Search & Destroy: John Coltrane

Now on to the good part.

Search:

Africa/Brass (shite Greensleeves is on it, but Africa is utterly mindblowing).

Coltrane (the one with blue sleeve, mid-period, good not too wild)

Lush Life (early period, but very lush indeed)

Sunship (getting harder, this one is from late 65 I think)

A Love Supreme (jazz bores hate it because it's popular with non-jazz bores. Fuck 'em...and it's about God and stuff which people tend to find embarrassing)

I you want the *wild* stuff:

Meditations is the one. It still has some lyrical beauty in constrast to Ascension which I don't know to well, but is supposed to be good and his hardest moment with Live in Seattle.

I also love Interstellar Space, very spare but beautiful.

A Love Supreme is quite boring and — if presented (as it routinely is) as JC's ultraclassic — it just inoculates foax against eg Live in Seattle or Interstellar Space or Ascension. Because they think "It's good [ie ALS] but I don't like it: I'll go no further."

However there's a live take of ALS, which — haven't heard it for years — I recall thinking greatly better

Search: The Impulse Classic Quartet Box Set, The Village Vanguard Box, the Johnny Hartman record, Giant Steps.

Also, stuff he did with Dolphy is amazing. Try and get live material from '63 w/ Dolphy, like the first Village Vanguard sessions (I may have the year wrong.) The Quintet Live in Paris is great, and has Dolphy playing bass clarinet on "Blue Train," bumping it up a few notches.

If you like lyrical Coltrane try "Transition." It has my favorite composition of his, "Welcome." Which I want played at my wedding. Actually, the rest of that album is so-so, but that track is so amazing.

My favorite "out there" stuff is probably Live In Seattle, could be what you're looking for if you want the more intense sound.

Destroy: Well, how about the opening chant of "Om."

As for the classic quartet and later stuff... --I highly recommend 'Live at Birdland' as a first pick, it was mine and from the beginning of Afro-Blue it pretty much floored me in terms of intensity. Besides, Alabama is the most beautiful song he ever did.

--I'm also pretty surprised at any backlash against A Love Supreme...for me, it's just an incredibly deep, emotional album that pretty much defines everything good about jazz. Plus, the Crescent album recorded the same year is my other favorite classic quartet album, it's so laid back and solid.

--As for the later stuff, all the stuff with Alice and Pharoah Sanders is pretty intense and free and busy...I 'got' Meditations after awhile, but can only listen to that stuff every now and then. Interstellar Space is a pretty singular record too (duet album with Rashid Ali on drums)...I had NO idea what was going on there for a long time. It's still pretty impressive in that sense, but it's easier to hear the colors and patterns they are going for.

Is 'Live in Seattle' out on cd? I just can't find a copy.

i think i probably find _is_ especially accessible because of its similarities to indian classical music. i put it on at work once and an indian immigrant co-worker loved it right away.

(ps josh: i'll write you back soon. i've just been really busy and not had enough time when i get to terminals.)

'Meditations' - Don't be fooled by the title. I'm telling you. This album here...will grab you by the balls and it will start to feel good.

'Ascension' - ...will grab you by the balls (that's for sure). It won't exactly feel good, however (unlike the nearly transcendent 'Meditations').

More or less, you can try most any of the later year Coltrane for the nifty free-jazz experience (aka: post-Love Supreme - the ones you have are pre-Love Supreme).

But, I know what you mean by "What's the fuss about this free-jazz I've read so much about?" and...with that :

I'd also try some Cecil Taylor. Now, HE is what I truly call avant-garde (wild/wacky/free-jazz). Cecil might just flat-out "blow your mind" (if that's what you're looking for in jazz form). Try Cecil circa 1966 ('Unit Structure') throughout/on up to around 1979 ('3 Phasis') and most inbetween (some of which is solo piano/some of which with band - the two mentioned as bookends are with band - so, be careful with that, taste according...personally, I kind of enjoy schizophrenic solo piano playing, but...it does have a more limited range than with band accompaniment).

Search: A Love Supreme (definitely his best, I would say), Crescent, and Meditations, just to name three off the top of my head. Meditations might take a bit to get accustomed to that one. The one with Johnny Hartman doing vocals is a nice, laid-back one.

Destroy: The later Village Vanguard album (with his final band) was a bit too out there for me.

We like it because it's great. I wonder if this doesn't suggest that there is something else other than jazz's complexity which turns some of us off to most of it? "Giant Steps" (the title track) tends to make me laugh. I like it's exuberance. He sounds like he's really enjoying himself playing it, but there's room for us to share the amusement. I'm still not sure I understand what "playing the changes" really means.

When you solo in straight-ahead jazz, the notes you play will generally reflect the harmonic structure of the song -- i.e. the chords. In tonal songs that are harmonically simple, the palette of "key notes" you have to choose from remains largely the same from chord to chord, so that at any given moment there are particular pitches that you can use as touchstones or "common tones", feeling pretty sure they won't dissonate. (For instance, if you're playing a very basic B-flat blues, the notes B-flat, C, E-flat, F, and G are all "safe" in that they're present in the scales that underlie all of the chords in a B-flat blues -- B-flat 7, E-flat 7, and F7. However, a solo made up of only those notes will likely be terrible, not least because it excludes "chord-defining" pitches and can't convey any sense of harmonic motion.)

The thing that makes the title track of Giant Steps so unusual is that the chords are changing very rapidly, and each chord is fairly remote from the previous one, so those touchstones are quite few. On top of that, the song is so fast that any given common tone is fleeting -- if you play a particular pitch for longer than a measure or so, the odds are that it will clash with a chord that's changing underneath you. So basically, the experience of improvising over "Giant Steps" can feel a little like trying to play catch in one of those gyroscopic whirlythings in which they train astronauts -- your frame of reference is constantly changing, and you have to think ahead at high speed in order to make sure that each of your choices will connect with where you're going to be in two seconds.

Given all that, the fact that Coltrane was able to play melodic and memorable solos in such a context is really remarkable, let alone the fact that he played them with total mastery. He didn't just plow his way through the chords, he weaved them into the fabric of his improvisation in such a way that, while they were integral to his solo and completely implicit in it (i.e. you can reconstruct the chord changes from his unaccompanied solo), he wasn't at all governed by them: he wasn't just running down the changes, he was using them as one would use a blues or "I Got Rhythm" changes or any other ground. In other words, he made the seemingly unnatural sound natural, even effortless, and in doing so he normalized a new part of human musical experience. It would've been incredibly easy to make "Giant Steps" sound like a gimmick, but Coltrane's sheer mastery made it seem instead like an open door, full of possibilities for new harmonic approaches that both he and others -- and anyone willing to listen and work hard -- could explore.

I really like the concert performance, especially Jimmy Garrion's solos in the third movement. Coltrane also plays a lot more noisily compared to the studio version, which I tend to enjoy. The sextet takes were a dissapointment. Shepp seems to be interrupting most of the time.

and then coltrane is playing his scales like crazy, garrison just fades. its a slow fade, I'm trying to listen to him but even the tape hiss is making more noise at the end and when coltrane does his bit is the turn of pharoah sanders/rashied ali/alice coltrane trio. I don't whether Alice knows what to do really...you keep hearing those piano notes but it gets harder to pay any attention to her and she sounds as if she was taken aback, only ali can keep up with sanders, they are just so 'in tune' with each other. Pharoah sanders' solo is just a thing of beauty...he starts off playing these 'sorrowful' notes but gradually he becomes keeps squealing and blowing so hard that he actually transforms the alto to some sort synth but there's no 'common logic' (its some other sort of logic) to what he's playing (unlike a lot of 'warp' type stuff)...anyway, sanders/Ali make this track.

Coltrane comes back and he and sanders throw little sax lines at the each to round off with Ali to round it all off.

If a live album's purpose is to make you wish you were there then this fulfills that purpose.

but historically - and vital for understanding "a love supreme" properly - you need to hear his '57 recordings with monk.

I'm still mad at the uncut reviewer who wrote a review of the last concert. it was basically: 'Free jazz is not my bag so don't bother'.

excuse my unpolished previous post on this.

what do other people think of 'infinity'? i've been thinking about starting a thread about it, but i guess this'll do. for me the strings = classic, but i can see how the cd piss a lot of people off.

I was looking for the live in japan 4CD box (it is a 4CD box yes?) but I couldn't find it at tower. must stop by HMV sometime.

That Ahsley Khan bk abt ALS is worth getting just for the pic of Ayler playing at JC's funeral - never seen that shot B4.

H*V doesn't have the 'Live in Japan' box, Julio - it must be out of print. In general, the collapse of the revived Impulse label has kind of left late period Coltrane reissues in limbo - now wld be a gd time to snap 'em up (or wait until the next set of superduper deluxe whatsits)

grebt review of the book there andrew!

thanks for that andrew. so Impulse went down then that's a shame. The coltrane rack at tower was looking a bit 'empty' (though they are closing now but still).

I'm gonna try and get what's there i think.

i have a question concerning the mixing quality of the album though. the cd i have has both saxes on the right channel and the drums on the left. the stereo sound is totally unbalanced as the saxes are so much louder than the rest. i always put the balance knob to the maximum level for the left channel. otherwise my right ear would get harmed when i put up the volume so that i can hear something from the left speaker. is that normal?

people used to put lots of effort into thinking and talking about actual records here, didn't they. well.

http://www.kompaktkiste.de/cd/_artist/coltrane/254646.jpg

Coltrane bassist r.i.p.

Art Davis, 73; known for mastery of the bass, also was a psychologist

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, LA Times Staff Writer
August 4, 2007

Art Davis, the renowned double bassist who played with John Coltrane and other jazz greats, was blacklisted in the 1970s for speaking up about racism in the music industry, and then later in life earned a doctorate in clinical psychology and balanced performance dates with appointments to see patients, has died. He was 73.

