Editing Thelonious Monk (section)

===1917–1933: Early life===
Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on October 10, 1917,<ref>[[Robin Kelley|Kelley, Robin]] (2010). ''Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original''. London: JR Books. p. 1. The source identifies the date of Monk's fortieth birthday in 1957.</ref> in [[Rocky Mount, North Carolina]], the son of Thelonious (or Thelious) and Barbara Monk. His sister, Marion, had been born two years earlier. His birth certificate spelled his first name as "Thelious"<ref name="Solis 2007 19–20">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BZqWxvNKGSYC&pg=PA19 |pages=19–20 |last=Solis |first=Gabriel |title=Monk's Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making |year=2007 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520940963}}</ref> and did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mathieson |first=Kenny |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Azl-2jRD5B4C&pg=PT127 |page=127 |year=2012 |title=Giant Steps: Bebop and the Creators of Modern Jazz, 1945–65 |publisher=Canongate Books |isbn=9780857866172}}</ref> His brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920. In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses, 243 West 63rd Street, in [[Manhattan]], [[New York City]]; the neighborhood was known as [[San Juan Hill, Manhattan|San Juan Hill]] because of the many African-American veterans of the [[Spanish–American War]] who lived there (urban renewal displaced the long-time residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and [[Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts]], though the Phipps Houses remained). Monk studied the [[trumpet]] briefly before switching to the piano at age nine, taking lessons from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, who taught him in the [[Stride (music)|stride]] style of [[Fats Waller]], [[James P. Johnson]] and [[Eubie Blake]]. Monk's mother also taught him to play some hymns, and he would sometimes accompany her singing at church. He attended [[Stuyvesant High School]], a public school for gifted students, but did not graduate.<!-- Claims that Monk attended the Juilliard School are false, see talk. --><ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/theloniousmonkli0000kell|url-access=registration|quote=thelonious monk stuyvesant.|title=Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original|first=Robin|last= Kelley|author-link=|publisher=Free Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-684-83190-9|pages=[https://archive.org/details/theloniousmonkli0000kell/page/13 13], 31|access-date=November 23, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Ku |first=Jaein |title=In Memoriam: Thelonious Monk |url=https://stuyspec.com/article/in-memoriam-thelonious-monk |access-date=2023-09-10 |website=stuyspec.com}}</ref>

For two years, Monk studied [[Classical music|classical]] piano under Simon Wolf, an Austrian-born pianist and violinist who had studied under [[Alfred Eugene Megerlin|Alfred Megerlin]], the concertmaster of the [[New York Philharmonic]]. Monk learned to play pieces by composers such as [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]], [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] and [[Franz Liszt|Liszt]], but his favorites were [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]] and [[Sergei Rachmaninoff|Rachmaninoff]]. The lessons were discontinued when it became clear that Monk's main focus was jazz.<ref name="auto1">Kelley, Robin (2009), p. 26.</ref>