He wanted to bring the renowned Thelonious Monk and his quartet to play a benefit concert at his high school in Palo Alto, California.”So begins a liner note by Robin D.G. Kelley, Monk’s definitive biographer, for “Palo Alto,” a previously unreleased recording of that concert, out now. His motivation was pure: Along with Duke Ellington, who he’d later bring to the school, Monk was his idol. He sold concert-program ads along his paper route in predominantly white, upscale Palo Alto. He put up posters in mostly Black, less affluent East Palo Alto, where a campaign was afoot to rename the municipality Nairobi, after the capital of Kenya.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 26, 2020 11:03 UTC