Davis, a player whom jazz critic Nat Hentoff once described as "an astonishing player" and "beyond category," died of a heart attack Sunday at his home in Long Beach, said his son Kimaili Davis.

"He was adventurous with his approach to playing music," said pianist Nate Morgan, who played with the elder Davis intermittently over the last 10 years. "It takes a certain amount of integrity to step outside the box and say, 'I like it here and I'm going to hang here for a while.' "

Known for his stunning and complete mastery of the instrument, Davis was able to genre-hop comfortably. He played classical music with the New York Philharmonic, was a member of the NBC, Westinghouse and CBS orchestras, and played for Broadway shows.

The most intense and enriching experience of Davis' career was his collaboration with John Coltrane. Described by Hentoff as Coltrane's favorite bassist, Davis performed on the saxophonist's albums including "Ascension," Volumes 1 and 2 of "The Africa/Brass Sessions" and "Ole Coltrane." The two musicians met one night in the late 1950s at Small's Paradise, a jazz club in Harlem, where Davis was playing with drummer Max Roach. Coltrane invited Davis to play with him the following morning at one of his legendary grueling practice sessions.

A few years later, when Coltrane was building his quartet, he invited Davis to join. By then he had become averse to touring and so declined, although he periodically played with the group.

Davis viewed his instrument as "the backbone of the band," one that should "inspire the group by proposing harmonic information with a certain sound quality and rhythmic impulses," Davis said in an excerpt from So What magazine posted on his website. "You let the bass do the talking. A bassist cannot be satisfied with playing straight." By following his own advice, Davis' career flourished. He played with a long and varied list of artists: Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, John Denver, the trio Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan.

Pianist Ahmad Jamal once dubbed Davis the "forgotten genius" because the outspoken bassist had been blacklisted for many years. Davis' decision to take a stand against racism was born of his experiences in music.

Davis began studying piano at age 5 in Harrisburg, Pa., where he was born Dec. 5, 1933. By sixth grade Davis studied the tuba in school simply because it was the only instrument available, he said.

By 1951 he decided to make music his career but chose the double bass, believing it would allow more opportunities to make a living. At age 17 he studied with the principal double bassist at the Philadelphia Orchestra. But when he auditioned for his hometown's symphony, the audition committee was so unduly harsh and demanding that the conductor Edwin MacArthur questioned their objectivity.

"The answer was, 'Well, he's ['colored']' — and there was silence," Davis recalled in a 2002 article in Double Bassist magazine. "Finally MacArthur burst out, 'If you don't want him, then you don't want me.' So they quickly got together and accepted me." After high school, Davis studied classical music on scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music. At night he played jazz in New York clubs.

"It all sounded good to me — and I felt I could do a number of different fields," he told Double Bassist. "I was of one the first to switch back and forth from jazz to classical."

But the switch was not always an easy one. Davis encountered situations where race was more important than performance. In the 1970s, his fortunes waned after he filed an unsuccessful discrimination lawsuit against the New York Philharmonic. Like other black musicians who challenged job hiring practices, he lost work and important industry connections.

"As a person, he had enormous integrity," Hentoff said in an interview this week. "He wouldn't bend to accommodate bias or the ignorance of some of the people in the music business."

With less work coming his way, Davis returned to school and in 1981 earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from New York University. Davis was for many years a practicing psychologist while also working as a musician.

"I went up against the big power people and lost 10 years of my life. I feel vindicated [through his court case], and I wouldn't be a Dr. Art Davis if it hadn't happened," he told Double Bassist.

As a result of his lawsuit and protest, Davis played a key role in the increased use of the so-called blind audition, in which musicians are heard but not seen by those evaluating them, Hentoff said.

The accomplished musician also pioneered a fingering technique for the bass and wrote "The Arthur Davis System for Double Bass."

Davis also wore the hat of university professor; for two years he taught at UC Irvine. Most recently Davis was a part-time music instructor at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. He could be regularly heard on Sundays at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel. Among musicians, Davis was highly respected for his work and his role in the Coltrane legacy.

"And he always had a great attitude, no matter what kind of music we were playing or how difficult the circumstances were," said Jan Jordan, the pianist who played with Davis at the Ritz.

"He always reached out to people in the audience."

:(

rip

RIP, a remarkable man.

Phil's explanation of "playing the changes" on this thread is so clear and to the point -- it sheds a lot of light in three short paragraphs.

As close to a God to me as anything I hold dear. Sincerely. God schmod.

RIP indeed...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/findagrave/photos/2001/222/coltranejohn2.jpg

Looks like the AP and NY Times just found out about Art Davis.

for the "far out free jazz" type stuff, just look for anything from 1964 to 1967 (the year he died)

my favorites are a love supreme, one down one up (recently released live recording with a long insane title track solo), interstellar space, stellar regions (this one was unreleased until the 90s or something, it's awesome), and live in japan (4 cd set with intense long ass songs).

hate when ppl say blue train is 'boring'

yeah the solo on blue train is awesome

more like BLUE LAME

j/k

I did get that "Live In Japan" box -- quite an interesting, disjointed group that came up with some pretty corrosive passages. xp

Is there somebody speaking in tongues during Tyner's solo on "My Favorite Things" from New Thing at Newport??

What the hell is that? Thought it was bowed bass, but you can hear pizz clearly. Is it maybe Trane just puttering? I really can't tell.

Yeah, that is 'Trane doing his basso profundo incantating.

heheh "Search And Destroy John Coltrane" sounds like the heading to a Philip Larkin jazz review!

any AWESOME books I should read about Coltrane?

Not yet read it myself, but this is meant to be v. gd and is likely the easiest to find:

Coltrane

Africa/Brass (shite Greensleeves is on it, but...

omar u crazy! it's a beautiful start to A/B, if a weird choice.

...he tells omar 6 years later

Is there somebody speaking in tongues during Tyner's solo on "My Favorite Things" from New Thing at Newport??

I've found that usually muttering that sounds like "speaking in tongues" on live jazz recordings is the sound of the pianist or drummer vocalizing as they play, and the close proximity of the mics picking it up. Not having heard that piece in a while, I suspect that it's Tyner. You can hear Bud Powell, and countless other pianists doing the same thing. I'd posit that there's nothing particularly spiritual or mystical about it.

i always thought the muttering was elvin jones, though now that you mention it, i'm not sure why i assumed that ... but uhhh yeah, that Coltrane book by Ratliff is pretty solid. Not the same ol same ol Coltrane is God kinda stuff, but a fresh ears approach.

Is there somebody speaking in tongues during Tyner's solo on "My Favorite Things" from New Thing at Newport??

I haven't heard the recording in question, but as someone who was forced to go to Pentecostal church for 17 years, does it sound like "SHA la la la la la Fie sha lala, sha lie COM la la la la la, fie sha la la com lie"? Because that's what speaking in tongues sounds like.

meditations WOW! nothing else to say, just have the feeling this is becoming my favorite album

yeah, Meditations. I put it on one Sunday morning, knowing little about Coltrane; halfway through the first song I was screaming and in tears (in an awesome way, if that makes any sense)---was happy no one else was around.

lol that makes perfect sense actually and would probably be a compliment to all of these guys except elvin jones who i understand didn't care for this thing at all. luckily you can't tell

whenever this thread opens and I see "Blue Train...boring as fuck" I'm like whaaaaa? I understand that it has a weird, maybe slightly overrated status being Coltrane's only Blue Note record, but uhhh, that record is not boring!

but, i can see how someone whose fave bands are Beefheart and the Stooges maybe not being a fan. i think it's one of the best "late-night" listens i own

The "Crescent" on disk 2 of Live In Japan, from 1966, is incredible! Alice's piano interlude achieves liftoff without losing the groove.

Can't believe no-one has mentioned Olé in this thread

I can't imagine any Beefheart fan not appreciating Coltrane. Beefheart certainly did, though he was quoted most referring to Coleman and Ayler.

After A Love Supreme:

My Favorite Things (Atlantic) 60
Crescent (Impulse) 64
Meditations (Impulse) 65
First Meditations (For Quartet) (Impulse) 65
Transition (Impulse) 65
Giant Steps (Atlantic) 59
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (Impulse) 65
Ole Coltrane (Atlantic) 61
Coltrane Plays The Blues (Atlantic) 60
Coltrane (Impulse) 62
Sun Ship (Impulse) 65
Ballads (Impulse) 61
Africa/Brass (Impulse) 61
John Coltrane With Johnny Hartman (Impulse) 63
Impressions (Impulse) 63
Coltrane Live At Birdland (Impulse) 63
Live At The Village Vanguard (Impulse) 61
Newport '63 (Impulse!) 63
The Avant-Garde (Atlantic) 60
Blue Train (Blue Note) 57
Coltrane's Sound (Atlantic) 60
Coltrane Jazz (Atlantic) 59
Soultrane (OJC/Prestige) 58
Black Pearls (OJC/Fantasy) 58
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane (Impulse) 62

Destroy: nothing

yeah, Meditations. I put it on one Sunday morning, knowing little about Coltrane; halfway through the first song I was screaming and in tears (in an awesome way, if that makes any sense)---was happy no one else was around.

― begs the question, when is enough enough (Euler), Friday, 5 March 2010 19:53 (4 months ago)

whoa

yeah, Meditations. I put it on one Sunday morning, knowing little about Coltrane; halfway through the first song I was screaming and in tears

Stubbed your toe on the way back from the CD player?

i haven't made it to those later-period live recordings (like LIve in Japan) yet ... the recording quality is good? is it radio broadcasts or something?

Live In Japan quality is v. good

meditations is basically the best record ever made by humans on earth

that said, the vastly underrated "stellar regions" is probably my favorite in the realm of ~coltrane records~ vs. whatever pantheonical land meditations inhabits

was checking out a new collected Coltrane interviews thing in the bookstore this week. amazing how chill the guy was, considering some of the music he made. seems almost ridiculously down to earth.

