By the way that's a cute hat, and a smile so hard to resist...

[Dave Monroe]

The Loneliest Monk.

Everyone who came to meet his plane wore a fur hat,
and the sight was too much for him to bear, "Man, we
got to have those!" he told his sidemen, and for fear
that the hat stores would be closed before they could
get to downtown Helsinki, they fled from the
welcome-to-Finland ceremonies as fast as decency
permitted. And sure enough, when Thelonious Monk
shambled out on the stage of the Kulituuritalo that
night to the spirited applause of 2,500 young Finns,
there on his head was a splendid creation in fake
lamb's wool.

At every turn of his long life in jazz, Monk's hats
have described him almost as well as the name his
parents had the crystal vision to invent for him 43
years ago - Thelonious Sphere Monk. It sounds like an
alchemist's formula or a yoga ritual, but during the
many years when the owner merely strayed through life
(absurd beneath a baseball cap), it was the perfect
name for the legends dreamed up to account for his sad
silence. "Thelonious Monk? He's a recluse, man!" In
the mid-'40's, when Monk's reputation at last took
hold in the jazz underground, his name and his mystic
utterances ("It's always night or we wouldn't need
light") made him seem like the ideal Dharma Bum to an
audience of hipsters; anyone who wears a Chinese
coolie hat and has a name like that must be cool.

© TIME magazine - 1964

http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/time1.php

For most of sixty‑four bittersweet years jazz
pianist‑composer Thelonious Sphere Monk lived
life as a legend.... Offstage and on, Monk always wore
one of his many hats from distant lands and performed
serious personal dances beside his piano when not
playing or whenever sidemen soloed. That was how he
conducted and made sure the music would swing.

Monk's majestic manner, sometimes coupled with
bamboo‑framed sunglasses and a cabbage or
collard leaf in his lapel, kept most at bay, People
coming close departed puzzled by his cryptic
monologues: "It's always night or we wouldn't need
light." "Black is white," "Two is one." "Hey!
Butterflies faster than birds? Must be, cause with all
the birds on the scene up in my neighborhood there's
this butterfly, and he flies any way he wanna. Yeah.
Black and yellow butterfly."

http://www.monkzone.com/Profiles_interviews/Crawford1.htm

--- kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Throughout the book, there's an unusual amount of
> detail paid to clothing (cloth, color, style) and
> food (local delicacies, wine, beer)....
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
> 
> >Anyone else noticed the hat motif? ...


 
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