Like a lot of Thelonious Monk fans, Sam Stephenson came to the pianist's music indirectly. He used to be into just blues, until a record dealer asked why Stephenson never bought jazz albums. Stephenson sheepishly confessed that he didn't know where to start.

"Start with this," the dealer told Stephenson, directing him to Monk's 1958 album "Misterioso" with strict instructions: Play it 10 times all the way through before passing judgment. It took all 10 listens, but by the end Stephenson was hooked.

"You have to let Monk sink in and bounce around, take you places you don't want to go," says Stephenson, now director of the Jazz Loft Project at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. "When you do that, you'll start to recognize these patterns that are just so brilliant.

"I often say that Monk's music is like a cat. You have to put a lot into it to make it familiar, more so than a dog."

Monk, who died in 1982, was definitely the coolest and most mysterious of cats. And after that introduction 16 years ago, Stephenson became an unabashed devotee. He's one of the organizers behind "Following Monk," a six-week series of concerts and other Duke-sponsored events that will pay tribute to the pianist's influence.

Even though Monk stands as one of the past century's most important musical figures, finding a way into his body of work can be daunting. He was the most idiosyncratic of pianists, a player whose skittery rhythms can seem impenetrable. But given enough time, what initially sounds loose and unwieldy will eventually reveal a meticulous structure.

Monk contributed enduring classics to the jazz repertoire: "'Round Midnight," "Rhythm-A-Ning" and "Epistrophy" still turn up on seemingly every new jazz album. He combined accessibility and out-there weirdness like no one else. While his playing was steeped in the blues and exhibited boundless playfulness, he also had a keen understanding of classical music.

Paul Jeffrey, Duke's former director of jazz studies, played saxophone in Monk's group for six years. Monk surprised Jeffrey plenty of times but never more so than when Monk was in the hospital and had a piano brought in for him to play.

"Everybody wondered what he'd play since he hadn't in over a month," Jeffrey says. "And he sat down and played Rachmaninov's Prelude in C Sharp Minor. Floored everybody. I'd never heard him do classical before, and I never heard him do it other than that one time. He knew the classical repertoire but never played it."

Playing a lot less than he knew was a constant for Monk, who rendered his oddball flights of rhythmic fancy with spare precision. But as Stephenson notes, he can be an acquired taste. As a short course to prepare for "Following Monk," here are a few entry points into the more accessible quadrant of his catalog:

* "The Composer" (1988, Columbia Records). It's missing some key tracks, especially "Misterioso" and "Epistrophy," but this single-disc sampler is a good starting point for the Monk oeuvre. It includes compositional signatures, starting with the oft-covered "'Round Midnight" (Bobby McFerrin's a cappella version earned him a 1986 Grammy Award) and "Rhythm-A-Ning" (one of Durham saxophonist Branford Marsalis' live-set staples). First-time listeners might be particularly struck by how big a debt Oscar-winning soundtrack composer Randy Newman, among other pianists, owes to Monk.

* "Straight No Chaser" (2001, Warner Home Video). Originally released in 1989, this essential documentary portrays Monk's personal eccentricity as much as his musical genius. It's drawn from footage shot in 1968, capturing Monk at the height of his powers. The film's enduring visual image isn't Monk at the piano, however, but breaking into his peculiar spinning dance -- completely inscrutable except for the joy of his smile. This project's executive producer is Clint Eastwood, who used "'Round Midnight" as the title and inspiration for his superlative 1986 jazz film starring the late Dexter Gordon.

* Various artists, "That's the Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk" (1984, A&M Records). Rockers have always loved Monk for his bluesy leanings as well as his crazed-genius vibe. Overseen by tastemaker producer Hal Willner, "That's the Way" finds an unlikely cast of pop musicians having a go at Monk's catalog -- Peter Frampton, Joe Jackson, Todd Rundgren, Was (Not Was), NRBQ and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. Steely Dan, which has always exuded Monkian cool, namechecked Monk on "Midnight Cruiser," a song on 1972's "Can't Buy a Thrill": "Thelonious my old friend, step on in and let me shake your hand."

* Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane, "At Carnegie Hall" (2005, Blue Note Records). A bebop superpower summit, North Carolina-style, starring the favorite native sons of Rocky Mount (Monk) and Hamlet (Coltrane). For years, fans lamented the paucity of recordings Monk and Coltrane made during their brief time together in the 1950s. Then tapes of a 1957 Carnegie Hall concert turned up in a mislabeled box at the Library of Congress. The resulting release put both men onto the Billboard charts decades after their deaths. Listening to Monk and Coltrane take each other's tangents and run with them is amazing.