Thank the Janitor

THELONIOUS MONK

Palo Alto

Impulse!

The back story makes this album irresistible even before you’ve listened to it: In 1968, a 16-year-old jazz fan at Palo Alto High School in California decides to hold a concert in the school’s auditorium to raise funds for its International Club—and convinces Thelonious Monk’s manager that his client should be the headliner. (Not surprisingly, the student, Danny Scher, would soon become a major force in the live-music production world.) As concert day approaches, one of the school’s janitors, an audio enthusiast, offers to tune the piano in exchange for recording the show, a deal that’s quickly agreed to. On the afternoon of October 27, the Thelonious Monk Quartet gives its only known high-school performance. Afterward, the janitor (his name apparently lost to history, though researchers are no doubt still working on that) hands the young promoter a tape. It goes in a box, where it sits for the next 50 years. When its owner rediscovers it, he contacts Monk’s son T.S., who—first tickled by the story, then impressed by the recording’s quality—sanctions its release.

All praise be to that anonymous janitor. Palo Alto’s sound quality may not be absolutely optimal, but its clarity is astounding. You can hear everything, from the creaks of the piano bench to the quiet, regular swish of Ben Riley’s hi-hat on “Ruby, My Dear”—and it’s even in stereo. There are no big surprises here in terms of material: four Monk evergreens (“Well, You Needn’t,” “Blue Monk,” and “Epistrophy” in addition to “Ruby”) and typically jagged solo rollicks through “Don’t Blame Me” and “I Love You (Sweetheart of All My Dreams).” Even so, this is one of the best live Monk recordings available, maybe even the best, and certainly the best by this band.

Which brings us to a key point: Monk is known for his compositions, his piano style, and his personal idiosyncrasies. He’s not known so much as a bandleader. But Palo Alto should add ammunition to the arsenal of those who believe his 1964-’68 quartet wasn’t just a great vehicle for his tunes but a superlative band in its own right. Riley, bassist Larry Gales, and saxophonist Charlie Rouse truly understood Monk’s music, and Monk himself, on a basic emotional level in ways that few others did—yes, more than Trane, more than Sonny, more than Blakey—and that’s clear in every note they play here.

As is the utter joy that Monk and his men take in performing for their young audience. More than five decades since it was recorded, this music simply bounces out of the speakers, the spring in its step only heightened by time. MAC RANDALL

ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS

Just Coolin’

Blue Note

This previously unreleased March 1959 studio session captures the Jazz Messengers in a period of transition. Benny Golson had departed; Wayne Shorter had not yet arrived. In the interim, the tenor chair was filled by Hank Mobley, who’d been a member of the original Messengers, appearing on their breakout albums At the Café Bohemia, Volumes 1 and 2, recorded in 1955 and released the following year.

Jazz itself was also transitioning during this time; bebop had morphed into the funkier, more roots-driven hard bop (due in no small part to Art Blakey and the Messengers’ pioneering work), and the even rootsier Saturday night/Sunday morning amalgam that became known as soul-jazz was on the horizon (several musicians here, including Lee Morgan and Bobby Timmons, would be central in this development).

Appropriately, then, these six tracks—half of them penned by Mobley—are buoyed by a hip, streetsy swagger, striding along the nexus between hard bop and soul-jazz. Mobley, alternately beguiling and blues-drenched, sounds in places almost like a tenorized Lou Donaldson, his characteristic flashes of humor adding both spice and hipster irony to his lines; Morgan imbues his usual technical virtuosity with fiery emotionalism, as if to give a workshop in the ongoing bop/hard-bop evolution. Timmons’ solo work is slyly understated but punctuated with spiky jabs, scurries, and curlicues. Blakey may be a bit more restrained than usual, yet he remains determinedly in control, relentlessly inspiring (compelling?) the soloists to alter