Thelonious Sphere Monk was born, ~1920, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, home state of numerous great jazzers, like John Coltrane and Woody Shaw. He was one of the revolutionaries involved in creating bebop - some have argued that he's its true inventor. Monk had a quirky compositional and improvisational style that kept him a fairly obscure figure until the late 1950's; a few years later, he made the cover of Time, a mere ~25 years after writing 'Round Midnight.

Thelonious Monk was one of the greatest musicians ever. Many musicians feel the need to play many notes, but Monk was content to play few notes, but to make every note count. For example, Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet,) describes the most memorable performance he ever witnessed:.

I saw Monk once at a theatre in San Fernando Valley. They gave him a grand piano, a really beautiful Steinway, with a cut glass bowl of roses. He came in late wearing a trench coat. He dumped the bowl in the piano, knocked down the lid, and hit one note. The sound: everything going into the piano, the strings, the water splashing, the roses. And then he left. "God, one note!"
from: http://junior.apk.net/~hoon/5Monk.html

Two things really made Monk's music outstanding: even as the leader of a band, he didn't attempt to dominate the band, he would let the other musicians have a good blow, putting a few notes in the gaps. The thing that made Monk unique was his sense of timing. He would play the same musical phrase many times in a piece, and each time it would sound very different because of being timed differently.

Thelonious Monk is well worth listening to.