Surely he didnвЂ™t want the concert to be as bleak and miserable as the weather? Monk was renowned for speaking in riddles. When Monk and his touring band arrived, crowds of black and white faces, an equal mix, was waiting at the high school.ДЄ white woman approached Monk as he waited to go on stage and asked, вЂDoes the rain influence your playing?вЂќ

Monk came along anyway, brining drummer Ben Riley, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist Larry Giles, and a hungry belly. Scher felt in his gut that Monk might not turn up, so he got him on the phone and the pianist didnвЂ™t even know about the agreement. Nobody thought Scher pasting posters with MonkвЂ™s black face around a primarily white neighbourhood was a good idea for fear of riling people up.ДЄt two dollars a ticket, there was initial resistance, but the posters soon drew crowds of jazz fans, money in hand, eager to pack into the auditorium. This was just four years after segregation formally and legally ended, and the same year that Martin Luther King Jr.

Meanwhile, Scher sets about plastering advertisements all over town.Д®specially around Palo Alto, which had a serious black-white divide. Whoever was filling in for MonkвЂ™s wife was out of his managerial depth, resulting in an agreement for Monk to play the High School, no contract, and Monk not being told of the agreement. Sony-Columbia showed their concern by billing Monk the cost of missed studio hours. Monk himself shortly followed and ended up slipping into a coma. It used to be his wife, but she went down with a serious case of the flu that took her out of commission. He sets about organising a jazz concert to be held in the high school auditorium and has his sights set on one of his idols вЂ“ jazz pianist Thelonius Monk. It just so happened that Scher was head of the International Club on campus and wanted to raise money for the Peace Corps and construction projects in Kenya and Peru. This kid, a jazz lover from the age of ten, who ran the schoolвЂ™s jazz club, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the music, the history, the performers, and a resolute entrepreneurial spirit. They wanted to listen to the likes of Miles Davis take cool by the hand and lead it into the avant-garde.Д®xcept for one 16-year-old Jewish kid: Danny Scher, a student of Palo Alto High School. Sure, bop still had itвЂ™s die-hard audience, but American music fans wanted their jazz as cool as the war they were fighting with Russia. Individualistic, innovative, constantly refreshing and reinventing himself, Monk was an original composer, like Duke Ellington.Д«ut bebop wasnвЂ™t Capital-C Cool in the late sixties.

Monk was still playing that bebop jazz вЂ“ the kind he helped create. Theolonius Monk is nearing the end of his Sony-Columbia contract. Thelonious Monk вЂPalo AltoвЂ™ Album ReviewД¬old War America still reeling from the fallout of the MLK and Kennedy assassinations. Let me tell you the story of the long lost jazz record of Theolonius MonkвЂ™s Palo Alto.

Thelonious monk ruby my dear