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