Johnny Griffin was a great tenor player who is probably best known for his time with Thelonious Monk. An excerpt from the linked 1982 interview at the Canadian Jazz Archive:
Q: “Of everybody you worked with, you had the most admiration for Monk?”
A: “Yes, Thelonious. Yes, I admired Thelonious more than anyone else, you know, just for the man himself. I’d been with Monk when he was getting unemployment compensation from New York State in the 40s and I was with him when they acclaimed him as the greatest, you know, working in the five spots, you know, he’s getting all this acclaim and the man had never changed. He never changed. He was a beautiful person.”
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