I like "First Meditations" a lot

Recent favorites are Ole:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hN5JpIG0B0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsIOgLp5rlU

and Alabama (this is live version but you get the point):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j_TDoOPnIA

Does anyone have the Prestige Box Sets - Fearless Leader, Interplay or Side Steps? Worth picking up?

i have 'em. some great stuff, also some very so-so, under-rehearsed blowing session-type stuff. I'd say Fearless Leader is the best of the lot.

Yeah, I have all three, too. I agree that Fearless Leader is the best one, but each has plenty to recommend it. I find myself listening to '50s Coltrane more often than '60s Coltrane these days; sometimes you just want to hear a dude with incredible talent playing melodic, easily-understood and -enjoyed music rather than listening to that same incredibly talented dude Brillo-ing his soul in front of you.

yeah, true. one essential thing that's included on Interplay is the Kenny Burrell collab album. Great from start to finish.

Love the Coltrane/Burrell record. Otherwise I agree his Prestige work was inconsistent but has some great moments. A couple of tracks that come to mind are Good Bait and Goldsboro Express.

Wow. How did I never hear Olé before? It's brilliant.

All the Atlantic stuff is top notch. Used to own the Complete Prestige set but sold it because it was never getting played. It wasn't bad, just nothing compared to the Atlantic and Impulse stuff.

Wow. How did I never hear Olé before? It's brilliant.

I know, right?

meditations is basically the best record ever made by humans on earth

Yes.
yes, it is.

Kind of ashamed I never got around to some of the later material until recently. Sun Ship and Interstellar Space are so incredible.

eh, no reason to be ashamed. i'm holding off on the later stuff, just because i'm scared of not having any more coltrane albums to discover!

Giant Steps still rules and is a permanent feature on my mp3 player. Need to get my hands on Olé and the Kenny Burrell collab. What's so great about the latter?

latter is great just to hear coltrane in a different context -- pretty much the only time he really played with a guitarist, i think? some of it is straightforward late 50s hard bop, but really good straightforward late 50s hard bop. highlight is the coltrane/burrell duet on "why was i born" which is insanely pretty.

I listened to Bags & Trane for the first time tonight.... what an unrelenting set of performances. It's like they are trying to top each other with every new solo.

have never really given the ascension and later period a chance but it's on the list.

I remember always hearing about how Tyner and Jones didn't like the direction Coltrane was going in toward the end, and there's all this tension in the late quartet recordings that I think actually makes for amazing music. I wonder if there's something to that -- Money Jungle has a similar sense of tension and struggle. I also remember hearing about how Keith Jarrett hated playing the Rhodes in the beginning, and he sounds so great on it on Miles records.

latter is great just to hear coltrane in a different context -- pretty much the only time he really played with a guitarist, i think?
― tylerw

excellent will have to check. totally into my jazz guitarists at the mo, particularly sonny sharrock on the herbie mann album and john mclaughlin on the jack johnson sessions.

(not that i'm comparing kenny b. to the guitarists above of course)

ha, yeah, was gonna say -- don't expect that kind of stuff from the burrell/coltrane record!

Someone kinda touched on this upthread, but I"m curious...listening to Live At Birdland this afternoon and during Alabama, I swear I'm hearing a human voice muttering faintly in the background. Right around the 2 minute mark and goes on for like 30 seconds.

Is that Elvin Jones or McCoy Tyner giving instructions or something? Any jazzheads able to offer some insight?

...and now I'm hearing that same "sound" all over Your Lady. What am I hearing?!

crowd noise? or, elvin does grunt and vocalize a lot to himself when he's playing. i don't remember it coming through on that record, but haven't listened to it in a long time.

It sounds too consistent to be crowd noise. Also, these are the two studio tracks on the album. So I'm gonna pretend like it's Elvin for now. At least until I can put some headphones on and really listen.

These two songs, btw...is there anything better?!

I bizarrely worded Googs search sent me to this:
Jazz pianists who make weird humming noises during their improvisations

haha...

you can hear him doing it pretty clearly during the drum solo near the end of this (killer) duet w/richard davis, like around 7:10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uMk0aKMpqQ

That's definitely similar to what I"m hearing on Alabama and Your Lady. Cool.

I always assumed that was Jimmy Garrison; you can hear him singing along with some of his solos.

Been meaning to check out the Elvin/Richard Davis collabo forever, thanks.

(Also will rep for this Richard Davis album
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IyDZgXq8QH0/SzZFIOoRtfI/AAAAAAAADoc/vpwNkSUGRVc/s400/Richard+Davis+-+Now
although I don't think Jordan likes the drummer too much)

Need to read the other thread again, but the thing about the humming is, always wonder how loud does the source have to be and where does the microphone have to be placed and what pattern does it have to have for it to be so audible to the listener? Although maybe I already said that on other thread three years ago.

although I don't think Jordan likes the drummer too much)

really, did i say something against freddie waits at some point? honestly not too familiar with his playing, i only know it from this crazy live freddie hubbard record. nasheet is great though.

So... Ascension Edition I or II..?

Let's Save John Coltrane's House
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03sun4.html?_r=2

Would Ravi Coltrane be worth seeing? He's coming to Toronto soon. I don't know any of his music, but the thought of seeing Coltrane's son is inherently powerful to me. (In a way that Julian Lennon and Jakob Dylan never were.) I didn't even know he had a son who was out there playing music.

I saw him a few years back and he was pretty good. He closed the show with a Giant Steps that he dedicated to his mother who had just died recently. And it was definitely powerful in a way.

Definitely go. Who is he playing with?

Christine Jensen Quartet. It's very tempting--I didn't realize it was coming up so fast, though.

http://performance.rcmusic.ca/event/ravi-coltrane-quintet-and-christine-jensen-quartet-featuring-ingrid-jensen

Definitely go. Ingrid Jensen is great too. I've seen her with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. Haven't seen or heard her sister though.

Today's his birthday; 24-hour birthday broadcast today on WKCR.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/370773643959

if i had $115,000 ... i'd probably do something else with it. but pretty cool!

i wouldn't pay more than 85k for an alto wtf

Sun Ship: The Complete Session

!!!!!

great record...some of these alts showed up a little while back, but i'm sure this release will sound better: http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1205

the Big O boot definitely makes me want to hear the complete sessions.

I could listen to 20 takes of the title track.

Yeah, I dl'd those outtakes, love it.

Weirdly, this is being touted as the only complete session by the Quartet in existence. Did Impulse throw a bunch of stuff away that they shouldn't have?

just turned sun ship on. so killer. i think a lot of the impulse stuff was lost at some point? at least that's what they said, there seem to be new discoveries regularly.
lol at how incomplete the "complete classic quartet on impulse" box set is by now.

the end of "attaining" goes so deep.

There seems to be very little material by the final quintet, I thought there were several studio dates as well as some live stuff. Just not sure what & what is still available.
I have live in Japan & I think still Expression somewhere though not played it in years & used to have the 2nd Village Vanguard on vinyl.
So what is there & what actually worked out right?

Other than that I really like him around about '62 live. The material captured on Afro Blue Impressions was one of my introductions and seems to be pretty classic, by most standards if not his. Really expansive without being too noisy. Though some noise he made was pretty riveting

this is one of my fave studio things with that later quintet. dueling sanders/coltrane flutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_j0LON3AlQ

OMG WANT COMPLETE SUN SHIP SO BAD!!

Got RAVI Coltrane to autograph my Sun Ship vinyl when he played Toronto w/Elvin Jones back in '91!

would've been 87 today!
pretty good piece on the latter day recordings in the latest arthur magazine. one thing i've been sort of curious about -- this article (and others) talk about coltrane doing lots of LSD at some point, 65-66. but i've never read where that factoid comes from -- did band members confirm it, or ...? i dunno, i guess it just seems out of character for the former heroin addict to suddenly be dropping acid.

The only thing I'd read about Trane doing LSD was that he (and supposedly the rest of the band) dropped acid before/for the recording of Om. I think it's bullshit, myself. Trane would periodically do "cleanses" and not eat sometimes for days; someone that careful/health conscious was not likely to backslide (as he might have seen it) and do acid.

yeah i think it's that album and Live In Seattle (which were recorded right around the same time) that people say he and the band were dropping acid. wishful hippie thinking or something?
researching this important info, i came across this:

In July of 1996, the group Sun City Girls billed an upcoming show with the headline "Sun City Girls play John Coltrane's Live in Seattle". One third of the group, Alan Bishop, had this to say of the concert: "Charlie Gocher [SCG drummer] researched the place in Seattle where John Coltrane did the session for the making of that record and it ended up it was turned into an Indian restaurant. He asked the current owners if we could do a show there and the people agreed to it. In further research, by talking to the original engineer, we found out that Coltrane and the other musicians were tripping on acid for that show. So the place was packed and we appeared on stage holding our instruments. Before we hit a note we put the instruments down and went over to a record player and put on side 1 of the actual John Coltrane record, flipped it over to side 2 and then said goodnight. I didn't think it was deceiving - we just did exactly what we advertised."

which is pretty lol, but i guess they're saying the original engineer told them about the LSD intake.
here's a bit more:
Lavezzoli, Peter (April 2006). The Dawn of Indian Music in the West: Bhairavi. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 285. "Coltrane had begun experimenting with LSD during this time, in order to inverstigate its ability to access new levels of consciousness. It has long been rumored that Coltrane was under the influence of the drug while recording Om, and while this has never fully been corroborated, it would almost make sense, as the recording sounds disjointed and hallucinatory, almost as though Coltrane is not in full control of his normal faculties... the opening chant is followed by some of the most dissonant and paint-peeling shrieks on any Coltrane recording. Whether or not Coltrane was on LSD when recording this piece, it is perhaps not the most suitable for listening while on LSD, as the music communicates an intense feeling of unrest."

Ha, I read about the Sun City Girls thing. But they only played half of it! It's a double record!

I dunno, though, I still don't really believe Trane dropped acid. There's no other reported instance of him taking it, and yet his playing still developed along the trajectory suggested by Live In Seattle/Om -- musically, those aren't isolated incidents, nor are they out of nowhere/without precedent in his catalog.

