Thelonious Monk Palo Alto LP (Vinyl)

After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, racial tensions across the country rose. Palo Alto, a largely white college town in California, was not immune to the events of the day. Danny Scher, a rising junior at Palo Alto High School, had a dream to bring Thelonious Monk to Palo Alto to perform and help bring about racial unity in his community as well as raise funds for his school's International Committee. After somehow securing Monk's services to perform on Sunday, October 27, Scher initially had trouble selling tickets and convincing people that Monk was even going to show up. With many twists and turns along the way and several hundred people in the school's parking lot awaiting Monk's arrival before purchasing tickets, the concert eventually happened and was a triumph in more ways than Monk or Scher could have imagined. This is a recording of that historic event.

Now available on Vinyl - includes 2 booklets and a poster.

"Monk's quartet gave the racially mixed, near-capacity audience an excellent show. They played for over an hour. Monk was called back by thunderous applause to play an encore - a solo piano rendition of 'Sweetheart Of All My Dreams' - and then graciously apologized for not playing another one: 'I gotta play in the city tonight, dig?'... Neither Thelonious nor sixteen-year-old Danny Scher fully grasped what this concert meant for race relations in the area. For one beautiful afternoon, blacks and whites, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, buried the hatchet and gathered together to hear 'Blue Monk,' 'Well You Needn't,' and 'Don't Blame Me.'" - Excerpt from Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelley

'Palo Alto' captures a band hitting a high note.

This is exuberant, abundant music, made by and performed for people whose lives often felt anything but.