Nica’s love of cats didn’t stop at home. On the night I took my father and some friends to meet her, as we left the club she flipped open the trunk of the Bentley to reveal it was full of cat food. “I stop at certain places on my way home to feed some needy strays,” she explained.
Many will place Nica in a long line of eccentric British animal lovers who prefer their company to that of people. Sometimes I wonder whether Nica’s obsessive love of cats was a form of displaced maternal impulse. Although she did not live with her younger children, her letters are full of references to them and her excitement over their visits. One Christmas she wrote about painting the garage in yellow and white and making bunks for the children to sleep in. “It was the craziest ever,” she wrote to her friend Mary Lou Williams. Toot described the wonder of the mass family Christmas where the Monk family would join Nica’s and they would hang out around a tree groaning with presents.
In the spring of 1957, Monk finally regained his cabaret card and the right to play in alcohol-serving New York clubs. Almost immediately he got a gig at the Five Spot Café. Writing at that time, Joyce Johnson, Kerouac’s girlfriend, said:
The best place to end up was the Five Spot, which during the summer had materialised like an overnight miracle in a bar on Second Street and the Bowery, formerly frequented by bums. The new owners had cleaned it up a little, hauled in a piano and hung posters on the walls advertising Tenth Street gallery openings. The connection with the “scene” was clear from the beginning. Here for the price of a beer you could hear Coltrane or Thelonious Monk.
Nica decided that the piano was not good enough for Monk and bought the club a new one. The Five Spot paid Monk the quite princely sum of $600 a week, $225 of which he kept himself and the rest was divided between his three sidemen, who included the drummer Roy Haynes.
Although he has been a professional drummer since 1945, Roy Haynes was still sprightly and youthful at nearly eighty years old when we met in 2004. “When I did start to play with Monk at the Five Spot, it was Nica who called me up. She was the one who made the deal,” Haynes told me. “The money was very slim, but it was great to play with Monk. We were there for eighteen weeks at a time.”
Roy Haynes has clear memories of Nica and Monk sweeping into the club every night. Her arrival was preceded momentarily by a whiff of her favourite perfume, Jean Patou’s Joy, a scent powerful enough to cut through any cigarette smoke.
Thelonious was usually very late. We were supposed to start at nine. Sometimes he would get there at eleven or even later with the Baroness. They would walk in together and go right back into the kitchen, that was the hangout, and start making hamburgers. Sometimes Monk would come right in there and lie down on the table and go to sleep. He wouldn’t even talk, you know. Nica was responsible for getting him to the club but getting him on stage was not easy. When he was ready to wake up and play, he would come up and play his heart out.
Bundled up against the winter cold in a huge fur coat, Nica was often surrounded by a group of admirers. She sat in her favourite spot nearest the stage with a Bible on the table in front of her: the good book was a flask of whisky in disguise. Apart from the coat and a triple string of the finest pearls, Nica dressed simply, having long since stopped being bothered with couture or hairdressers. It was not her appearance but her demeanour that most struck Roy Haynes. “She was always smiling, you know. I will never forget that smile of hers.”
Nica captured a typical night at the club on her tape recorder. Introducing the evening in her inimitable gravelly voice, she says over the general clatter and chatter of the crowd, “Good evening, everybody, this is Nica’s tempo and tonight we are coming to you direct from the Five Spot Café and that beautiful music you hear is the Thelonious Monk quartet, Charlie Rouse on saxophone, Roy Haynes on drums and Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass.” She pauses and the first strains of her tune, “Pannonica,” float over the ambient noise.
Then Monk starts to speak. “Hello, everybody, Thelonious Monk here. I’d like to play a little tune I composed not so long ago dedicated to this beautiful lady here. I think her father gave her that name after a butterfly he tried to catch. Don’t think he ever caught the butterfly but here’s the tune I composed for her, ‘Pannonica.’ ”
Monk’s star was ascending: he was recording and finally getting decent reviews. His manager Harry Colomby knew that there was a lot of ground to make up. “A Thelonious Monk album would sell ten thousand copies. Forget a million, forget platinum. Jazz was a limited world with a tiny audience. Thelonious Monk was listed in the phone book as: ‘Monk, Thelonious.’ Because they were poor, they wanted the phone [to be listed] for jobs.”