No one's ever claimed he was tripping on his 1966 Japanese tour, or during Ascension (which preceded Om) or Meditations or Interstellar Space.

yeah i don't really believe it either, especially if it's just hearsay -- like someone listened to Live In Seattle and was like "these dudes must've been on acid!" and now it's repeated as if a fact. can we get pharoah sanders to settle this?

Dude had co-top-billing on the original issue!
http://w.mawebcenters.com/static/ecommerce/84/84222/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/c/o/coltraneseattlefront.jpg

nice. that record is pretty nuts, lsd or not.
coltrane is a mysterious dude though... reading any interviews with him, it's hard to reconcile this mellow, un-pretentious dude with some of the music he made. maybe he played up some of the aw shucks stuff when talking to the press.

I think he felt a little burned by the press ("anti-jazz," "hate music" and such) and probably saw interviews as something of a chore/necessary evil, depending on the interviewer. He seemed to open up slightly more to Frank Kofsky, though.

I studied with one of Coltrane's contemporaries who knew John a little. Apparently John never had a single negative word to say about any other musician, and was sometimes impossibly stoic in the face of things like a drunken Elvin Jones ranting backstage about not getting paid for a benefit show and calling Coltrane several kinds of motherfucker loudly and to his face.

The books I've read mention the constant LSD usage in his final years as a matter of fact but no one does actually come out and confirm it except anonymously. Said books do tend to gloss over the last years in general, though, as he kept a relatively low profile at the end. It seems pretty believable to me, heroin is quite a different substance in every possible way!

I can easily imagine him, a VERY enlightened and open minded dude, hearing about this new LSD thing, this supposedly spiritual/enlightening drug, trying it and when it worked more or less as advertised, continuing to use it from time to time... it's MUCH harder for me to imagine a hard-core heroin addict John than a John who does LSD sometimes!!

Happy birthday, John!

That's a tremendous record, though, yeah. One of my favorites of his. I had a cassette dub of the vinyl, which fades out on one side and fades in on the other for the longer pieces. When I was taping it I flipped over the wrong side (it was one of those sides 1 & 4, sides 2 & 3 dealies) and landed smack dab in the middle of the vocal screams. That was...jarring.

xxp

no doubt that heroin and LSD are very different drugs, but still, just seems like a dude who had been way down in the addiction hole wouldn't suddenly be just like "oh hey let's do this new drug!"

WKCR birthday broadcast:
http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/john-coltrane-birthday-broadcast-monday-september-23rd

Right now it sounds like the 1966 Temple University show, which I coincidentally listened to for the first time last night. Stands up favorably to the Japan recordings, and arguably superior to the Olatunji Center record (definitely superior soundwise).

Dunno why the 'trane-does-acid thing is so hard to believe. Ornette admitted taking it "several times" in Four Lives In The Bebop Business, and I once read somewhere his claim that it was Coltrane who introduced him to it.

is that right? i dunno, it's not like it's out of the realm of possibility, i was just reading all these things that referred to coltrane's "acid" period w/o really giving any actual quotes / references, just a lot of "supposedly"s and "allegedly"s. if ornette says he dropped acid w/ coltrane i believe him.

it's not bullshit, and it's not hearsay

“Trane took acid. No doubt about it,” shrugs his biographer Lewis Porter. “Plenty of people talked to me about his heroin and alcohol use, though all four who talked to me confirming his acid experience wanted it off the record. I don’t know why that’s so scary. JC Thomas [author of Chasin’ The Trane, the first published book-length biography] wrote that he was tripping either at the time or around the time that he recorded Om [6 October 1965]. Apparently he did a lot of LSD during the last period of his life. Some people have used that against him – that explains why his late music is so crazy.

from the Wire

not surprising to me at all that the jazz community at large would be cool with heroin/alcohol and not LSD

why do they want it off the record, i wonder? at this point, who cares?

xp
Also, LSD hadn't really been demonized at that time I don't think, so maybe he saw it as a legitimate consciousness-expanding tool.

why do they want it off the record, i wonder? at this point, who cares?

Porter doesn't name names there so it's hard to guess motivations - maybe they don't want to sully his post-junkie phase with the spectre of additional drug use, maybe they don't want whether or not LSD was in the picture to factor into how the music is received, maybe they just don't like LSD. I would think Alice would have spoken up about this at some point but I can't find any quotes.

but when I say it's not surprising I just mean that in jazz heroin and booze were de rigeur (hey, who *didn't* have a junkie phase! Monk probably? Sun Ra lol), they were part of the package/mystique from the beginning, going back to Charlie Parker and probably before that even (although I don't think Armstrong ever copped to anything stronger than weed). But LSD was different, a drug for white kids, just like that horrible rock music...

I can easily imagine him, a VERY enlightened and open minded dude, hearing about this new LSD thing, this supposedly spiritual/enlightening drug, trying it and when it worked more or less as advertised, continuing to use it from time to time... it's MUCH harder for me to imagine a hard-core heroin addict John than a John who does LSD sometimes!!

yea otm! my impression also is that LSD may not have really been seen as a drug the same way heroin was. LSD opened up your mind. it didn't bring down in a hole.

ditto for cannabis -- i feel like almost everybody in the sixties jazz world smoked cannabis? i don't have a whole lot of backing for either of these impressions though

I have no reason to doubt that it's true at this point, given Porter's quote. But yeah, this is key:

Some people have used that against him – that explains why his late music is so crazy.

For Trane admirers/late-period detractors like Crouch or Marsalis, acid is the most convenient explanation imaginable for why/how Trane went where he did (despite the trajectory of his work leading in that direction anyway).

but when I say it's not surprising I just mean that in jazz heroin and booze were de rigeur (hey, who *didn't* have a junkie phase! Monk probably? Sun Ra lol)

That was the thing about Trane going clean: beyond cleaning up, his playing went to another level altogether, and musicians who thought junk went hand-in-hand with being a great musician had to re-think that. There were few, if any, junkies among the leaders of the New Thing (I can't think of any off the top of my head), and it was largely due to Trane's example.

Didn't heroin in jazz disappear in general in the '60s?

Moved over to rock iirc

i dunno if it disappeared, but it probably became less the thing to do for the younger players. but i think bill evans was addicted for quite some time in the 60s.

Oh yeah, forgot about him. Chet Baker too prolly

and to bring it back to coltrane, i believe that elvin jones was a pretty major user for a while there too? might be misremembering.

He was, and part of that was while he was with Trane. I don't know when exactly he kicked, though.

Actually, wait, he probably kicked in '63, as that's when he was in the federal drug prison in Lexington, and Roy Haynes subbed for him.

oh is that why haynes is on a couple coltrane records from then (newport?)? didn't know that. it is interesting to hear coltrane w/o jones.

man Baker was a junkie for a looooong time

Ooh, forgot about the Coltrane w/Haynes period

but when I say it's not surprising I just mean that in jazz heroin and booze were de rigeur (hey, who *didn't* have a junkie phase! Monk probably? Sun Ra lol)

i think Mingus skipped the junkie phase though he got into coke later on.

fwiw never much liked coltrane with haynes

yeah i mean coltrane and jones are pretty unbeatable, but I like the newport disc with haynes.

That one had the first versh of "My Favourite Things" I ever heard - pretty weird hearing Haynes discard most of the waltz-time aspects

I really like Haynes' playing with the quartet. In a way, it shouldn't work -- because so much of the volume and intensity was down to Jones -- but it's fascinating how it does.

listened to the original My Favorite Things LP last night -- sort of thing i should probably be tired of hearing but I never am.

^^ the tyner chords on that records are so huge.

it's weird to me how controversial the New Thing was, incl Coltrane's willingness to go with it. I'm listening to "Change of the Century" and the "Shape of Things to Come" now for instance, and on the surface they don't seem that far apart from other things going on at the time, sonically it's just not really that jarring to hear these right after "Kind of Blue", for example. I get that there were structural and performative differences that were pretty radical to jazz-heads at the time but with the benefit of hindsight these things seem more like logical progressions rather than radical transgressions. Granted once we get to "Free Jazz" or "Ascension" the differences become a bit more stark...

I sometimes wonder which aspect was more difficult to accept: Ornette's harmonic freedom or the free-time innovations of Sunny Murray or whoever

got to be the latter

yeah, if anything, Ornette was kind of the "pain-free dentist" of free jazz

The thing is, in the bop era, it was all about navigating insane chord changes in the blink of an eye. Once Ornette came along and said "enough of that," it was seen as a slap in the face to everything a lot of these musicians had spent their lives working on.

It's like Bill Dixon said: "Well, these guys, it's taken them years to learn how to pick out 'I Got Rhythm', on the piano and now, the new music comes along and undermines their entire career, which is built around understanding tunes based on it."

I think once metric time had been dispensed with, it wasn't quite as shocking, since by then conventional harmony, melody, phrasing, and tone had already been thrown out the window.

lol at pain-free dentist

Can anyone help me? I have a copy of Kulu Se Mama which turned up in a bunch of vinyl belonging to my parents. Neither are big free jazz fans but my grandfather liked a bit of jazz now and again so maybe it came from him.
Anyway i put it on the player and on side one, rather than being the title track I'm pretty sure it's actually playing 'Om', not Kulu Se Mama, so this must be some sort of misprint? Also it's on HMV/ EMI label, not Impulse or MCA. Can't find a trace of this being released on Discogs. So can anyone shine a light on what the heck this is?

Om takes up two sides of a record; does the second side fade in (and sound like the first side)?

"Om" begins with percussion (incl. kalimba) and bandmembers reciting in unison the speech that ends with "... I am he who awards to each the fruit of his action. I make all things clean. I am Om!", whereas "Kulu Se Mama" begins with a single drum and recitation in some African tongue, including the title phrase.

