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Curtis Ensler's Collection

Thelonious Monk Quartet   02/16/1948

WNYC "Festival of American Music", New York, NY
Media CDR   1 disc
J-Card Comment The Thelonious Monk Quartet, February 16, 1948, NYC

WNYC "Festival of American Music" broadcast

liberated boot

Thelonious Monk - Piano
Idrees Sulieman (Leonard Graham) - Trumpet
Curley Russell - Bass
Art Blakey - Drums

1. Just You, Just Me (l. Raymond Klages / m. Jesse Greer) 4:53
2. All The Things You Are (l. Oscar Hammerstein II / m. Jerome Kern) 5:55
3. Suburban Eyes (Ike Quebec) 3:20 [incomplete]

Total 14:08

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Remaster Notes
The Thelonious Monk Quartet, February 16, 1948, NYC
WNYC "Festival of American Music" broadcast
liberated boot

Pitch correction and EQ by TheTooleMan
September 2006

Two versions of the tracks are in this torrent. You may prefer the sound of one over the other, so both are included.

On both versions, pitch correction was applied using Sound Forge. Per Goody's comment, the pitch of the recording was lowered 91 cents. The spoken word "Thelonious" was cut from the end of track one since it is repeated at the beginning of track two. A bit of noise was also cut from the end of track three.

On the second version, EQ was added to bring up the high frequencies above approximately 1,000 Hz, as well as bass between 60 and 130 Hz. This gives the recording a more "modern" sound but also increased surface noise or hiss from the original recording. No noise reduction was used to minimize the hiss.

Tracks were sector-aligned using FLAC 1.1.1.

Thanks again to "sanrocco" for torrenting the original files.

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From the original seeder on Dime (Sanrocco):

About the venue:
Composer Ellis B. Kohs' "Sonatina For Violin And Piano", k. 26, was definitely performed at Carnegie Hall (main hall) during the same Festival, so I consider this a strong possibility.

Lest you think "they wouldn't have mixed the classical stuff with the jazzers", check out this description of Kohs' piece: "In three closely related movements, the first and last are lively and suggestive of Milhaud's adopted Latinisms. The slow middle movement is a Blues featuring major-minor triad clashes, leading without interruption to the finale in which there is a brief recall of the harsh Blues. The ending is happy and optimistic."

Darius Milhaud was, of course, the great French composer with whom Dave Brubeck was studying at Mills College (Oakland, CA) in this very period... Brubeck's Norwegian maternal grandfather, by the way, taught Edvard Grieg!... "everything is everything", like Donny Hathaway says.

Today, WNYC's A.M. frequency is 820 (93.9 FM).

According to WNYC's site, the station started broadcasting (with a second-hand Brazilian transmitter!) at 570 A.M. on July 8th, 1924. Over the years, the frequency was shifted to 810 and 830 before settling on its present location. The site provides no further details, so I just checked some old dial settings listed in the radio program guides in local newspapers from January and June 1948 (thanks to the microfilm scans on newspaperarchive.com) and the frequency is 830 so there's your answer, provided the recording was taken from A.M.

WNYC's F.M. broadcasting began on March 13th, 1943, so that's another possibility.

As far as I know, Boris Rose always recorded broadcasts to tape - and he jealously guarded his original reels - only making acetates to sell to collectors.

The files in this seed (which I flac'ed from a bootleg CD) sound to me like they come straight from his tape or a good tape transcription; clean and no tell-tale scratches. Amazing! Even the copy of "All The Things You Are" WNYC used on a recent "archive"
show (August 25th) is scratchy and probably, in my opinion, taken from Rose's early '70s Chazzer 2002 LP boot.

Incidentally, the ultimate source of the recent Monk '63 Birdland seed is also a Rose tape (which he releassed on Alto AL 725).
Trades Allowed Yes
Owned by Curtis Ensler · Last Updated May 23, 2023