Thelonious Monk buys a hat

Early 1940s: Number 15 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of jazz musicA contemporary of the great jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Monk once remarked that with a name like that, all he had to do was "hustle". But in the 1940s, Monk was in the shadow of stars such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and often dismissed as lacking technique or just plain weird.Immortalised in reeds player Eric Dolphy's 1964 masterpiece Hat and Beard, the goatee'd Monk's headgear became his visua...

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