Preordained Rhythm : Thelonious Monk Jr. Follows in the Musical Footsteps of His Famous Dad : HEP-CATS : A Musical Legacy by T.S. Monk, Sr. and Jr.

The circular, stack-of-45s look of the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood seems like a perfect place to interview a man who’s middle name is “Sphere.” And somewhere up on the seventh floor, where there’s a sweeping view of the hills and the lights of the city, T.S. Monk--drummer, one-time R&B; artist and son of the late, mysterious hep-cat of jazz piano, Thelonious Sphere Monk--is talking about how his life has come full circle.

It’s the day before the Grammys, and Monk Jr. is in Los Angeles to accept a lifetime achievement award for his father. He looks every bit Monk’s son in a sharp, black fedora (his father was famous for his headgear), a crisp white shirt opened at the throat and shades (another of his father’s trademarks).

The junior Monk, while taking orders from a photographer, says he is “on a mission” and calls himself a “media vulture.” With a first jazz album, “Take One,” out on the Blue Note label and another being readied for release, one might think the 42-year-old percussionist would be banging his own drum.

Instead, the junior Monk, who played in his father’s last groups and later led an ‘80s R&B; band named T.S. Monk, concentrates on his father’s achievements and his hopes for the fledgling institute that bears his father’s name. That his own sextet, which appears tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano before moving into Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood Friday for a four-night stand, has created something of a sensation, seems secondary.

A call comes in. It’s National Public Radio, wanting to know if the junior Monk sees any irony in the Grammy’s selection of his father for the lifetime achievement award 10 years after his death and some 40 years after his greatest triumphs. Slightly offended, Monk retorts, “Not at all. Not at all.”

Later, he explains: “Thelonious (the younger Monk constantly refers to his father as Thelonious) was uncompromising in his music, but don’t think he was unaware of the accolades given during his life to lesser beings, so to speak. So I think it points to a changing of the guard when a Thelonious Monk receives a lifetime achievement award from an establishment entity like the Grammys. It’s an affirmation and a validation of the things that Thelonious and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach and all those guys did to change the music.”

The senior Monk, who, along with Gillespie and Parker, was there on New York’s 52nd Street during be-bop’s formative days in the ‘40s, was little understood and vastly underappreciated during his life. His playing worked a quirky, often propulsive rhythmic style immediately identifiable as his. Still, Monk is best known as the composer of the beautifully melancholy ballad “ ‘Round Midnight,” and such jazz standards as “Misterioso,” “Straight, No Chaser” and “Little Rootie Tootie,” which he wrote on the birth of his son in 1952.

“I think there’s been four or five great music composers in the United States in the last 75 years,” Monk Jr. asserts. “Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Stevie Wonder and Thelonious Monk. Some people would include Charles Ives.”

So it figures that drummer Monk would include three of his father’s tunes on “Take One”: “Skippy,” “Think of One,” and, of course, “ ‘Round Midnight.” But the recording doesn’t make any attempt to sound like something from pianist Monk. Instead, T.S. mines the hard-bop sound of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, concentrating on the music of saxophonist Hank Mobley, trumpeter Idrees Sulieman and especially Kenny Dorham, the late trumpeter-composer who was a mainstay of the Blue Note label during that period.

“My father was in love with the quartet,” explains Monk. “I’ve always loved the small ensemble, quintets like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. And the greatest writers of that sound were from that period. Kenny Dorham is my guy and the world doesn’t really know who he is. Well, I’m determined to let them know. The sound of the T.S. Monk band is the Kenny Dorham sound.”

Though Monk admits having his father’s name has opened doors for him, he says he isn’t out to mimic his father’s style. “A lot of people have this feeling that I’m important in jazz because I made this very good record and my father is Thelonious Monk. But I’m not really on that trip. If the old guard is changing, I’m not one of the new guards taking their place.

“The people who know me as a performing artist, knew me as an R&B; artist, they don’t know me as a jazz artist. Who gets a chance in their early 40s to discover a brand new career? That’s the advantage of being Thelonious Monk Jr. People didn’t know what to expect of my father and they don’t know what to expect from me. It’s startling to be who I am and have it turn out this way.”

The demanding lifestyle of a jazz musician, with its night-crawling work schedule and long periods of travel, wouldn’t seem to leave much time for parenting. But Monk Sr. made sure his son was part of his life. “He took me with him everywhere he went,” T.S. recalls. “I was in the clubs by the age of 4 or 5, two or three times a week. It was good parenting, because he had me with him. Bad parenting is when you’re an entertainer and your kids never see you.”

