Thelonious Monk's
Top 10 Records |
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Thelonious Monk |
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Name: Thelonious Monk
| Nee: |
Thelonious Sphere Monk |
| Born: |
10 Oct 1917 |
| Died: |
17 Feb 1982 |
| Origin: |
Rocky Mount, North Carolina, United States |
| Instruments: |
Piano |
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| Thelonious Monk was a jazz pianist known for his unique improvisational style and many contributions to the standard jazz repertoire.
While Theloniuos Monk is often regarded as a founder of bebop, his individual style veered away from the form. Little is known about his early life. Shortly after his birth his family moved to New York shortly after. He began playing the piano at age 6, and while he had some formal training, Thelonious Monk was essentially self-taught. He briefly toured with an evangelist in his teens, playing the church organ. He attended Stuyvesant High School, but did not graduate.
Around his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. He appears on recordings of Jerry Newman made around 1941 at Minton's, a New York club, where Thelonious Monk had been hired as the house band pianist. His style at the time is described as 'hard-swinging', with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. In 1944 Thelonious Monk made his first studio recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. |
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