November 29, 1957
If you are a jazz fan, then there is reason to celebrate today for it is the 48th anniversary of a remarkable concert at Carnegie Hall featuring the Thelonious Monk Quartet featuring John Coltrane.
The Village Voice said it well,
The jazz event of 2005 is an unknown Carnegie Hall concert that took place 48 years ago
Chris May at All About Jazz explains,
The hype surrounding the discovery and release of this concert recording has been considerable, but now the actuality is upon us, every breathless adjective proves to be justified and then some: it’s only September, and this beauty must already qualify as the Buried Treasure Discovery Of The Year, no contest.
Just in case you’ve been off-planet recently and missed it, here’s the back story…. It’s ’57 and the legendary, and legendarily under-recorded, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, match fit after four months of solid work at the Five Spot, is taped at a benefit gig at Carnegie Hall by Voice Of America, with state-of-the-art recording equipment, for a future broadcast which never happens. The inadequately labeled tape reels are then lost in the vaults until they are discovered by eagle-eyed Library of Congress recording lab supervisor Larry Appelbaum earlier this year. Take a bow, Larry, you deserve it, along with our great gratitudeâ??a less forensically alert person might have missed this muthalode, which could all too easily have been lost forever.
Go buy it for yourself, or a jazz fan you know, for Christmas.