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.