LINER NOTES

Thelonious Monk Live at Palo Alto High School

In the fall of 1968, a sixteen-year-old Jewish kid named Danny Scher had a dream. He wanted to bring the renowned and his quartet to play a benefit concert at his high school in Palo Alto, California. Armed with little more than a telephone, posters, a persuasive pitch, an impressive knowledge of jazz, and iron-willed determination, Scher not only made it happen but temporarily united a divided city.

As Scher makes clear in his own notes, the kid was no neophyte. Born on October 19,

1951, his conversion to jazz began at age ten. A few years later, he was putting up posters and doing odd jobs for the legendary Bay Area jazz promoter Darlene Chan and critic Ralph

Gleason. His classmates at Palo Alto High School all knew Danny as the red-headed kid who spun jazz records every Wednesday at lunch time for anyone willing to listen. During his junior year (1967-68), Scher was elected chairman of the campus International Club, and in an effort to raise money for the Peace Corps and school construction projects in Kenya and Peru, he organized jazz concerts. In December he produced an afternoon concert featuring pianist Vince

Guaraldi and vocalist Jon Hendricks, followed by vibraphonist Cal Tjader and his quintet in

April.

Now entering his senior year, he had his sights on Monk and possibly Duke Ellington.

Darlene Chan had him call Monk’s manager, Jules Colomby. Jules quoted a fee of $500 and agreed to the gig, but never followed up with a fully executed contract. What Scher did not know was that Jules, a noted music producer, had only recently taken over for his brother, Harry

Colomby, who, after nearly twelve years of managing Monk left for Hollywood to try his hand at producing movies. Jules not only lacked experience in management, he inherited an artist facing severe health and financial challenges. When young Danny Scher, just shy of his 17th birthday, made that call in the early fall of 1968, he could not have known that Monk’s income had dropped precipitously, or that he was deeply indebted to Columbia Records, or that the IRS took most of his meager earnings the previous year. Critics had begun to turn on Monk, disparaging his quartet as “predictable” and tired. He even dropped in Down Beat’s International Critics

Poll, falling from fourth the previous year to sixth place, behind Earl Hines, Bill Evans, Oscar

Peterson, Cecil Taylor and Herbie Hancock.

Dissatisfied with Monk’s record sales, Columbia executives ill-advisedly tried to market his latest LP, Underground, to a younger rock generation. The press kit read, “Now, in 1968, with rock music and psychedelia capturing the imagination of young America, Thelonious Monk has once again become an underground hero, this time as an oracle of the new underground.”

Their promotional materials barely mentioned the music, focusing instead on the provocative photo on the cover, in which Monk poses at an upright piano, machine gun strapped to his hip, surrounded by weapons of war, bottles of vintage wine, a slim young model dressed as a French

Resistance fighter, and a Nazi prisoner of war tied up in the corner. The print ads for the LP heralded “The Underground Groove” in psychedelic style typeface and promised that with the addition of four new compositions and “another great cover photo that’s just out-of-sight, the

Rock generation will be clamoring for more and more Monk.”

That the “Rock generation” failed to boost record sales surprised no one save Columbia’s marketing department. Nevertheless, sales were respectable thanks to Monk’s loyal fans— young and old—but for the corporate giant respectable didn’t cut it. The pressure on Monk to produce and generate income for his family took its toll on his health. During the spring of 1968, he was forced to cancel engagements and postpone a recording session for Columbia. Then his wife Nellie came down with a severe case of the flu and was out of commission for three weeks.

Because she wore multiple hats as road manager, business manager, mother, caregiver, and accountant, it meant that contracts and agreements remained in envelopes unsigned, bills went unpaid, and tax returns were exceedingly late. Then in May, Monk was hospitalized after suffering a seizure and lay in a coma for several days. When he missed yet another recording session as a result, Columbia’s business office callously charged Monk the full studio fee.

Indeed, he hadn’t fully recovered before going back on the road, this time as part of a national summer tour sponsored by the Schlitz Brewing Company. The “Schlitz Salute to Jazz” covered twenty-one cities in nine weeks, and with Dionne Warwick as the headliner and Cannonball

Adderley, Herbie Mann, , Gary Burton, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela on the roster. So when Monk began his two week engagement at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop on October 22nd, he took any opportunity to earn a little extra bread on the side.

Of course, Monk’s personal struggles occurred against a backdrop of a series of tumultuous national crises. The year 1968 was marked by the brutal assassinations of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, unsettling revelations about America’s war in

Vietnam, and the brutal police beating of antiwar protesters outside the Democratic National

Convention in Chicago. For African Americans confined to crumbling ghettoes, the spring and summer of 1968 was a period of rage and frustration. In reaction to Dr. King’s death in April, racial unrest engulfed at least 126 cities and towns, including East Palo Alto, a predominantly black and poor community separated from the wealthier and whiter Palo Alto by the Bayshore freeway. Anguished black students from Ravenswood High School poured into the streets, throwing rocks, overturning a car and assaulting an unfortunate truck driver caught in the melee. The unrest surprised no one in East Palo Alto. Black youth had rebelled before—in

August of 1965 on the heels of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, and again in August of 1966.

