Thelonious Monk in Palo Alto

from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed

My guess is that, by now, most readers already know the back-story for the recently-released Impulse! Records album Palo Alto, presenting a “live” recording of Thelonious Monk performing at Palo Alto High School on October 27, 1968 and leading a quartet whose other members were Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on bass, and Ben Riley on drums. The concert was arranged by a sixteen-year-old student at the school, Danny Scher; and this was not the first time he had produced a jazz concert there. That first occasion took place about a year earlier with an appearance by pianist Vince Guaraldi and the scat-singing trio known as (Dave) Lambert, (Jon) Hendricks, and (Annie) Ross.

Those old enough to remember will appreciate that 1968 was one of the darker years in the history of our country. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated that year; and Kennedy’s assassination took place here in California, down in Los Angeles. Discontent with the Vietnam War was on the rise, particularly in cities that housed major institutes of higher learning, such as Stanford University. Palo Alto also played a major role in the emergence of Silicon Valley, due significantly to the efforts of Stanford’s Provost, Frederick Terman. In many respects the geography bounded on the east by US 101 and on the west by Interstate 280 became an intellectual hub of inventiveness that rose above much of the discontent spreading across the rest of the country.

Where Palo Alto itself was concerned, one only had to cross 101 to come face-to-face with that discontent. Robin D. G. Kelley’s biography of Monk described East Palo Alto as “a poor, predominantly black, ‘suburban ghetto.’” As early as 1966, the town was developing its own black nationalist sentiments, culminating in the foundation of the Nairobi Day School with an African-centered curriculum. On April 3, 1968, the Municipal Council approved a ballot initiative for changing the name of the city to “Nairobi.”

When Scher got approval to bring the Monk quartet to “Paly,” he thought that tickets would sell out immediately. However, this turned out not to be the case, since Monk was far more adventurous in his approach to jazz than most Palo Alto residents were willing to handle. As a result, Scher extended his publicity work to include East Palo Alto. Kelley’s book include the following Scher quote:

So now I'm putting up posters in East Palo Alto and the word on the street is, “So Monk is coming to lily-white Palo Alto? We'll see it when we believe it.” The black guys I met were skeptical, so I told them to just show up in the school parking lot on Sunday, and if you see Monk buy a ticket.

The result was that the Monk quartet played to a racially-mixed full house that uniformly responded with enthusiasm. (Kelley also observes that Scher himself would become one of the most successful concert promoters on the West Coast.)

As to the Palo Alto album, it has its own back-story. It only exists because a janitor at Paly decided to make a recording. Since that recording was not mentioned in Kelley’s book, it is likely that it only came to light after the book appeared in October of 1999. The program was relatively short, organized around four Monk compositions. Two of them were given roughly quarter-hour treatments with extended improvisations across the entire quartet: “Well, You Needn’t” and “Blue Monk.” Shorter treatments were given to “Ruby, My Dear” and “Epistrophy,” along with a take on Jimmy McHugh’s “Don’t Blame Me.” At the end of the show, Monk took a solo encore with a brief account of Irving Berlin’s “I Love You (Sweetheart Of All My Dreams),” which he had recorded in 1964 for Columbia Records.

Where repertoire is concerned, the Monk selections are all familiar. Nevertheless, there is much to be gained from listening to the spontaneous inventiveness that emerges during the longer tracks. Gales’ bass work in “Well, You Needn’t” is particularly worthy of focused attention. Still, the real virtue of this gig is the history behind it, with the “punch line” of the Nairobi ballot initiative being defeated by a margin of more than two to one!