Colomby booked Monk to play a gig in Baltimore, Maryland. As the date got nearer, though, Monk’s close circle became nervous, because he was having one of his “mental episodes.” Colomby explained to me that periodically Monk would refuse to sleep for up to five days in a row. During that time he would wander the streets or stare catatonically out of the window, often shuffling from foot to foot, mumbling under his breath. Eventually he would fall into a deep sleep that would last twenty-four hours. Occasionally during an episode he destroyed things, objects rather than people. Once he tried to take a ceiling down in a hotel room. Another time he swept ashtrays off pianos and knocked over furniture.
Paul Jeffrey, Monk’s last saxophone player, was frequently recruited to watch Monk during one of his episodes. I asked him if he was ever frightened. Jeffrey shook his head. “The Baroness told me, ‘He will never hurt you.’ She was certain so I never worried.”
Nica, Monk and the Bebop Bentley, an S1 Continental convertible, outside the Five Spot Café in the Bowery, New York City, January 1, 1964 (Photographic Credit 19.6)
The only time Monk hurt Nica was falling off stage at the Village Vanguard and landing on his patroness. “He toppled over from the stage, on top of me, ’cause I was sitting on the table underneath,” she said, roaring with laughter.
Monk had not slept for three days before the job in Baltimore. “We weren’t in a position to cancel a job,” Colomby said. “It is easy to say now, why did we let him go? But we simply could not afford to cancel work. You just had to do it.”
* * *
*Al Timothy, Nica’s supposed lover, had come from London to New York to look for work. Nica helped him but there is no evidence that the couple were close at this time.
20 • Strange Fruit
At eleven o’clock on the morning of Wednesday October 15, 1958, Nica drove out of New York City and into a whole lot of trouble. She had always, her contemporaries recalled, been a mischief magnet, the kind of child who climbed too high in trees, the sort of young woman who gave her chaperone the slip, the type of wife and mother who thought a regular routine was a death knell rather than an achievement. On this occasion the fortuitous combination of luck, breeding and charm that normally got Nica out of difficulty failed her, and for the first time in her life being white, rich, beautiful, British, well connected, female, titled and even perhaps innocent, counted for nothing. Although the Baroness left New York a free woman she would soon be caught up in a chain of events that would lead to a spectre not only of personal disaster but also of the end of the life she’d chosen, a life for which she’d sacrificed so much.
After a series of delays that morning, Nica pointed her Bentley Convertible downtown and left Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel, bound for a jazz club some three hundred miles south-east in Baltimore. In the back of the car was the young tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse and in the front seat was Monk. In Clint Eastwood’s storeroom, I found transcripts of interviews with Rouse and Colomby relating to this incident. In the Delaware Superior Court archives, the courtroom transcripts still exist and, using these sources, I was able to piece together what happened next.
The atmosphere in the car was tense. The trio had set off late and were unlikely to make Baltimore for a sound check, let alone a rehearsal. Neither the Baroness nor Monk was used to rising befor
e noon and their departure had been further delayed when Monk insisted on trying on several suits and a variety of hats. Nellie, who normally chose his clothes and helped him dress, was unwell. That day Monk was particularly taciturn, not having slept for fifty-two hours. His manager Harry Colomby agonised about cancelling the gig but eventually decided to take the risk on the condition that Nica drove him and never left his side.
Nica understood how much the Baltimore gig meant to Monk. Since the return of his cabaret card in 1957, every concert from that day onwards, however small, represented a precious financial and emotional fillip. He had been off the scene for over seven years, and it was vital to keep him playing and to recapture his lost audience. Determined to keep Monk’s spirits up during the journey, Nica wedged the steering wheel under her right knee and, leaning into the back of the car, pressed the play button on her portable eight-track recorder. She often played back some of his recordings to boost Monk’s morale. She chose the track “Pannonica,” played most nights in the Five Spot Café.
