But there is a twist as there always is with these things which is why we continue to return to these vibrant back moments of small histories made amid the chaos of the bigger picture.
To reiterate, it is '68, which isn't pretty for anyone, let alone Monk who can be and has been accused, for any number of mental, health, and personal reasons, of just letting it ride through the late 60's, the ebbing genius playing standard sets of greatest hits. So, on an October Sunday afternoon, between gigs at the Jazz Workshop in San Fransisco, Monk and his antic merry-mentenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Gales and drummer Ben Rileyset-up on the small stage of Palo Alto High School's 350-seat high school auditorium and well, rock the freakin' house. Jazz-stirred high school senior and budding teenage concert-promoter Danny Scher, through a series of chit-chats with this name and that name, secures the ear of Monk's manager Jules Colomby who agrees to half-a-grand. But it is Monk, so Palo Alto, comes to us with all the scholarly fandom brouhaha we accord these wonderful little things that gratefully drop in our laps from troubled time to troubled time.įor anyone not paying attention to the jazz chatter of late, the backstory to Palo Alto thumbnails broadly like this: It is 1968 which, as it just so happens, is another troubled time in America and a whole other discussion outside of this sphere. Earth-shattering? The best live Thelonious Monk recording ever? Who knows? Probably not.
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