Unfortunately, the LOC had no record of a VOA recording made at Carnegie Hall on 11/29/57, but staffers allowed that as they continued to organize and catalog this huge collection, it might indeed turn up-if it was there at all.
Monk’s challenges can be seen as work-related. Coltrane had gone to work for Monk at New York’s Five Spot shortly after he (Coltrane) parted company with Miles Davis in 1957. The year 1957 brought two of the music’s Olympian figures together in collaboration, a year that, for distinct reasons, was pivotal in each man’s life. With the date now in hand-Friday, November 29, 1957-I contacted the Library of Congress, which owns all the VOA tapes. The album features 3 quartet selections, 2 septets (with Coleman Hawkins as an added attraction) and one 9:42 piano solo, Functional, closing out the disk. In 1996, while doing research for my book John Coltrane: His Life and Music, I found an advertisement in the New York Amsterdam News (a venerable black newspaper) that listed that VOA concert.
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In the December 26, 1957, issue of Down Beat there was notice that stated, “Willis Conover and the Voice of America were scheduled to invade Carnegie Hall late in November” to broadcast a jazz concert. It’s not quite the Lost Ark of the Covenant, but for some time researchers had been aware of the possibility of a long-lost recording featuring Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.