“Good evening, everybody,” her distinctive voice reverberated around the car out of the machine.
Twenty years later, in an interview for the documentary Straight, No Chaser, Charlie Rouse remembered those few hours clearly.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nica turned to Rouse who was sitting alone in the back seat.
Realising that he was the only person looking at the oncoming traffic, Rouse whispered urgently, “Baroness!”
“What?” she replied, still leaning over the seat, trying to adjust the volume.
Rouse gesticulated towards an oncoming truck. Nica wrenched the wheel and the Bentley swerved back to its own side of the road, narrowly avoiding a major collision. To calm her nerves, she took a swig of whisky from a hip flask.
Within half an hour they had left the New Jersey Turnpike for Interstate 295 and the car was cruising comfortably at ninety miles per hour. Nica turned on the lunchtime news. That day CBS Radio reported that in Japan the death toll from Hurricane Ida had risen to 1,200. President Eisenhower was due to address the Senate on reports coming out of the USSR that nuclear tests had been performed at Novaya Zemlya, while BOAC’s new service offering passenger flights across the Atlantic was proving to be a smash hit. John Hamilton, the well-loved actor from The Adventures of Superman, had died that morning, aged sixty-one. For the fourth week running, the number one hit was Domenico Modugno singing “Volare.”
They had been driving for just over two hours when Monk spoke for the first time that day.
“I need to stop.”
Monk’s prostate problem would increasingly impact on his life and career, making travelling for any distance and eventually sitting at a piano uncomfortable.
“We’re only six miles from Wilmington. I know a place there,” Rouse piped up from the back seat.
“Stop,” Monk insisted.
Nica exchanged looks with Rouse in the rear-view mirror. All three understood that finding a suitable place for Monk to use a bathroom wasn’t going to be easy. They were west of the Mason-Dixon line, technically in the more emancipated North, but the state’s fortunes had been built on agriculture and slavery, so traditionally it sided with the South. Racial prejudice was the norm rather than the exception.
To a casual observer, New Castle was a quaint, unassuming town, red-bricked and clapboarded, with an annual chicken festival and a factory cranking out the finest nylon stockings. However, public whipping and segregated schools had only recently been abolished and racially segregated accommodation and bars were still commonplace. As Nica drove her car down Main Street, she looked in vain for an establishment that would allow Monk to use its facilities. The inhabitants of New Castle stopped and stared. The sight of a Bentley Convertible in itself was a surprise. The sight of this grand European car being driven by a woman in a fur coat was an event. But the sight of a Bentley being driven by a woman in a fur coat with two black men was a spectacle.
It took only a glance to see that the Cherry Corner Soda Shop on 2nd and Cherry Street would not let Monk use its facilities. Hostile white faces stared in outrage at the car. Comegy’s Oyster House on 12th looked equally uninviting and only white faces were visible in the Deerhead Hot-dog Store, Eddie’s Soda Fountain and Peterson’s House of Fudge. The only coloured faces at Baker Ben, at Gino’s and at the Charcoal Pit on Maryland Avenue were those cleaning the stoop.
Heading out on Route 40, Nica caught sight of the Plaza Motel and pulled off the road. Contemporary postcards reveal a low, orange-roofed building arranged in a horseshoe around a reception area. A sign proclaimed “All welcome.” Nica ignored the neatly painted parking spaces, headed straight for the front door, mounted the pavement with the Bentley’s nearside tyres and, yanking the handbrake up with both hands, came to an abrupt stop right by the entrance. “She’d park by crossings, in front of fire hydrants, you name it, she ignored the rules,” one frequent, and intrepid, passenger confirmed. Monk, as usual, looked smart in a homburg, a beige suit, black shirt and black pencil tie but, at a little over six foot two and weighing 250 pounds, he cut an imposing figure. Getting out of the car, he walked into the motel, past the desk clerk and towards the cloakrooms.