Indeed, racial tensions between East Palo Alto and its neighbors date back to the 1940s, when

Southern black migrants flocked to the area in search of affordable housing. By the mid-1960s,

African Americans were in the majority, but because it remained an unincorporated area governed by San Mateo County, its residents had no power to govern its own affairs. The

Bayshore freeway construction in 1955 destroyed almost half of the community’s small businesses. A few years later, neighboring Menlo Park and Palo Alto annexed a quarter of its original territory, stripping it of much needed property tax revenue and population. A 1968 report found that East Palo Alto had the highest rate of unemployment (12%) in the county and a median annual income of only $3,000.

Hoping to revitalize East Palo Alto, local leaders not only sought incorporation but established independent social, economic, and cultural institutions designed to empower black residents. In 1966, a group of black educators founded the Nairobi Day School, which in a matter of three years expanded from elementary to community college. Donald Reid, a black technical writer and activist, went further, launching a campaign to rename East Palo Alto

Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. His proposal was not “anti-white.” He and other supporters believed that if they could instill a sense of pride of place in the community by adopting an

African name, they could improve schools and neighborhoods, develop a stronger economy, and ultimately make Nairobi an attractive place for all families, irrespective of race. On April 3,

1968, East Palo Alto’s Municipal Council voted to hold a hearing on the name change. The next day Dr. King was killed, deepening racial discord. In September, East Palo Alto was the site of a major national Black Power conference that included Black Panther leaders Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, and Maulana Karenga of US Organization.

These political developments did not go unnoticed in neighboring Palo Alto. Black students bused to Palo Alto schools encountered a fair share of racist graffiti and physical threats.

But as home to Stanford University, the affluent residents of Palo Alto tended to be on the liberal end of the spectrum. The campus was rocked by protests, mainly against the Vietnam war and the CIA’s campus recruitment program. That summer Stanford made history by hiring its first black assistant coaches in football and basketball. King’s assassination convinced a group of liberal white homeowners to challenge longstanding real estate practices of maintaining segregation and actively recruited black middle-class families to buy homes in Palo Alto.

This is what the world looked like when young Danny Scher set out to bring Thelonious

Monk to his campus. The posters he hung promoting the concert competed with signs and bumper stickers urging East Palo residents to vote “Yes on Nairobi.” The cops told him not to go to East Palo Alto, but he wouldn’t listen. And when black residents saw what he was doing, they were skeptical. Scher recalled, “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 believe it when it.” Ticket sales were slow at first, but Scher had the good sense to pair Monk’s quartet with two popular local bands—groups that not only enjoyed a substantial following in the black community and on Stanford’s campus but embodied the political climate of the moment. Jym

Marks Afro-Ensemble was an outstanding seven-piece band with guitar, sax, electric flute, bass, and heavy percussion led by drummer, poet, and Illinois transplant Jym Marks. “Smoke,” billed as kind of avant-garde “electric jazz band,” might be best described as a cross between late

Miles Davis and early Ornette Coleman. Formed entirely of college students—mostly from Stanford—the quintet was led by vibraphonist Salah Woodi Webb, with Chris Cristy and John

Felder on bass and drums, and a front line made up of trumpeter Fred Berry and tenor saxophonist Kenny Washington. Berry was already renowned as a founding member of the

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago, and an original member of the Roscoe Mitchell Quartet. Washington happened to be the co-chair of Stanford’s

Black Student Union. In other words, Monk’s opening acts embodied a kind of Black Power aesthetics consistent with political developments in cities like East Palo Alto and on college campuses across the country. Given Smoke’s university fan base, the concert would have attracted an interracial audience even if Monk hadn’t shown up.

Although ticket sales remained dismal up until Sunday, October 27th, the day of the concert, the skeptics showed up as promised and assembled outside of the school auditorium in the rain well before start time to see if Monk would show up. Doubts evaporated as soon as

Danny’s older brother Les pulled into the school parking lot in a white van, the neck of Larry

Gales’ bass protruding from a window for all to see. As Monk, Gales, and Ben

Riley sauntered across the parking lot and made their way to the “green room,” which turned out to be an empty classroom with refreshments, the skeptics promptly lined up to buy their tickets.

By the time the rain-soaked crowd filed into the auditorium to take their seats, the place was nearly packed. The interracial audience appreciated the two opening bands, especially African

American fans from East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Stanford University who regarded Jym

Marks’ Afro-Ensemble and Smoke as hometown favorites and bearers of the culture. Monk most likely appreciated what he heard, but neither he nor members of his band said much to the other musicians. Fred Berry did witness an interesting encounter in the “green room” between

Monk and a fan. “I remember there was a young caucasian lady who came up to Monk, who was standing on the side looking out the window. She asked him, “Does the rain influence your playing?” And Monk looked at her and said, “I hope so.”

If the rain did influence his playing, it certainly did not dampen his mood, or that of the crowd. As soon as they hit the stage, the quartet was met with thunderous applause. Fortunately for us, the concert was impeccably documented by an as-yet-unknown black custodian at Palo

Alto High School who arranged to have the piano tuned in exchange for permission to record the concert.

