THE GREATEST LOST CONCERT in American history almost never happened at all. It was Oct. 27, 1968, in Palo Alto, California. Outside of his high school, Danny Scher, a 16-year-old, bushy-haired, jazz-obsessed, self-described “weirdo,” was pacing the parking lot waiting for his hero, and music’s most elusive and enigmatic genius, to show up: composer and pianist Thelonious Monk.
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To the disbelief of most everyone — including his mother and girlfriend waiting alongside him — Scher claimed to have booked the jazz legend for an afternoon gig, the modern equivalent of securing Kendrick Lamar for prom. Pulling this off at a nearly all-white school during his racially divided town’s explosive Civil Rights battle — when the predominantly Black community of East Palo Alto was fighting to rename itself “Nairobi” — made it even more unlikely. But the mixed crowd in the parking lot proved how music could bring them together. “It was really the only time I ever remember seeing that many Black people,” Scher recalls. “Everyone was just there to see Monk.”…