Thelonious Monk buys a hat

A 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 visual trademark, an early exercise in beatnik branding, and with the strength of his compositional genius, he won a cult reputation that blossomed into minor commercial success with Riverside and international stardom with CBS. Monk's sartorial eccentricity defined his public image and broad appeal. He wore an entertaining sequence of titfers that included embroidered skullcaps (later adopted by Joe Zawinul), trilbies, bobble hats, berets and even a "coolie hat"; a fashion story that is parallel but separate to that of the sharp-suited stylists on Blue Note. But it was Monk's timeless music that won what Time magazine's Barry Farrell called his "tortoise-and-hare race" with jazz's speed merchants.