Thelonious Monk was born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. When he was just four years old, his parents, Barbara and Thelonious, Sr., moved to New York, where he would spend the next five decades of his life. Thelonious Monk grew up in New York, began playing piano around age five, and had his first job touring as an evangelist's accompanist. Monk began learning classical piano at the age of eleven, but had already shown some aptitude for the instrument. Monk was thirteen when he won the weekly amateur competition at the Apollo Theater. He won so many times that management banned him from participating in the competition again. One of his inspirations was his neighbor, James P. Johnson, who was a Harlem Stride pianist. At seventeen, Monk dropped out of Stuyvesant High School to pursue his musical career. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay He toured with the Texas Warhorse, an evangelist and healer, before forming his own quartet. From 1940 to 1953, Thelonious played in a band at Minton's Playhouse. He worked with Lucky Millinder for a time in 1942 and was briefly with the Cootie Williams Orchestra in 1944. Williams recorded Monk's "Epistrophy" in 1942 and in 1944 was the first to record Round Midnight. But it was when he became Coleman Hawkins' regular pianist that Monk first came to attention. In 1947, Monk married Nellie Smith, his longtime sweetheart. They later had two children, whom they named after his parents, Thelonious and Barbara. In 1952, Monk signed a contract with Prestige Records, which spawned songs like "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "Bags' Groove." The latter, which he recorded with Miles Davis in 1954, is sometimes considered his greatest piano solo of all time. In 1955, he signed with Riverside and producer Orrin Keep News convinced him to record an album of Duke Ellington songs. Monk turned a page with his 1956 album, Brilliant Corners, which is generally considered his first true masterpiece. In 1957, the Thelonious Monk Quartet, which included John Coltrane, began performing regularly at New York's Five Spot. By 1962, Monk was so popular that he got a contract with Columbia Records, a significantly more mainstream label than Riverside. In 1964, Monk became one of four jazz musicians to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. He played with the Giants of Jazz in 1971-1972, but in 1973 he suddenly retired. Monk suffered from mental illness and, apart from a few special appearances in the mid-1970s, he lived the rest of his life in retirement or privately. He died of a stroke in 1982. He has since been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry, and featured on a U.S. postage stamp. One of Thelonious' famous quotes was "The piano has no wrong notes!" ". He would be 100 years old today.