https://driftrecords.com/products/thelonious-monk-palo-alto
Estimated release date: 31 July 2020
Thelonious Monk – piano.
Charlie Rouse – tenor saxophone.
Larry Gales – bass
Ben Riley – drums.
1. Ruby, My Dear
2. Well, You Needn’t
3. Don’t Blame Me
4. Blue Monk
5. Epistrophy
6. I Love You Sweetheart of All My Dreams
"After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, racial tensions across
the country rose. Palo Alto, a largely white college town in California, was not
immune to the events of the day. Danny Scher, a rising junior at Palo Alto High
School, had a dream to bring Thelonious Monk to Palo Alto to perform and help
bring about racial unity in his community as well as raise funds for his school’s
International Committee.
After somehow securing Monk’s services to perform on Sunday, October
27, Scher initially had trouble selling tickets and convincing people that Monk was
even going to show up.
With many twists and turns along the way and several hundred people waiting in
the school’s parking lot to await Monk’s arrival before purchasing tickets, the concert
eventually happened and was a triumph in more ways that Monk or Scher could
have imagined. This is a recording of that historic concert."
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Excerpt from Robin Kelley's bio: "Monk's quartet gave the racially mixed, near-capacity audience an excellent show. They played for over an hour. Monk was called back by thunderous applause to play an encore - a solo piano rendition of 'Sweetheart Of All My Dreams' - and then graciously apologized for not playing another one: 'I gotta play in the city tonight, dig?'... Neither Thelonious nor sixteen-year-old Danny Scher fully grasped what this concert meant for race relations in the area. For one beautiful afternoon, blacks and whites, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, buried the hatchet and gathered together to hear 'Blue Monk,' 'Well You Needn't,' and 'Don't Blame Me.'" -