Oh hai I am the clarified butter

Yep, it's definitely Om on the first side, but the label and cover both say Kulu Se Mama. Not sure about the second side. A bit more digging threw up that this is a misprinted copy that got recalled, but I can only find one reference to it on the internet.

What, am I quids-in or what here?

Like Tarfumes said, both sides of "OM" basically sound the same. 2nd side of KSM would have two separate under-ten-minute tracks.

Om also ends with the same recitation it begins with.

Have you checked Popsike or collectorsfrenzy?

If you peel off the cover is there a picture of Coltrane in a butcher's smock with a cleaver and some bloody dolls?

^^ nice one!

Checked all the sites mentioned and there's little-to-no info.

can you post a short video with music from both sides?

yeah when i get home i shall do that.

Here go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLminRDx5gw

Bump.

Having spoken to a few people, I'm kind of convinced this is most probably a rarity. But what to do with it? I'm not a very confident eBay user...

Side 2 is definitely the continuation/2nd part of Om.

This just sounds like half of a British vinyl version of this:

http://www.amazon.com/Major-Works-John-Coltrane-Selflessness/dp/B000003N6C

There are lots and lots of vinyl repackagings of Coltrane's stuff. Unless they contain material unavailable elsewhere, they're not generally worth very much at all.

WF, but it's not that - the label/cover is clearly Kulu Se Mama, but the music is Om.

Well, I'm guessing the market for mis-labelled British Coltrane issues of commonly available material is not especially fierce, but am happy to be proved wrong when you sell it for a mint on ebay.

haha, cool. i know next to nothing about how much stuff goes for, so i'm curious. don't expect to make a fortune but it's interesting all the same.

I started a thread on the Steve Hoffman forums asking about this. Only one reply so far, but it said that unless the music was previously unreleased, a mislabeled record isn't worth a lot (or at least, not appreciably more than an error-free copy of the same record).

So, depending on condition, probably around 30 pounds/$50.

Cheers. Well that's a fair bit to me.

good longread here: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/06/03/an-absolute-truth-on-writing-a-life-of-coltrane/

This is a tremendous and fascinating story; thanks so much for posting!

i've never read that book, but really want to now. i thinnnk my library might have it? seems to be sort of hard to come by, even the reprint.

that's a really cool story

Yeah, great piece - thanks for the link!

All-day birthday broadcast today:
http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/john-coltrane-birthday-broadcast

I know it just came out today but anyone heard "Offering" yet? (wasn't Christian Vander's post-Magma band called Offering?) I have a boot of half the show but curious to hear anyone's heard the "new" thing.

Also, HBD JC

My work firewall seems to prevent me listening to WKCR's stream for some reason. Weird because I can always get FMU. Oh well.

Ugh, I know, I'm not able to get this at work, either.

One of the highlights will be an Evan Parker interview between 7-10 eastern tonight. That should be interesting.

I've had Offering for a couple of months. Considering it was recorded with a single microphone, it sounds amazing; the engineers recovered way more sound than I thought they'd have been able to, though you'll never be able to convince me there was actually a bassist present that night. Musically, it's really strong, though a couple of nobodies wander onstage and start soloing - and Coltrane lets them. Totally worth hearing if you're already a diehard, though not recommended for new fans.

Can't even listen on my phone w/ cell data.

Finally got the stream going, Marion Brown just finished his solo on "Ascension."

How much of the final Quintet is there recorded and released?
Looking forward to getting my hands on this Offering set but wondering what else is out there both studio and live. Cos I get the feeling they're greatly under-represented and I'm not sure if it's me or what is available by them.

Studio, there isn't much...in fact, strictly speaking, that quintet only made one studio record (Expression). Stellar Regions is also studio, but it's a quartet (no Pharoah).

There's a few live things, though: Live at the Village Vanguard Again!, Live In Japan, and The Olatuniji Concert.

I've only heard the boot of Offering, but it's tremendous, easily on par with Live In Japan, which itself has always been a high-water mark of this music for me.

I thought there was more, or is that just officially released. looks like I've had all of it but the Olatunji concert though I need to get new copies of a couple of things.
Hadn't realised there was no Pharoah on Stellar Regions & I did think there were more studio recordings which had been put out at least posthumously though i didn't know titles. Was that all Quartet stuff?
& Alice reworked some material prior to posthumous release by editing/overdubbing from what I've heard.

Live in Japan is the one Coltrane rec I'd return to.

I did think there were more studio recordings which had been put out at least posthumously though i didn't know titles. Was that all Quartet stuff?

Yeah, most of the posthumous stuff was the Quartet (Sun Ship, Transition, Living Space, First Meditations, others), or some coagulation of the Quartet + others (Live In Seattle, Om).

& Alice reworked some material prior to posthumous release by editing/overdubbing from what I've heard.

I think that's mostly on Cosmic Music, but I've never heard it.

forgot about transition, that's a great fucking record

Infinity is the reworked one (and it's fucking glorious; I wrote about these albums almost exactly a year ago), Cosmic Music is two tracks by John Coltrane's group and two tracks by Alice's.

Infinity is amazing, agreed, I also liked those two tracks on Cosmic Music OK, but I sold it years ago so I must not have *really* liked them

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/oct/04/catastrophic-coltrane/

^ horror show of a review.

You can like or dislike Coltrane's work in this period (defining what it was to be 'in transition' a lot of the time) but its his "confession" around his oh so clever use of the word "catastrophe" that comes off so...ineffectual and weedy. Just leave it there man.

Having skimmed through this thread I guess I am going to have to give Meditations another go!

Anyway, for what its worth, Coltranology Vol 2 is my pick.

https://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3293&action=edit&postpost=v2

is it me or does Coltrane *almost* break into "Happy Birthday" on "Welcome" (from Kulu Se Mama)?

Birthday celebration on back-to-streaming, now-with-playlists WKCR!

Found out last year that my Dad had the same birthday as Coltrane though I think he was at least 12 years younger. Then missed any comment about JC's Birthday this year so missed it.

Rarely see my dad and grew up without him so don't know if i ever knew his birthday

Your dad isn't ilxor... oh never mind.

Didn't know this was on its way--opens in a couple of weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMFNuDJmc1Q

http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/the-tone-circle-john-coltrane-drew-to-illustrate-the-theory-behind-his-most-famous-compositions-1967.html

http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/04/11003129/coltrane-circle-new.jpg

rad

yeah that is wild! hadn't seen it before.

So cool.

I'm curious about the doc becuz of home movies of Trane in a bathrobe, slippers, and pipe playing with his dog, less interested cuz Carlos Santana.

And something I've been wondering lately...are there more tapes of the Live at the Village Vanguard...Again! date? That record can't be everything they played that night is it?

lol santana yeah ... hopefully he's a small part of that doc. still, this shreds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DDwvSTrpj0

don't know about more Again! tapes --seems like they'd've made their way out to the world by now in some form?

Yeah that's what I would have figured...but it isn't exactly a widely loved/known (outside of heads I mean) lp so maybe it's been overlooked? Just that line-up only playing a 40 minute set (with a long bass solo) seems unlikely

I was about to post that santana / mclaughlin track ... imo the best "love supreme" version ever

Best "Love Supreme" cover is Alice's from World Galaxy

i'm sure more was taped — but they've put out lower-fi "previously unheard" Coltrane recordings (like that Olatunji Concert or the One Up One Down CD or the Temple University set). would love a big box set of the 66 vanguard recordings though, mannnnn. i also always wonder how embarrassed everyone else in the band was to be photographed with jimmy garrison on the day the cover photo was taken.
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0003/226/MI0003226957.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/f8/04/d4/f804d4d95e23925fda5a3cd855c8c0ae.jpg
"jimmy we told you we were taking the photo today! this is what you chose to wear?!"

xpost - disagree!

he looks like some kid they just picked up from summer camp

everyone else looking cool as hell!

i like the archimedes badkar version of "love supreme" from their first album

read carlos santana as carlos castañeda and wigged out a little momentarily

"jimmy we told you we were taking the photo today! this is what you chose to wear?!"

"You guys told me we were going to the beach!"

i'm sure more was taped — but they've put out lower-fi "previously unheard" Coltrane recordings
― tylerw, Wednesday, April 12, 2017 4:00 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I pulled out the cd reissue last night and per a very small note from Michael Cuscuna "doubtless more music was played this night but no tapes or paperwork exist" :(

I love Jimmy Garrison's knobby knees! There's a photo from I think the Olatunji concert Garrison's got the same outfit on.

Love that album cover, love that they certainly don't look like they're a face-melting free jazz group

oof if cuscuna couldn't track anything down, it's probably lost forever.
garrison was capable of looking totally cool, of course ...
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fe/da/bc/fedabc85e7af8eb5fa55fd7c8ec0f7dc.jpg

this is also good
https://a1-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/116/49cc16737bb91ad7d90572f9a7839d68/full.jpg

Such great bass player, those long solos from the 65-66 era...unreal

Yeah, honestly, his two ~15-minute bass solos were my favorite parts of the 4CD Live in Japan box set.

Commencement speakers at Bennington College in the early 1970s:

1970 Kurt Vonnegut
1971 Anais Nin
1972 Jimmy Garrison

(I'm told he played a solo rather than give a speech.)

whoa

Every year an upgrade! Tho seriously, whoa

wow

Is the percentage of Coltrane lps that have his image on the front cover normal? Had just been thinking that pretty much all of the ones that were released during his lifetime have him as the cover image. Think there's only 4 or 5 that don't.

Did wonder if there was any reason for that.

Thought a lot of lps from the time had either abstract art or a female model or something.

Live at the Village Vanguard Again might be my favorite album cover ever!

idk, it doesn't feel abnormal to me, but i'm not expert in it! but if you look at like, the discogs pages for coltrane's contemporaries (miles, monk, mingus, ornette, etc.), their late 50s-mid 60s discography is mostly them on the cover.

yeah coltrane started putting out records right when the abstract covers stopped being the norm.

