ut a “the” in front of a name and it acquires historical heft. The Thelonious Monk who entered New York City’s WOR Studios as Halloween approached in 1947 was both man and figure. The man had lived—as he seemingly always would—several lifetimes in recent years. The figure was an oracle of a new shift in the idiom of jazz, which was about to be taken out of its orbit, regrooved for a postbop solar system. Bop,
