Trustee Holloway Produces ‘Lost’ Thelonious Monk Album

Emerson Trustee Doug Holloway ’76 was a producer of a newly released lost Thelonious Monk album.

Released to record stores on June 12, Palo Alto: The Custodian’s Mix, hit second on the jazz chart that day, which is Record Store Day. Variety listed it as one of their most wanted Record Store Day releases.

The album was released by Rhythm-A-Ning Entertainment (RAN Ent), the music and film production arm of jazz great Thelonious Monk’s estate, of which Holloway is the president.

Palo Alto is the recording of a surprise 1968 concert by Monk and his steady touring band at a local high school in Palo Alto, California. The concert was organized by a then-student and jazz aficionado, Danny Scher, who organized the show as a way to help bridge the divide between Black and White residents in the area during a particularly tumultuous year.

Listen to “Epistrophy,” off Palo Alto

Monk’s performance was recorded by the school janitor, and sat in Scher’s attic for years, until he contacted Monk’s son, T.S. Monk, chairman and founder of RAN Ent. They decided to release the recording on John Coltrane’s label, Impulse! Records – known as the “house that Trane built.”