I had just noticed that Interstellar Space which doesn't have him on the cover was several years posthumous when I asked that. But had wondered before.

Should I bother with Chasing Trane? It's playing in a couple weeks, but I'm afraid it's just going to be one of those standard issue talking head "He was a genius. He changed music" type docs.

this was my review, if it helps you decide: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2017/08/free-form-thoughts-on-john-coltrane-and-how-not-to-remember-or-talk-about-him-next-time-maybe/

Lol so it's exactly as bad as the trailer makes it look. Fucking Carlos Santana, I swear it's in his contract that he gets to be in every single one of these.

There's also a new Lee Morgan doc which looks maybe a little more interesting? Have you seen that one?

i haven't, no, sorry

lol i just realised you replied on the thread i first posted this on -- making the same remark abt santana! apologies for insisting you reread it all

haha I actually forgot, I had a vague memory that I had made that comment somewhere but didn't realize it was in response to same, brain is getting old

i just read dizzy's autobio and it was cool that he thought that ornette and coltrane were the first new thing since..you know, dizzy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MARZANYmD5Y

Birthday broadcast on WKCR today

Totally want to see the Lee Morgan doc.

good lookin out, forgot. Their current stream player works much better than what they previously had.

You mean what they came back with after the snafu? Yeah, even has a functional playlist, I think.

I might have stayed tuned to WBGO but I don't really dig The Rhythm Revue.

Also enjoyed Sinkah's review thinking of FPing him for dissing Jimmy Heath.

insert ^but

wait i didn't diss him :0

"stellar" indicates level of celebrity outside jazzdom not quality of musicianship

Ah, got it.
The Einstein Intersection you mention in your review made me think you might be interested in the paper by Rob Schneiderman linked here: Math & Music: The Severed Alliance. Some Recent Academic Approaches (Do Not Read If You Hate Drums)

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/chasing-trane/

Coltrane doc debuts on PBS tonight

Chasing Trane features never-before-seen Coltrane family home movies, footage of Coltrane and his band in the studio (discovered in a California garage during the production of this film), along with hundreds of rare photographs and television appearances from around the world. Coltrane’s incredible story is told by the musicians who worked with him (Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Reggie Workman), musicians inspired by his fearless artistry and creative vision (Common, John Densmore, Wynton Marsalis, Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter, Kamasi Washington), Coltrane’s children (Ravi, Oran, and step-daughters Michelle Coltrane and Antonia Andrews) and biographers, and well-known admirers such as President Bill Clinton and Dr. Cornel West.

heard this was not particularly good, but maybe there's some interesting footage?

i relistened to that Tell Me How Long Trane's Been Gone radio doc a little while ago and it is still great.

because they are cheap and I got interested, I've been picking up the "Mastery of John Coltrane" series that was issued in the late 70s. Lots of interesting stuff there and more substantial than a simple cash-in comp. Most of the material has since been added to various CD reissues, but since I didn't have that stuff they've been a nice discovery.

Taped the PBS doc, but also watched first hour of it before going to sleep. As a non-expert I found it interesting, informative and entertaining.

uhhh https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/arts/music/john-coltrane-lost-album-both-directions-at-once.html

wow

crazy, right? the opposite of the barrel-scraping i've kinda come to expect at this point ...

(not that I don't love barrel-scraping)

If you're gonna scrape a barrel, Coltrane's is the barrel to scrape.

and WOW. Can't wait to hear this. It seems odd that a studio recording went undiscovered for so long. And that photo in the Times piece is now my favorite inside the Van Gelder studio: you really get a sense of the size of the room, how the musicians were placed in it, miking, etc.

Whoa!

I got a stream of it last month but it was embargoed (technically till tomorrow, but Gio got permission to jump the gun, I see). It's good; all the music was recorded the same day as the take of "Vilia" that showed up on the CD of Live at Birdland, so somebody must have really dropped the ball to forget this stuff existed for so long. Anyway, it doesn't have the soul-crushing intensity of Crescent or A Love Supreme; in 1963, these guys were still capable of going into the studio smiling and having fun. But it kicks all kinds of ass and is totally worth hearing/buying.

only two mics, both right over the kit?!

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/08/arts/08coltrane2/08coltrane2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

er
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/08/arts/08coltrane2/08coltrane2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

one on the bass and one on the piano but... what is John playing into?

Extremely psyched about this

There's def a mic in the piano and one on the bass. Sax has to be mic'd too, probably just can't see it.

Good question...maybe this wasn't a recording moment, and he had a spot outside of the photo to record?

xp

or maybe he's just not mic'd up yet. I suppose he could have a spot on the other side of the piano somewhere. looks like a v big room!

only two mics, both right over the kit?!

Best way to do it, imho (of course, the room has something to do with it, too). Glyn Johns was another engineer who didn't close-mic every element of the kit; I think he used no more than four mics on Keith Moon's gargantuan setup.

Likely moved Coltrane's mic for the photo, or else it'd be in front of Jones.

just to be clear, my initial post was before I spotted the bass and piano mics - not really surprised at a two-mic drumkit setup in the mid-60s.

the new song sounds wonderful — though I don't know why there's confusion about who wrote it ... can't they ask Tyner? (maybe he doesn't even remember).

Could be wrong, but I think it was pretty standard not to have a kick drum mic in jazz. Kick drum isn't really essential to jazz the way it is in rock, it's more for accents.

And I don't think anyone was close-micing every drum in 1963, but I could be wrong about that too

fuck knows how a '63 JC album goes missing for so long, but good work whoever found it!

Yeah, I don't think drum kit close-micing became a thing until Geoff Emerick/the Beatles in '66, and then that suddenly became the only/default way to mic drums.

xp

Really excited to hear this. Pretty much an untouchable era for this band.

I hope it's not heretical to say I prefer the 1965 Antibes recording of Love Supreme to the studio version. I think they captured some magic that night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlrQZc3h13E

When I bought this years back the packaging somewhat deceptively lead me to believe I was buying the studio album, so it was a bit of a surprise when I put it on. But that also meant it's become the "canon" version in my mind.

In the years since I've heard other recordings of the Antibes residency and they are stunning. "My Favourite Things" goes to some places.

I hope it's not heretical to say I prefer the 1965 Antibes recording of Love Supreme to the studio version. I think they captured some magic that night.

Not at all -- I definitely prefer the live recording. I never loved the studio ALS; I think they made better studio records before (My Favorite Things) and after (The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, and especially Sun Ship). The Antibes ALS reaches heights the studio version only hints at.

I remember reading that they performed it live one other time, in Philadelphia, but it wasn't recorded.

ok I gotta hear that Antibes set

It's on one or another "deluxe edition" of ALS, which also includes the somewhat fascinating alternate ALS (or parts of it) with Archie Shepp and Art Davis added to the quartet.

This one.

I don't care much for the alternate, larger band studio recordings. But the live set that kicks off disc two is pretty much essential.

Crescent > A Love Supreme

I always figure every bit of tape that ever existed in any jazz great has been released in triplicate by some weird euro labels and here's new Coltrane recorded w Van Gelder, boggles my mind

I remember reading that they performed it live one other time, in Philadelphia, but it wasn't recorded.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

yes it was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUVxlm0cJds

(technically just "resolution" for 32 minutes. fine by me!)

Holy crap!

Thanks for posting that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7X2X7LDFok

one on the bass and one on the piano but... what is John playing into?
― Οὖτις, Thursday, June 7, 2018 9:50 PM (yesterday)

The album cover that's shown in the nyt article shows how it was done:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/06/08/arts/08coltrane4/merlin_139110909_79a01066-168a-417b-9563-9fc2145eacc6-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp

This piece in the Guardian sheds some light on the history of the tape:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/08/lost-1963-john-coltrane-album-discovered

The master tape left in the studio was lost, and it’s likely it was destroyed in the early 70s when the label, Impulse!, was trying to reduce storage fees. But Coltrane gave his own reference tape of the recording to his wife Naima, despite their then disintegrating relationship – the pair divorced in 1966, and the tape has stayed in her family’s possession ever since.

The Coltrane family houses must've had lots of hidden storage spaces as the tapes for the posthumous

One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note

Scroll down this page a little and there's a lot of information about the music on the upcoming release, as well as some other unreleased material that's not out yet:

http://www.barrykernfeld.com/aop.htm

The Antibes ALS reaches heights the studio version only hints at.

it is a really awesome performance

Where does one get other recordings from the Antibes residency?

wow, so the complete "love supreme" masters, including the tapes referenced by kernfeld, were released in 2015, eh? i missed that one!

Where does one get other recordings from the Antibes residency?

There's any number of bootleggy discs called Live at Antibes 1965 that have the other night (My Favorite Things, Naima, Impressions, and Blue Valse).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_in_Antibes

wow, so the complete "love supreme" masters, including the tapes referenced by kernfeld, were released in 2015, eh? i missed that one!

Yeah, there's a 2CD set called A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters. It's worth hearing.

not sure if this is the thread to ask for such things, but I'm interested in compiling a list of Coltrane-esque tributes, cut contemporaneously to his passing, or later, in the vein of Sonny Sharrock's "John's Children/ Many Mansions" or even Larry Coryell's "Search for the Higher Consciousness"... stuff that's aiming for what JC's 'Spiritual' does.... any suggestions would be appreciated.

you know about the comp "For JC - Love is Supreme", right?

I do not! Will seek— thank you!

