Picture a late-1950s pianist who stops mid-song, stands up, dances beside the piano, then sits back down and strikes the keys with flat fingers, producing clusters that sound like mistakes to the untrained ear. This episode explores how Thelonious Monk, born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in 1917 and raised in Manhattan's San Juan Hill, built that style on a deeply traditional foundation: trumpet, then piano at nine, hymns at church, stride piano learned from a neighbor, two years of formal classical training in Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and a place at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. The hosts debunk the persistent Juilliard myth, repeated even at his funeral, revealing that he placed second in a contest whose prize was a Juilliard scholarship and later expressed relief at losing.

As house pianist at Minton's Playho ...