among the musicians who would soon compose bebop’s inner circle. Ira Gitler writes that the shy, young, and apparently a little socially awkward pianist almost managed to get himself put out of Minton’s on his first visit to the club: “Powell sat on a chair and put his feet up on the fresh white tablecloth. When a waiter started to throw him out, Monk intervened on behalf of his protégé: ‘Don’t do that. That kid’s got talent.’ “26 As Monk was a respected figure on the scene in Minton’s, he took it upon himself to force others to give the young pianist opportunities to play, even going as far as to threaten to quit if his protégé was not allowed to sit in.27
Monk and Powell remained close throughout the decade. Jackie McLean recalls that in the late 1940s, Powell “spoke of Monk quite a bit. . . . He would always play Monk for me.”28 Powell was one of the few musicians who played Monk’s music publicly at a time when, according to Gitler, it was generally misunderstood. Powell would later introduce Monk’s composition “Off Minor” on his first recording date as a leader in 1947. Bebop innovator and drummer Kenny “Klook” Clarke believed that “Monk wrote for Bud. All his music was written for Bud Powell. All this piano music, he deliberately wrote for Bud because he figured Bud was the only one who could play it. He wrote for Bud just like a composer writes for a singer. And when you hear Bud play Monk’s music, then you really hear something.”29
Between 1940 and 1942, Powell made professional connections with musicians other than Monk. He met and played with many who over the next ten years would introduce a new idiom to the jazz world, and he broadened his contacts beyond local musicians. When trumpeter and vocalist Valaida Snow (1900–56) opened at the Apollo Theater in April 1943 with the Sunset Royals, Powell had just joined the group. The American Federation of Musicians (Local 802) Directory shows that Powell joined the union sometime in 1943. The engagement with Snow’s band appears to have been his first important job, so he may have joined the union to secure the position in her band.30 He remained active in the small club scene as well, frequenting “carving sessions” at the Hollywood Club with other pianists, including Clyde Hart, Dorothy Donegan, and Art Tatum.31
“A BAD BAND THAT SOUNDED SO GOOD”
Many early bebop musicians began their careers in swing/dance bands. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, and Dexter Gordon, among others, all paid their dues in big bands of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Likewise, Powell began his ascent to prominence in the jazz world under the watchful eye of trumpeter Charles Melvin “Cootie” Williams (1911– 85), one of jazz’s best-known soloists. Powell joined Cootie sometime in 1943, and this association circulated his name and growing reputation in jazz circles. During his tenure with Williams, Powell toured the country and made studio and live broadcast recordings in a variety of settings. (Porter, Ullman, and Hazell note, for example, that pianist Tommy Flanagan first heard Powell with the Williams band during a riveting live performance in Detroit.)32 Furthermore, the group’s repertoire and musical approach placed Powell in a unique environment where swing, rhythm and blues, and an emerging bebop style intersected.
When Powell joined him, Williams was enjoying popularity with the American public as well as respect among his peers. His star had first risen through an eleven-year association with Duke Ellington. After brief stints with the Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson bands, Williams joined Ellington in 1929, replacing Bubba Miley during Ellington’s long engagement at Harlem’s Cotton Club from 1927 to 1930. Williams’s initial role was to master the growl and plunger techniques that Miley had made a staple feature of the “Ellington sound.” Williams not only mastered these techniques, but extended them into a highly personal style.33 The fruit of Ellington and Williams’s long professional association crystallized in Concerto for Cootie (1940), a piece that one writer considers “an ongoing continuity of gradual masterly development” in Ellington’s work as a whole.34
In addition to the high visibility and quality of his work with Ellington, Williams’s association with Benny Goodman, whom history has dubbed “The King of Swing,” increased his popularity and raised his stock. In the late 1930s, Williams recorded small group sessions under his own name and also with Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday, and others. Williams’s appearance on the bill of Goodman’s famous Carnegie Hall concert (January 1938) confirmed his stature in the jazz world.35 In fact, according to Goodman, the success of the concert, long considered a watershed event in the history of jazz, was due in large part to Williams’s participation. In November 1940, Williams left the Ellington Orchestra to join Goodman, who hired him to play primarily in his sextet. After a year with Goodman, Williams’s reputation had grown to such a degree that at Ellington’s urging, he formed his own permanent band.
Williams’s associations with Ellington and Goodman influenced his leadership style and his band’s repertory. And his work ethic served him especially well when dealing with both the enormous talent and the impulsive behavior that the young Powell displayed while a member of his group. Like Ellington and Goodman, Williams had a knack for discovering new talent. From time to time during the 1940s, his band featured young musicians who won great respect in jazz. Powell, Charlie Parker, pianist Ken Kersey, and saxophonists Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis were all employed by Williams at various times. During his Ellington years, Williams described himself as a surrogate disciplinarian, settling personal and musical disputes among band members such as Sonny Greer, Johnny Hodges, and Barney Bigard: “Duke would never say nothing to them. I’d be the one that had taken over that spot.” But Williams tolerated unruly behavior among some of his own band members, including young, reckless ones such as Powell: “Now, like Bud Powell, and those types of people would come in half-high and messed up. I’d overlook it. Because when they would be straight, I would get some great sound.”36 Goodman, in contrast, ran a tight ship—musically and otherwise.
Williams created his own style of leadership, balancing traits from both of his former employers. Charles Holmes, once a member of Williams’s band, fondly recalls his days with Cootie: “I’ve never in all my life played with such a bad band that sounded so good. There were more people in there who couldn’t read a note as big as a house, and they had no more conception of music than the man in the moon, but they could play, and they could swing, and it sounded good.”37 Likewise, “Lockjaw” Davis describes Williams as “good to his sidemen” and says that his group was “musically . . . ahead of the others.”38
At least two stories exist about how Powell first came to Williams’s attention. One comes from the bandleader himself. According to Williams, he learned of Powell through one of his former sidemen, trumpeter George Treadwell. Treadwell may have known Powell from Monroe’s Uptown House, where the former served as a house band member in the early 1940s. Powell came to one of the band’s rehearsals, played for Williams, was hired immediately, and, in the bandleader’s words: “He was what you call a real genius. . . . He was something else in his young age.”39
“Lockjaw” Davis tells another story about Powell’s joining Cootie. Davis was working at