« Why Music? | Main | Quiz: Jay-Z is to Rush Limbaugh as Eminem is to ...? »

Last fall, there was a fascinating story in the NY Times about the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter - a major patron to some of jazz music's greatest creators, most notably Thelonious Monk. Both Charlie Parker and Monk died in her home, Parker in 1955 and Monk 27 years later. Strange, eh? Her story is worth tracking:

Both deaths made the baroness an immediate target of tabloid headlines and a long-term subject for scurrilous gossip. Almost no one, though, beyond the insular jazz world, could possibly know her whole story: how, until her death in 1988, she championed jazz as both a friend and a generous, if rather unlikely, benefactor.

A Rothschild heiress, she offered her home to countless jazzmen as a place to work and even live, while quietly paying their bills when they couldn't find work. She chauffeured them to gigs around New York, toured with them as a kind of racial chaperon, and was even known to confront anyone she felt was taking advantage of her friends because they were black.

"I always likened her to the great royal patrons of Mozart or Wagner's day," the saxophonist Sonny Rollins said in a telephone interview. "Yet she never put the spotlight on herself. I try not to talk publicly about people I knew in jazz. But I have to say something about the baroness. She really loved our music."

Yes she did, indeed.

The baroness first materialized in New York jazz clubs in the early 1950s like some film noir siren, right down to the raven hair and long cigarette holder. She seduced the music's greatest figures with her friendship, the revolutionists of the bebop era: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and many others. Her illustrious family has long refused to discuss her. But now a new book, "Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats" (Abrams Image), offers a window into her personal life, providing details even her jazz intimates were probably unaware of.

Read on, oh lover of jazz....

Name (required)
Email
Website
Remember personal info? Yes   No
Comments

home | music | democracy | earth | money | projects | about | contact

Site design by Matthew Fries | © 2003-23 Consilience Productions. All Rights Reserved.
Consilience Productions, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
All contributions are fully tax deductible.