Make a mistake!
– Thelonious Monk to Abby Lincoln, quoted by Max Roach, Down Beat Magazine, November, 1978, interview by Bret Primack. The complete context:
I remember when Abbey Lincoln, who is a very fine lyricist, wrote a lyric to one of Thelonious Monk’s pieces. She decided to record it, and to do that, you need the consent of the composer, naturally. In this case, Monk was invited to the studio when she was doing the piece. In between takes, he walked over to her and said something very quiet to her. Later, after the session was over, I asked her what he said. She told me, “You know what he whispered to me? Make a mistake! What did he mean by that?” I said, “Well, he was trying to say, ‘loosen up.’”
Mainly he was saying don’t be afraid to make a mistake. Don’t sing so that it doesn’t have any feeling. Give it some humanity. Just ’cause he was there, she was trying to sing it, everything just correct, straight as he had written it. Monk never plays his own music that way himself. But it was a nice way of putting it. That was an education. He was saying something profound but the way he was saying it was short, succinct, to the point. He said, “Make a mistake.” She said, “Well, I always heard Monk was strange.”
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