Thelonious Monk

Monk, with his angular dissonant lyricism, was one of jazz’s great idiosyncratic talents. He knew Johnson — an early influence — as a teenager. Hawkins gave him his first recording work. Gillespie and Parker were important colleagues. At Minton’s Playhouse (one of bebop’s nurseries), Clarke, Christian and Eldridge were among his fellow-players (Williams, who first met him aged eighteen, said he was never properly credited for his influence on his colleagues). Parker and Davis proved wary bosses. Smith taped and photographed Monk, who took the rap for his close friend Powell’s narcotics bust, and told the young Dylan “We all play folk music.”