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Thelonious Monk

Mostly raised in New York, Thelonious Monk taught himself piano before he was six. In the early 1940s he landed a job as house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan night club where he worked with many of the leading jazz musicians of the day. Collaborations with brilliant mavericks like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker inspired him to evolve the fast-tempo improvisational style that came to be termed "be-bop" and his approach to jazz grew increasingly daring. Monk was also noted for his strange fashion sense and idiosyncratic stage shows but, during the 1940s and 1950s he...