Monk also says that despite his father’s eccentric reputation, he was really a devoted family man. “It’s somewhat strange to hear people discuss Thelonious as this detached, introverted, quiet guy when my father wasn’t detached, certainly wasn’t introverted and was not quiet at all. He talked and talked and talked. And when he wasn’t talking, he was playing the piano, and when he wasn’t playing the piano, he was out running around, or dancing with my sister or playing cards with my mother. He loved to play pool and Ping-Pong, and he loved holidays. Now, that was something to hear; Thelonious playing ‘Happy Birthday.’ This was a very active, engaging person who was a great dad. Totally off the beaten path, sure, but a great dad.”

Monk Jr. started out on the trumpet and took some piano lessons as a youth, but didn’t get interested in the drums until the age of 13. When he approached his father for a drum set, Monk Sr. set two conditions. “You’ve got to practice, he told me, and you’ve got to learn to read music. He sent me to Max Roach to get lessons.”

His father left him to his own musical devices until one day when he was 19 and the elder Monk asked him, “You ready to play?” recalls the drummer. “So I did my first performance with Thelonious, a television show on Channel 13 in New York, with bassist Larry Ridley. That’s how Dad got me involved in music. It was trial by fire.”

The heat stayed on when the junior Monk began touring with his father. “I wasn’t aware of all the cats who wanted my gig, and all the people who were saying, ‘What’s he up there for?’ All I was thinking (was) that I had to play this music right.”

Monk Jr. remembers coming to California in 1970 to play Shelly’s Manne Hole in Hollywood with bassist Al McKibbon. “I didn’t know Al McKibbon. And I got a feeling from Al--he’d be shocked to hear me say this--but I got a feeling he was a bit miffed that I was on the gig. He didn’t know me, must have thought I was some wise-guy kid, lucky little guy. Now daddy’s taking him on the road.

“What he didn’t realize is that he was talking about the son of a lifelong friend who had never been wrong musically, had never accommodated anyone musically. But eventually Al learned that I was a nice young guy, that I was hungry to learn the music, that I was scared to death to be on the bandstand with my dad, and that I could play.” Monk Jr. credits his father with teaching him patience, confidence and individuality. “Thelonious helped me define myself very early. He never put pressure on me to be Thelonious Monk Jr., you dig? He put pressure on me to be myself.”

After working with his father for two years, the young drummer was turned out on his own as his father began to work less and less. “There was more pressure on me when I left his band than when I was in it,” says Monk. “I didn’t have the umbrella of Thelonious, the performer, to cover me. I was like every other drummer who’d ever played with him. If you can keep decent time, Thelonious is going to make you sound great. So it was scary, suddenly coming out of that context and into the real world.”

Monk Jr. broadened his view after playing with his father, joining the fusion band Natural Essence and working with Paul Jeffrey’s Big Band. His R&B; group, T.S. Monk, with younger sister Barbara Monk and Yvonne Fletcher doing vocals, gained some notoriety in the early ‘80s with its single “Too Much Too Soon.”

“Being in R&B; was part of a natural progression for me,” he explains. “Contrary to popular belief, there was no edict in our house saying you had to listen to Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Art Tatum. So I grew up with the Temptations, with Jimi Hendrix, with the Supremes. I was a child of the ‘60s.”

Things took a turn when his father died at the age of 64 in 1982, followed by the death of his sister and Fletcher of cancer in the next two years. “I was left with nothing to do,” he says. “All the people who I was musically involved with were gone. I was in a tail spin.”

The establishment of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in 1986 put Monk Jr. back on track. The Monk estate was accumulating royalties (Monk Sr.’s estate now pulls in more money in one year than the pianist made during his entire lifetime, according to his son) and the family was looking for some way to extend the Monk legacy. The institute, which sponsors an annual music competition that has launched the careers of several young artists, is now looking for a permanent home for its conservatory. Los Angeles, Boston, New York and Washington, are among the possible locations.

“The music we will teach at the Monk Institute is the music that changed the world,” says Monk Jr. “All of the musical concepts of rock ‘n’ roll, country-Western, funk, heavy metal, punk, all came from concepts created and discovered by jazz musicians.”

His involvement as chairman of the institute has drawn Monk back to playing jazz. “They would call me and want me to play drums as a guest at the fund-raisers, and it always turned out I’d be playing with someone like Dizzy Gillespie or Clark Terry, which means you can’t just go up there and jive. You have to go back and practice to be cool. So all of a sudden, this somewhat empty feeling began to get filled up with drums and jazz. That’s what gave birth to the T.S. Monk band.”

Monk’s second album, set for release later this year, will be called “The Changing of the Guard.” The album will again include tunes from Monk Sr. and the likes of Kenny Dorham, as well as contributions from members of the band. But T.S. Monk Jr. isn’t yet ready to record his own compositions. “With my father’s reputation as a composer, there’s a whole other microscope that they’ll examine my writing with. I’m not yet ready for that, but it’s coming.”

Meantime, there’s one thing Monk Jr. wants to make clear: “I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for Dad,” he says. “It’s all for him.”