Thelonious Monk, New York City, 1963

A seminal figure in the history of jazz, Thelonious Sphere Monk spent much of the 1950s composing, recording and performing his unorthodox angular music outside the Big Apple. By 1962, when Monk came to Columbia Records, the master had returned to the New York music scene with a vengeance, performing a string of mythic Gotham concerts, ranging from a watershed six-month residency at the Five Spot Café to a landmark concert at Carnegie Hall. His Columbia catalog included numerous live albums including 1963's Miles and Monk at Newport and 1964's Live At The Jazz Workshop. In this 1963 archival photograph, Columbia staff photographer Don Hunstein caught Monk between numbers, standing near the jukebox at Manhattan's fabled Blue Angel. Interestingly, on February 28, 1964, Time Magazine featured Thelonious, The Loneliest Monk, on its cover.