Monk made the bold decision to open with a ballad, “Ruby, My Dear,” which he had composed in the early 1940s for his first serious girlfriend, Rubie Richardson, and remained a mainstay of his repertoire ever since. Of course, Monk’s unique tempos stretch the definition of

“ballad.” The band swings “Ruby” in a kind of medium tempo trot, with Ben Riley’s brushes providing a vibrant field of head-nodding rhythm. The band signaled from the very first bars that they came to play—this was no detour or secondary gig. Although they had been a unit for four years (Monk and Rouse had been together for ten years; Riley and Gales since 1964), they refused to slip into auto-drive. Monk backs Rouse with breathtaking arpeggios up and down the keyboard while never straying from the melody. Monk’s solo is beautifully balanced, a mélange of original passages and common phrases that over time had become embedded in the song’s structure.

They picked up the tempo on “Well, You Needn’t,” another Monk standard composed in the 1940s. The band was on fire. The rhythm section set a flame beneath Rouse, who in turn bounces off of Monk’s unique accompaniment which expertly exploits the song’s chromatic movement in the bridge. While Monk would occasionally (and wryly) quote himself, his solo here is so inventive that one wonders what the critics were smoking when they disparaged him for being tired and repetitive. And yet, even Monk’s thunder was usurped by Larry Gales’s magnificent bowed solo. It is uncommon for bassists to pull out their bow on uptempo songs

(and Monk had a personal distaste for the bow). But Gales’ lyricism and intonation is spectacular, rendered even more exciting by his singing solfeggio and Riley’s dynamic backing—followed by his own marvelous drum solo.

Monk slows things down with an unaccompanied rendition of the Jimmy McHugh and

Dorothy Fields classic, “Don’t Blame Me,” which he had been performing regularly since 1963.

Played in his characteristically stride piano style, replete with dissonant clusters, tremolos, and signature whole-tone runs, the recording is only marred by squeaky piano bench—though it didn’t seem to bother Monk. The band then to stretches out on “Blue Monk.” Composed in

1954, Monk once identified it as one of his favorite tunes. The band drives the song like a freight train—steady, strong, unstoppable. At one point, Monk gets up from the piano and leaves

Rouse and the rhythm section to jam on their own for six choruses. When Monk returns to the piano, he gives his young audience a clinic in the-blues-as-storytelling. Beginning with deceptively simple riffs, each chorus becomes more elaborate, exploding with detail, color, and anticipation, pushing Gales and Riley to the verge of doubling the tempo, until the master storyteller pulls them back from the precipice. Again, Gales puts his skills on display, building on Monk’s last phrase to construct his own story using double stops, quotations, even plucking below the bridge to evoke the sound of a Kalimba (African thumb piano).

The crowd explodes as soon as “Blue Monk” ends, but Monk interrupts by jumping headlong into “Epistrophy.” Co-composed with drummer Kenny Clarke in 1941, back when they worked together in the house band at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, “Epistrophy” had long been Monk’s set closer. This time the band played a slightly more extended version than usual, with Monk delivering an energetic and playful solo. Monk fans knew this was supposed to be the end, but the crowd wanted more, clapping, shouting, whistling, jumping to their feet until

Monk launched into a solo rendition of “I Love You Sweetheart of All My Dreams,” the 1928 love song made famous by Rudy Vallee. He played less than a minute before an enraptured audience, disputing every Columbia executive who believed that Monk could not reach young people without a dramatic makeover. Monk came as Monk, bringing music older—and hipper— than most of the folks who squeezed into Paly High’s auditorium to see the master at work.

Monk had to interrupt the sustained applause, graciously apologizing for not playing another one: “We got to hurry back to get to work, you dig?” Judging from the ecstatic response, people got their money’s worth and more.

With that, Thelonious bid farewell, Danny paid his fee in cash, and his brother shuttled the band back to the Jazz Workshop with plenty of time to spare. A couple of days later, an incensed Jules Colomby called Danny asking for the money. “I told him I paid Monk. He asks,

‘What about my commission?’ I said, ‘Well Mr. Colomby, I never had a signed contract. So if you want your commission you should talk to Mr. Monk.’” Scher would grow up to become one of the most successful concert promoters on the West Coast.

Neither Thelonious Monk nor Danny Scher fully grasped what this concert meant for race relations in the area. For on this one beautiful Sunday afternoon, blacks and whites, Palo

Alto and East Palo Alto, gathered together to listen to a jazz legend. Nine days later, the referendum on changing the name of East Palo Alto to Nairobi came to a vote. It was soundly defeated by a margin of more than two to one. The problems facing East Palo Alto did not go away, however. Although this magical afternoon concert demonstrated the power of music to bring people together, an interracial gathering on Paly High’s resplendent school grounds also reminded the skeptics that after the final chorus, the inequalities persist. And Monk ended his run at the Jazz Workshop, still in debt.

Robin D. G. Kelley

Author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original