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 school’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.Įxcept for one 16-year-old Jewish kid: Danny Scher, a student of Palo Alto High School. Sure, bop still had it’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.īut bebop wasn’t Capital-C Cool in the late sixties. Monk was still playing that bebop jazz – the kind he helped create. Theolonius Monk is nearing the end of his Sony-Columbia contract. Thelonious Monk ‘Palo Alto’ Album ReviewĬold 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 Monk’s Palo Alto. There have been numerous cover versions ranging from former Police guitarist Andy Summers’ interpretation on his Green Chimneys: The Music of Thelonious Monk (1999) sonic homage to the undisputed magnum opus rendering on Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (1957). Much in the same way that he had done with “Crepuscule With Nellie”, Monk succeeds in crafting as skilful a love song as anyone in the bop genre had done to that point, and arguably since. This rendering is included on any number of the essential titles gathering the Complete Vogue Recordings/The Black Lion Sessions. By contrast, the solo reading made during his final studio sessions in November of 1971, is much more developed and languidly paced. This structure seemed to have been fully developed as early as his second sessions for the Blue Note label in late October of 1947 - which were a key element to Monk’s breakthrough Genius of Modern Music, Vol. There is likewise an undercurrent of optimism in the practically jovial demeanour that counterbalances the slower more methodical lines and phrases.
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Rather than unfurl a series of complexly arranged chord progressions, he constructs a seemingly spontaneous solo with meticulous attention to each note as it builds upon the previous one. A love sick pining can be heard punctuating the evenly paced verses.
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The track commences with one such dynamic flourish as Monk counts off the intro with a free form glide down the treble and bass clefs. With his trademark sense of drama, the artist resolves the angular harmonic and rhythmic phrases. Monk’s unusually understated arrangement is draped with lush, yet improbably timed runs up and down the keyboard. The melody is stark and memorably poignant and he fittingly kept it as a staple in his performance repertoire, recording it with a combo as well as an otherwise unaccompanied solo. “Ruby, My Dear” is one of Thelonious Monk’s (piano) most sentimental and otherwise affective love songs.
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