“All he wanted was to use the bathroom,” Rouse later reported. “He wasn’t threatening nobody. Delaware is a little prejudiced, a little backward, so I see what happened next as a racist thing.”
“The average cop down the street seeing a black guy and a white woman would probably be enraged,” Colomby added. “Even in Greenwich Village at that time, when the older folks used to see the interracial couples, they went nuts.”
Nica and Rouse sat in the car waiting. Every minute that passed spelled trouble.
Rouse spotted the state trooper’s car first. It passed the motel a few times, back and forth, like a great white shark circling its prey, then pulled in about twenty yards down the road. Nica saw a middle-aged man through her rear-view mirror. These were the types that you had to watch out for, musicians later told me, the ones who had missed promotion, who were finally forced to accept that their careers were on a fast track to nowhere and who’d decided social progress was firmly to blame.
Monk had used the bathroom but now he wanted water. He was sweating in the afternoon sun but perfectly calm.
“Water,” he said to the woman at the check-in desk. She could not understand his way of speaking; few could.
“Water,” Monk repeated loudly.
The woman began to feel scared.
“Water.” She rang the police.
Half a century later I read my great-aunt’s own account of the events that followed, notated in the transcript of the final appeal:
Q: When if at all did you see Officer Littel drive up in his troop car for the first time on October 15th, 1958?
NICA: I think it was about 1.15 and I saw Officer Littel drive up in his troop car and park a little way in front of me.
Q: What, if anything, did you observe Officer Littel do after he drove up in his troop car and, if anything, which you also heard him say?
NICA: He got out of his car and came back to my car on the side on which Monk was sitting and asked him to get out.
Q: What, if anything, did Monk do when the officer asked him to get out?
NICA: He didn’t do anything. He just stared at Trooper Littel and didn’t move.
Q: What conversation, if any, did you have with Trooper Littel at this time?
NICA: After Trooper Littel asked him a second time to get out and he didn’t move, I got out of my side of the car and went around the back to Trooper Littel and asked him what was wrong. Because I hadn’t seen anything happen, and I told him that Thelonious Monk was a very well-known musician and I was his manager licensed by the American Federation [of] Musicians and we were going to Baltimore for an engagement.
Q: What, if anything, did Trooper Littel reply to you?
NICA: He said, “All right” and went back to his car.
Putting the Ben
tley into first gear, Nica flipped the indicator and slowly pulled out onto the highway. The signpost showed how far it was to New York; they were on the right road but facing in the wrong direction. Nica made a U-turn. As they passed the patrol car again, all three noticed that the officer was still on his radio. Moments later they heard the siren. In her rear-view mirror Nica saw the patrol car also make a U-turn and speed towards them. Drawing up beside the Bentley, Littel stabbed his finger towards the kerb and on his loudspeaker instructed the Baroness to pull over. No one in the Bentley spoke. This time the troop car parked right in front of the Bentley. The officer got out of the car carrying a pair of handcuffs and yanked open the front passenger door. He tried to cuff Monk but the musician sat on his hands and turned his large frame away from the trooper.
Q: Did there come a time when the musician used a profanity in Trooper Littel’s presence?
NICA: It is possible he said, “What the hell,” or something like that.
Q: What conversation if any did you have with Trooper Littel at this time?
NICA: I said, “What are you doing this for?” And he said, “Because he’s under arrest.”
Littel straightened up and slowly walked around the car. “Driver’s licence and registration,” he commanded rather than asked, and then took the keys out of the ignition before returning to his own vehicle. Rouse, Nica and Monk watched in silence as Littel picked up his handset and radioed for help.
Q: What did you do next?
NICA: I got out of my car, went over to his and pleaded with him to take no further action. I assured him that if I asked Monk, he would get out of the car, if that is what he wanted.
Q: What was the trooper’s reply, if any?
NICA: He said, “He’ll get out all right.”
Q: After this conversation what did you do next?
The Baroness Page 19