Danny explained to me that the first time he had ever seen African-Americans and white Americans together, just enjoying themselves, was at the Monterey Jazz Festival. That’s how angry they were at that side of town.
At that time, East Palo Alto, which was the African-American side of the town, actually had a campaign going on to rename it Nairobi. He started telling me the backstory, and then I really listened to the recording, and I said, “Oh, you know what? This is really, really serious.” It’s just a wonderful American story of this young white kid caught up in all the tumultuous times of 1968 with all the racial distress, particularly in places like Palo Alto. He called me a second time, and my life was a little more settled. There might have been a four- or five-year gap. I listened to it, and I thought it was good, but I was busy. He didn’t have a chance to really explain the backstory to this recording. I had so much going on at the time … that I didn’t really give him the kind of time I should’ve. Since I was highly visible, he picked up the phone and said hey, I’ve got this recording of your father. Danny was clearing out a closet or a garage or an attic one day, and he saw this recording.
Probably as a result of the success of the Thelonious Monk Institute and its visibility. How does it find its way to you and see the light of day? This is a two-track mono recording from 52 years ago and it doesn’t sound like that at all. I’m delighted that we found this recording, and that I was able to restore it so that it sounds, frankly, like it was recorded last week. The young man Danny Scher caught him on an exceptionally good day, and all of those elements that the world loves about Thelonious Monk are present in this recording - his ability to work with time and shift and displace various phrases, the swing that all of his bands always had, the unique harmonics and melodic figures that he played… it’s just all there. And he really, really did.īeing familiar with most of his recordings, this is one of the best recordings of Thelonious Monk in his entire career. I think the fact that he had been hired by this 16-year-old kid and brought to a town that was going through a lot of racial tumult at the time - and in fact the whole country was ablaze with racial tumult - I think he really wanted to put his best foot forward. is a live recording that Thelonious did not know was being made, and so he was just really being himself. But I saw Monk live at the Vanguard.” They always say you had to hear Monk live to really understand the magnitude of his impact on the musicians around him and on Western music in general. When you talk to people, older folks, they will always tell you, “Oh man, the record’s great, man. He didn’t rely on his recordings to either feed him or to enhance his notoriety. Thelonious was originally on Blue Note and then he was off Blue Note, then he was on Prestige and then he was off Prestige, then he was on Riverside and then he was off Riverside, then he was on Columbia and then he was off Columbia. He had a very scattered recording career, unlike a Miles Davis who basically spent his career with Columbia, or John Coltrane who spent his career at Impulse. The world didn’t discover Thelonious until he was on the cover of Time magazine, so there was a good 25 years of Thelonious Monk that was primarily a live artist. But there were definitely times when I felt like he was just playing, and there were times when I said, “Oh man, he’s really feeling good.” Given the unique nature of Thelonious Monk, no matter how he was feeling it was always going to be a unique listening experience for anyone. My father was a real family man, so we spent a lot of time together - enough time to know when he was feeling good, and when he was feeling great. That particular band with Charlie Rouse and Ben Riley, they were working down in Berkeley, and they were firing on all cylinders. He was still riding the crest of the wave created by his gracing the cover of Time magazine in 1964. In 1968, what was going on in that particular time in your dad’s career? Hear a newly unearthed Thelonious Monk recording called Palo Alto.
0 kommentar(er)
