For many of the residents within the Bay Space metropolis of Palo Alto, October 27, 1968, might have appeared similar to one other Sunday, however at an area highschool, one thing extraordinary was occurring: jazz legend Thelonious Monk was taking part in a live performance.
Thelonious Monk taking part in a live performance, in fact, wasn’t all that out of the peculiar in 1968. What was odd was the promoter was an enterprising 16-year-old white Jewish schoolboy known as Danny Scher. “My two idols were Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington,” says Scher, now 68, recalling how the Monk live performance took place. “I had a dream of bringing them to my high school.”
{The teenager} had already organized two earlier highschool jazz live shows and was associates with an area promoter, Darlene Chan, whom he helped out often. He instructed her about his dream and she or he mentioned, “here’s Monk’s manager’s number, give him a call.” Scher adopted her recommendation and was instructed by the pianist’s supervisor that Monk would seem for $500. After a deal was agreed, Scher was despatched promo footage, copies of Monk’s newest report, and a contract. “I was not old enough to sign it, so I gave it to the school principal to sign,” he says, including that the principal solely agreed to do it as a result of it was a profit live performance. All earnings from ticket gross sales would go to the varsity’s Worldwide Membership, which supported faculties in Kenya and Peru.
Selling the live performance
Scher labored laborious to advertise the live performance. “I printed up posters, put ads in stores and put together a program,” he remembers, “so that even if I sold very few tickets, we’d have enough money to pay Monk. Tickets were $2, and if you were a student, they were $1.50. Back then, that was cheap.”
Even so, ticket gross sales had been so sluggish that Scher determined to promote the live performance in East Palo Alto, an unincorporated space (on the time) situated simply north of Palo Alto. In 1968, East Palo Alto was contemplating a vote to vary the realm’s identify to Nairobi. It was additionally thought to be a no-go space for whites. “There were posters all over East Palo Alto saying ‘Vote Yes On Nairobi,’ and there I was putting up my Thelonious Monk concert posters right next to them,” laughs Scher. “The police came up to me and said, ‘you’re a white kid, this really isn’t safe for you,’ but I wasn’t thinking like a white kid, I was thinking like a promoter who had to sell tickets.”
Monk’s go to got here at a time when america was beset by racial tensions. The assassination of Civil Rights chief, Martin Luther King Jr., in April 1968 solely heightened the nation’s sense of division. However Scher continued placing up posters and started speaking to some intrigued locals, who didn’t consider Monk would flip up at an all-white highschool. “They were skeptical, so I told them, if you don’t believe Monk is coming, then don’t buy a ticket – but come to the high school parking lot, and when you see him, buy one.”
A short lived snag
One other twist within the story got here a couple of days earlier than the live performance when Scher known as Monk to go over the live performance preparations. The pianist, who was in the course of three-week membership residency in San Francisco, shocked the schoolboy by saying, “I don’t know anything about it.” Monk instructed Scher he already had a gig booked that evening and in addition had no means of attending to and from Palo Alto. “My brother can get you, he’s old enough to drive,” responded Scher, which glad Monk, who then agreed to play the live performance.
“As my father already had a gig that day, I have a strong feeling that he said yes because it was a 16-year-old kid contacting him,” says Monk’s son, T. S. Monk, who produced and helped within the audio restoration of the Palo Alto live performance tape. “It’s very unusual and outside the box; very Thelonious Monk.”
The live performance
Arriving on the college car parking zone within the Scher household’s station wagon, Monk and his band – tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Gales and drummer Ben Riley – had been met by a number of hundred individuals, each black and white. The group appeared on stage at 2 pm, following a few native assist acts. Monk performed a 47-minute six-song set, which included vibrant variations of his traditional tunes “Well, You Needn’t,” “Blue Monk,” and “Ruby, My Dear.”
“It brought me chills because the energy of the concert was so high,” remembers Scher, who went on to turn out to be a west coast live performance promoter and labored for a few years with the legendary Invoice Graham. “Everything’s a little faster, and the solos are longer than usual. When I first played the concert to T. S. Monk, he knew right away that his father was feeling good.”
“He was playing his ass off, and the band was really cooking,” laughs T. S. Monk, who says he first turned conscious of the recording 20 years in the past however on the time wasn’t capable of give it any consideration. “I could hear that he was feeling really good. His best performances have always been live: there’s a different kind of energy and freedom than on his studio recordings.”
The recording
The truth that a recording of the live performance exists in any respect is down to a faculty janitor who volunteered to seize it on his mono reel-to-reel machine. He gave the ¼-inch tape to Scher, who then saved it in a field for over half a century. “There’s a social media campaign to find out who the janitor was,” reveals Scher. “Based on the quality of the recording, he really knew what he was doing.”
Wanting again, T. S. Monk believes the Palo Alto live performance has new relevance. “I think it’s very appropriate to release it right now in America [in 2020] given its back story,” he states. “It’s a message of unity, which is something that we need on planet Earth right now.”
“It shows that music can bring us together,” says Scher. “I like to think that on that afternoon 52 years ago, everyone became colorblind.”
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