After Les Liaisons Dangereuses was released-and the soundtrack not released-Romano held onto the reel-to-reel tapes for more than four decades. Romano had developed a reputation in the French jazz scene of the 1950s while booking the Club Saint-Germain in Paris.

It was Marcel Romano who introduced Monk to Roger Vadim. The story behind the soundtrack's chance rediscovery? It's as eccentric as the legendary musician's hat. Now, 35 years after Monk's death, two friends at small French labels are co-releasing the long-lost recordings. Monk carried on with his career, retired from public life during the 1970s and died of a stroke in 1982. The soundtrack was never released, quickly lost to history.

The film premiered in the fall, scandalizing censors (one lawsuit, brought by France's SociГ©tГ© des Gens de Lettres, claimed to be protecting the reputation of the novel). He also included a gospel hymn-'an ironic choice to underscore the film's theme of seduction and innocence,' according to Monk's biographer, Robin Kelley. Instead, when he finally made it into the studio five days before the deadline-supported by a band that included Art Taylor on drums and Sam Jones on bass-he recorded new arrangements of some of his best-known compositions (including the sly ballad 'Crepuscule with Nellie' and the widely covered 'Rhythm-a-Ning'). Monk, overcommitted and anxious, was barely able to sign the contract, let alone write new material for a film. The music supervisor for the film, Marcel Romano, eventually had to travel to New York to chase him down, with a strict deadline to procure the soundtrack: July 31.

Plagued by insomnia and erratic behavior, Monk spent a week in a Massachusetts insane asylum. Worse, after being hired to score the adaptation of Les Liaisons, his legal problems made it impossible for him to travel to France, where the adaptation was being filmed in 1959. Monk lost his cabaret card, which meant he couldn't play in clubs. In late 1958, the musician fell into a deep depression after an arrest on drug charges that included a vicious beating by cops. It was a troubled, exhausting time for Monk-a wonder, in fact, that he made it to the recording session at all. His music, off-kilter and dissonant, helped set the seductive, scandalous mood of the film. Les Liaisons Dangereuses was the only film Monk would ever soundtrack.

Monk wore many hats in the figurative sense, too: composer, pianist, bandleader, eccentric style icon-and, for a brief moment, film scorer. Monk was still wearing it, photos reveal, when he sat down at the piano that day to record music for the soundtrack to the French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a racy adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's novel directed by Roger Vadim. But this headpiece, a gift from Ghanaian Afro-jazz pioneer Guy Warren, was particularly distinctive: large and round, like 'some weird modernistic lampshade,' as the trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton described it. This was often the case the enigmatic jazz pianist was known for his bobble hats, trilbies, fur hats, even skullcaps. On July 27, 1959, Thelonious Monk entered Nola Penthouse Studios on Manhattan's 57th Street for a recording session.

Thelonious monk hats