Yuseef Lateef wrote 'Brother John' in tribute to Coltrane way back in '63. It's a cool groove, very much in a "My Favorite Things" vein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_F8cFRO99c&list=PLFRQl8Ca9Qfaa6KWHhkIDlb5w6ZAeMpqk

Roland kirk cut several Coltrane tributes/covers iirc

this great new comp of japanese jazz from the 70s is packed with coltrane worship: https://spiritualjazz.bandcamp.com/album/spiritual-jazz-8-japan-pt-1

Yeah; I reviewed that compilation, and another contemporaneous one, for Burning Ambulance.

oh yeah, the j-jazz one is sounding awesome as well (missed that ode to workman actually features reggie workman!). pretty interesting — as you note, except for a few exceptions, i don't think i'd be able to distinguish this stuff from western jazz. these players had quickly absorbed and mastered the style.

i was looking up keitaro miho from the spiritual jazz comp and found this amazing looking record: All-Japan Male Volley Ball Team "The Road To Munich"

https://img.discogs.com/qqVIR7KK9fgiZU6d8C01wfXz2Xg=/fit-in/400x400/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6946446-1430135632-4101.jpeg.jpg

thanks for all the suggestions!

another one: pharoah sanders' memories of j.w. coltrane from the excellent live at the east lp

Really enjoying this new John Coltrane album

New Trane! Crazy, can't wait to listen to this tonight

it's fucking nice and just completely what you'd expect I suppose, but in the best sense of that!

great to listen to this on my way in to work this morning, but i bet it's going to sound a hundred times better going back home again tonight

yeah — i mean, the urge to overrate it is probably high, but even on something as laid-back / workmanlike as "slow blues" (which they probably did just to blow off steam), it's wonderful to just luxuriate in the sound of this band. elvin jones! best drummer ever?

god this really was the best band ever

garrison's bowed solo in the first track, my god

I'm glad I have this thread bookmarked so I will be repeatedly reminded that I need to get this new one

this is really great, and i'm generally hot/cold on Coltrane

The full Antibes Love Supreme set is on the deluxe edition from 2002.

A couple good Coltrane tribute songs are. . .

Cliff Jordan — 'John Coltrane' (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znr4KRw2au8

Abdullah Ibrahim — 'For John Coltrane' (1992)
https://vimeo.com/82702349

So friggin' excited to hear the "new" record.

Wasn't bowled over by the first "new" track tbh

but I mean, this is an unfuckwithable era of the quartet and there was nothing bad about it either, looking forward to hearing the whole record

I went through a phase when I had Live at Birdland on nonstop and this seems like the studio analogue to that record afaict

Good piece by Lewis Porter here:

http://wbgo.org/post/deep-dive-lewis-porter-considering-john-coltranes-lost-album-all-directions

this one popped up in my youtube subs, i'm liking it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJcpBWry04w

Got my copy of the 2CD version in today's mail.

this is really great, and i'm generally hot/cold on Coltrane

― Hotdogs Killcars (dog latin), Friday, June 29, 2018 10:10 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

Listening to Ole Coltrane today (first track, on repeat) and it's McCoy's album, or at least it's him I think of when I summon an aural image of the album. He's so in charge and oceanic. Then it's the knotted basses and Dolphy taking flight. I barely think of Coltrane and Elvin at all. Puzzling.

Poor old Freddie doesn't even get a look-in.

Hubbard?

Aye.

I picked up "Concert in Japan" last night and it's pretty great, fidelity and chopped up sequencing notwithstanding. Rashied Ali is unreal on it.

Are you referring to this one? I have had it for possibly a decade and have listened to it maybe once. It's pretty crazy.

That's the one! I had never heard it. It is indeed pretty crazy.

olé is sometimes my favorite coltrane album and it’s largely bc of its rhythm so it’s hard for me to listen to it and not focus on jones, also coltrane’s playing is so fucking mesmeric at this point that i can’t imagine not noticing him either! fair point that the interlocking basses kinda steal the show though

I think I undersold how much I love Ole! It makes me want to run up mountains with a bull on my back.

I wonder if it's that I've listened to it so much that when I focus on it, I sort of hear through it to the bottom now. Anyway, what an astonishing thing. I wish he'd done more with that particular ensemble.

OK ILM you've made me want to hear this again, it has been a few years. That title track, damn. It really doesn't get better than this, does it?

Also--maybe a nice thread idea but I don't think it would be very popular--are there many other examples in jazz of a well-known musician using a pseudonym for contractual (or other) reasons? I can't think of too many other examples, though there are obviously quite a few blues players who did this

McCoy was listed as ".Etc" on Joe Henderson's 'Page One' and other Blue Notes of the time owing to his conflicting contract with Impulse. And there's "Ed Kelly & Friend" and Leon Thomas' "Spirits Known & Unknown", both of which feature an pseudonymous Pharoah Sanders, listed as "Friend" and "Little Rock" respectively.

Did not know about any of those!

the cover for the Ed Kelly record is great

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ngiwSpTEL._SY450_.jpg

oh and Pharoah is also credited as "Mystery Guest" on Larry Young's Lawrence of Newark

Oh cool!

https://jazzdiscography.com/fitzgera/pseudo.htm

I love all the pseudonyms that jazz guys used. Charlie Parker used Charlie Chan, Cannonball Adderley used Buckshot LeFonque. . . there's lots of them.

omg who remembers Branford Marsalis's project Buckshot LeFonque? That hadn't popped into my mind for maybe two decades?

Preemo AND Buckethead, lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckshot_LeFonque

Olé and Africa/Brass are my favourite Coltrane albums. His discography's so vast though, and I've only started exploring it a few years ago.

I did not know about the key changes in Giant Steps, well explained in this awkwardly titled video from Vox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w

Adam Neely is a Coltrane obsessive. He did this video a while back and it blew my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98jwtm5U4E

Adam is really smart. I took some lessons from him for a little while a few years ago and loved talking to him.

Poor Tommy Flanagan. I thought they should have mentioned that he played Giant Steps on every gig he could after that, just so people would know he got it together (or at least I remember hearing that anecdotally).

Great video otherwise.

Feel like “most” “serious” fans have gotten beyond that, but maybe that is just wishful thinking. By the time I was seeing him I don’t recall him playing “Giant Steps” and don’t really remember too many people bringing it up in conversation.

This new 1963 box set Impulse is putting out seems like kind of a ripoff to me - it's the tracks from that "lost album" they just released, with John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Live at Birdland, and I think some other previously released stuff tacked on.

Ah, good to know, James.

I’ve been geeking out to his solo on But Not for Me from My Favorite Things lately. He does stuff in there that already sounds like “late” Coltrane

Urrr, brainfart, I meant Summertime, not But Not For Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEftw9o1joo

semi kicking myself for not picking up whichever European tour was £15 in FOPP.
Did get Village Vanguard though just realising that I probably had most of it since i still have most of teh box set somewhere.
Want to pick up most of his Impulse lps and probably a few of teh Atlantic ones.

Also should have grabbed Pharoah Sanders' Elevation when I saw it in Honest Johns.

Do love Afro Blue Impressions since chancing on it on vinyl in Belfast 28 years ago & I assume the European tour material is going to be pretty similar.

& I assume the European tour material is going to be pretty similar.

It mostly is, but the first disc-and-a-half is with Eric Dolphy. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find just the Coltrane/Dolphy live European stuff as a standalone disc.

(sorry, to clarify: the first disc-and-a-half of the Live Trane: The European Tours box)

Man, Interstellar Space is really peak music

listening to that prestige '58 box .. it's often quite familiar stuff, but still so good.

Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Jimm Cobb, Tommy Flanagan, Red Garland, Louis Hayes, Freddie Hubbard - literally fucking top notch '58 combos!

Coltrane w Kenny Burrell was one of my first jazz records and I love it so much

It's sort of interesting in jazz how since these guys all did so many sessions in short periods of time, it can be sort of arbitrary which one you wind up starting with and that one often becomes a favorite.

uh hi dere

Now comes word of another new album by the classic John Coltrane Quartet, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. Blue World will be released on Impulse!/UMe on Sept. 27, and like Both Directions it offers an unexpected view on a pivotal period in the band's evolution. It was recorded at Van Gelder Studios on June 24, 1964 — a few weeks after the quartet put a finishing touch on the album Crescent — as the soundtrack to a Canadian art film. Because the date had gone unnoted in session recording logs, this music has occupied a blind spot for Trane-ologists, archivists and historians.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/16/751516859/a-lost-album-from-john-coltrane-is-found-with-thanks-to-a-french-canadian-direct

fuuuuck

nice

anything in the vicinity of Crescent already has my full attention

otm

The new song is really good, and the idea of the 1964 quartet re-recording "Naima," "Village Blues," "Like Sonny" and "Traneing In" is very interesting to me. I am fully on board for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m24Q78QeHA

oh yeah that's fabulous, thanks

this is very good and exciting

Really want to listen to this on cd, from a black & orange digipack, on a boombox for full effect.

that new track is indeed wonderful. just what i needed on a sunday evening.

Listening to the whole album now. It's two versions of "Naima," three versions of "Village Blues," one each of "Like Sonny" and "Traneing In," and the one brand-new track. About 37 minutes of music in all. No bad performances, and the sound — it's in mono — has real punch. I love it. Gonna be listening to this one a lot more than Both Directions At Once, for sure.

oh you didn't like Both Directions? I really loved it. if this is better I'm really excited

I liked it (bought the 2CD version), but I didn't love it. This one hits my personal sweet spot better, both because of the mono sound and because all the tunes are basically blues riffs.

I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO HEAR THIS

I'm confused, isn't "Blue World" just a slower take of Out of this World?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTTNL-RHEMs

Barry Harris!

"bakai" (1957)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckwFw7YEzHg

this is some badass shit. from his first session as a leader. because of whatever reasons, he doesn't even take the first solo! also sahib shihab on baritone!

John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy - Evenings At The Village Gate

^^^

this newish dug up from the Impulse archives release is really good, it's a rough single mic recording but the music really cuts through and features some amazing playing from Dolphy.

I picked up one of the European tour box sets from FOPP a few years ago. Presumably same line up though not sure about bassist.
Cost I think £15 back then and there was a 2nd volume from the next year, or was it previous. It's 61 and 62 anyway.
Haven't looked at it in a while but I think it was pretty great.
The box set of Village Vanguard sets was quite good too

the star lineup on this one also includes McCoy Tyner/Elvin Jones/Jimmy Garrison/Art Davis.

