Listen (2:59)
March 3, 2025
A Carnegie Hall benefit concert, “Thanksgiving Jazz," took place on November 29, 1957, produced by Kenneth Lee Karpe for the Morningside Community Center in Harlem. Voice of America recorded two sets that night performed by Thelonious Monk – piano, John Coltrane – tenor saxophone, Ahmed Abdul-Malik – bass, and Shadow Wilson – drums. I first heard it twenty years ago; it was a profound listening session, and one I would repeat a dozen more times, impossible to experience were it not for the work of Larry Appelbaum.
Larry Appelbaum, audio engineer, jazz journalist, historian, and broadcaster, died on February 21, 2025, in Washington, D.C. He was 67 years old. Appelbaum's life was profoundly influenced by his love for music, especially jazz. He is perhaps best known for helping to preserve the lost 1957 tapes of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, which he discovered in the Voice of America archive at the Library of Congress, where he spent over forty years. In 2005, Blue Note Records released these tapes as Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall.
He held the supervisor position at the Library’s Magnetic Recording Laboratory and became a senior music reference specialist in the Music Division. Throughout his career, Larry focused on preserving and documenting jazz history, significantly impacting the field and safeguarding historical recordings for future generations.
His expertise enhanced major jazz anthologies, including “Jazz: The First Century” and “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology,” and he also curated a long-running jazz film series at the Library of Congress. He wrote extensively for many publications, including DownBeat, where his final review, Village of the Sun’s Live In Tokyo, appeared in the February issue.
Larry was born on April 12, 1957, in Washington, D.C., and lived there his entire life. He graduated from the University of Maryland and began his broadcasting career on campus station WMUC. In 1979, while still a student, he took his first job at the Library of Congress, where he continued to work until his retirement in 2020. He began broadcasting at WPFW in 1981 and remained on the air weekly until 2024.
Larry’s boundless knowledge and masterful interviewing skills taught me the importance of research and familiarity and the value, as an interviewer, of knowing the answer to 75 percent of the questions posed to a guest. Much like Larry's radio program, the remaining 25 percent of knowledge gem rewards would arrive as a “Sound of Surprise.” Although there are many contenders, my favorite conversation was recorded in October 2012 with Ron Carter.
The jazz world, and all worlds that value communication and authentic human interaction, has lost one of the good ones. Sail on, Larry.