I think he only had 2 steady lineups under his own name so it would either be Tyner/Jones plus Workman or Garrison and possibly Davis and depending on time some of the time either Dolphy or Sanders and then Sanders/Alice/Ali/Garrison plus possible augmentation.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone describe A Love Supreme as boring.

nevertheless

Not the first time I've seen it described as boring tbh.

Dolphy's clarineting on my favorite things is some wonderful playing, then comes Trane ... it's great stuff

on this new live one I mean

It's a great Elvin record, what a gift

this dolphy recording is really excellent for a single mic recording. I saw notes that it was drum-heavy and maybe, slightly, but nothing inexcusable. that said with the advent of the technology peter jackson is using for demixing for the Beatles, I'd be really into seeing that same technology used in older jazz recordings like this.

I wrongly posted it was from the Impulse archives, I've since read it was accidentally discovered in NY public library.

It is a killer recording.

Looked at the track listing and was kinda bowled over that they perform "Africa" (!)

it's so good

beware of the vinyl copies btw, terrible pressing according to Discogs reviews

I bought this on CD today and now I want every note that was recorded for these dates, this appears to be a selection from two nights?

i'm looking forward to checking this out!

I love this new set, and was pleasantly surprised by the recording, after the disappointment of A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle release, where you nearly had to strain to hear Coltrane and the other horns. This recording also isn’t professional, but Coltrane and Dolphy are front-and-center, and it’s all completely thrilling. And I don’t know if Dolphy had already settled on his arrangement of “Africa,” recorded two months later, but he’s doing that piece’s French horn leaps on bass clarinet here, which is amazing to hear.

it's so good

beware of the vinyl copies btw, terrible pressing according to Discogs reviews

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Monday, 14 August 2023 21:18 (yesterday) link

My copy isn't fucked but there is a weird little hiccup at the start of side three where if I don't get the needle in the exact right spot it's a all scratchy for a few seconds, it is weird and yeah it seems like generally the pressing is shoddy at best.

The set is pretty amazing, esp as a kind of bonus to the Complete 1961 Village Vanguard box

I am obsessed rn

am I correct that the only place I can get the studio take of "One Down, One Up" is on this posthumous compilation?

https://www.discogs.com/master/1068522-John-Coltrane-The-Mastery-Of-John-Coltrane-Vol-II-To-The-Beat-Of-A-Different-Drum

the 15 minute version is also on a 90s comp called "dear old stockholm" and there are a couple of takes on the more recent "both directions at once" comp. I'm not aware of it being on any official studio album unless it's a bonus track on some CD version of something

I fell in love with the track when I heard it on the coltrane/shepp newport live album - it's pleasingly tart and astringent - coming to the studio versions later they sound a little tame in comparison

that's very helpful, thank you!

I recently wrote short reviews of 10 live Coltrane albums from 1963-67.

I saw those! That's what got me on this latest kick tbh

You’re being modest Unperson. You did live recording from 61 to 67. And if you like the Coltrane/Dolphy stuff sleeve, there are some pretty high quality bootlegs from their European tour in 61.

ooh yeah dime has a bunch, thx

From an interview with Tootie Heath about asking Jimmy Garrison to do a gig after JC died:

He said, “I’d love to make it, Tootie, but after playing with Coltrane for so long, I don’t know any songs! After seven years of vamps, I forgot all the tunes!” I thought that was some funny shit. Of course, the way Elvin played so loud and rumbled through everything, you couldn’t hear those vamps anyway!

Heh

it's funny that to some of us, probably most of us, Coltrane is like this paragon of sophistication, jazz personified, etc. etc. and then you realize some of his contemporaries basically regarded him like he was Iron Butterfly or something

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth"

It is interesting as a listener to come across totally opposite views by some contemporaries in jazz.

I love watching jazz educator Barry Harris videos and there is one where he is talking around a piano about voicing and one of the students mentions Bill Evans. Harris pretty much shoots that Evans is not that good and is overrated go listen to Hank Jones.

There is definitely some bile and venom in how things works out that comes from some classic jazz artists when a sore spot is touched. Read enough and you will come across some anger in some stories and interviews- I know I have read of some from and about George Coleman, Joe Henderson, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Knepper off top of my head that made me think wow.

Barry Harris is kind of a bore imo

ikr get something like "sheets of sound" named after your playing style and then maybe i'll take your critique seriously.

Barry Harris is a technician. his major contribution, outside of the music (which isn't peanuts either by the way), really has to do with jazz pedagogy for players. so yeah if you're not a jazz musician it makes sense that you might find it boring

Barry Harris was awesome — even though I might disagree with him, I wouldn't mind hearing why he thought Bill Evans is overrated.

sheets of sound is a memorable phrase but it's a terrible description of coltrane's actual playing style, time to sit down the late ira gitler

the renata adler of honkin and squeakin

totally agree on "sheets of sound." That never seemed fitting to me at all.

Barry Harris is a technician. his major contribution, outside of the music (which isn't peanuts either by the way), really has to do with jazz pedagogy for players. so yeah if you're not a jazz musician it makes sense that you might find it boring

― budo jeru, Wednesday, April 10, 2024 2:02 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I started college as a jazz major and took a clinic with him. I don't just mean his music is boring, I find his entire persona and approach to be boring.

*found - I forgot he passed a few years ago

Hank Jones is good of course. I'd be interested to hear an argument for why he's better than Bill Evans. But I'm pretty skeptical!

i mean for starters i think you could make an argument that there's more to learn from Hank Jones. i don't think that makes him "better" though. but yeah if you find his music boring and his approach unhelpful than to each his own

young players often get stuck in traps and sometimes it's unhelpful when a cult forms around a certain player, or people get it in their head that certain kinds of players are "conventional" or "boring", and therefore aren't worth paying attention to or learning from. i think that's what that's about, i mean he's not a music critic or something

I love weird jazz opinions and hating. More on a micro level though, it's not good to write off whole styles and eras.

I thought "sheets of sound" was only coned for one specific phase in Coltrane's development, like even maybe one of the Prestige sessions.

coined

it is but (a) ppl never remember this and apply it everywhere and (b) it's a bad description for that phase also

Better than Johnny Lotsanotes

I saw Barry Harris back in... 2005? 2006? I don't remember who the bassist and drummer were with him, but he sounded really good.

Barry Harris is for people who think Tommy Flanagan is some kind of radical avant-gardist. Like, wow, your harmonies are so sophisticated. Your chord substitutions are so cleverly conceived. You are truly the platonic ideal of jazz piano. But somehow, I never want to listen to you!

dunno what to tell you if you can't get with this album

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxLqEmaBJ4zz4-agdQ2kDZG43UvkVEq5F

I mean, the first track is exactly why I don't listen to Barry Harris. He takes one of the most famous bebop melodies there is, and plays it like Bach. He's exactly the kind of guy who'll say "jazz is America's classical music" with a straight face, and want you to nod soberly when he says it. He's not an innovator. He's a traditionalist, someone who makes sure the fences stay up.

Harris pretty much shoots that Evans is not that good and is overrated go listen to Hank Jones.

this would be funny if harris told the student to go listen to ryo fukui

Can I flagpost the whole thread for the Barry Harris hate?

What’s the hive mind opinion of Don Friedman?

see Can I flagpost the whole thread for the Barry Harris hate?

He's not an innovator. He's a traditionalist

god help us if every musician has to be an "innovator"

Sorry, he just really rubs me the wrong way, and I really did not like him in person! His music is fine. The idea of "learning to play bebop correctly" makes me want to die and is part of the reason I dropped out of the music program I was in, which was built on that concept. And I say this as someone who can actually play bebop "correctly."

Like no I am not interested in becoming an AI bebop generator, what the fuck is the point of that?

god help us if every musician has to be an "innovator"

Well, that's not what I said. But if you're determined not to be an innovator, maybe jazz isn't for you. Maybe you should just play piano in a blues or a country band.

Meanwhile, here's Miles talking about why he didn't require the players in his band to "know jazz history"
https://www.tiktok.com/@ettletodd/video/7349651562203024683?_t=8lFPsTGTris&_r=1

Also, even among *just bebop* players, I find Harris pretty unadventurous, fwiw.

every celebrated "jazz" "innovator" ever has been a traditionalist and the coltrane quartet was basically a fancy blues and country band anyway

yeah I thought bebop was about wrong notes where's the wrong notes

he's fine you know just not the kind of music I'd listen to

dubiousness about the phrase aside, my point stands: harris, by all acounts, was a consummate professional and highly respectable musician. he never did anything cool enough to merit a fucking catchphrase though.

no, not everyone needs to be an innovator to be an expert. but i would think the experts (who know what they're doing) would defer to the innovators.

Jazz is a big tent with ample room inside for lots of different cats of varying stripes.

Dissing Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones and Barry Harris in one go is basically running down the entire Detroit school of piano– unless you are intentionally making an exception for Roland Hanna– along with the deep well that they were part of and contributed to that also brought us Motown etc.

TBC, I love Tommy Flannagan. I saw his trio live at least three times.

Now remembering some tangentially relevant funny things I heard Tootie Heath say at Smalls that I’m afraid I can’t type here

Meant to add something to that other post to the effect of “study, study or bonk, bonk on the head with Henry’s Swing Club!”

TBC, I love Tommy Flannagan. I saw his trio live at least three times.

It's pretty much understood these days that Coltrane practiced so assiduously only in the hope of someday bursting in on a urinating David Crosby

Loool!

Just remembered that bit of business in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS

search: vote coltrane propaganda
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qkx77hnjvz7n2mdqxq7ssaec/bafkreif2g7vqjoc665dajfvppclf275voque5b6xiqaf4bmbvlfzsg2rse@jpeg

yes!

america has never been so divided, so beset by tribalism. some of us feel that the "sheets of sound" period was coltrane's best work, while others feel that the late recordings with rashied ali are superior. if only we could recognize that what unites us is so much stronger than what divides us