It's disconcerting for me to consider how many musical inside jokes might be getting past me in Coltrane's work. All those hologrammatic facets that advance and recede, reflecting each other. You know the game "Concentration"? I'm noticing a lot of similarities between that and the way music is played. Or followed, in listening. Or recalled. By anyone. Training and practice is rewarded. Here's Felix Cavaliere's attempt to put Coltrane into a pop song- "Sky Trane", the first cut on the Rascals' 1971 record Peaceful World. I like it better than "Baby Be Mine": That's from the original vinyl- I might as well add the remastered version, for comparison purposes. Although I prefer the warmer frequency balance of the original, there's more upper midrange&treble detail and separation between instruments on the remaster: The Rascals - Sky Trane (Remastered Sound) [Pop - Soul] (1971) Buzz Feiten plays great on that tune, both single-note solos and chording. And check out the rest of the players on that record... Peaceful World (album) - Wikipedia
Two weeks after recording Sonny's Crib with Sonny Clark, Coltrane is back at Rudy's with Curtis Fuller and Paul Chambers for . . . John Coltrane Blue Train Blue Note 1577 John Coltrane (ts), Lee Morgan (tr), Curtis Fuller (tb), Kenny Drew (p), Paul Chambers (b), Philly Joe Jones (dr) You guys know this album. Go for it!
I just finished listening to the A-side of the mono reissue by Music Matters. To my mind, this is the first album by Coltrane as a leader to fully marry his big, swinging sound with his early harmonic conception to create something timeless. Recorded in September, he was several months deep into his Five Spot residency with Monk, and I think it shows here for the first time on one of Coltrane's own records. Not that he's exploring 12-tone sequences or atonality here--that would come later--but I think for most listeners, this is the real place to start for a run of truly classic Coltrane records.
Moving right along. Feel free to comment on Blue Train or any earlier release even if I plow ahead. Wrapping up some stray sideman appearances from Fall and Winter 1957: Coltrane appears on The Prestige All Star's Wheelin' and Dealin' as part of a septet that includes Frank Weiss on flute and tenor sax, Paul Quinichette on tenor sax, Mal Waldron on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Art Taylor on drums. Recorded Sept. 20, 1957 at Rudy's, this fairly large ensemble with three tenors plays a bit of Ellingtonia, both in terms of style and song selection, including the classic "Things Ain't What They Used to Be." A highlight is Mal Waldron's incredibly syncopated solo on "Wheelin' (Take 2)." Though the heads are pure Ellington, these cats could get pretty far out in their solos for 1957. Still, this is truly a sideman date for Coltrane, so kind of a minor footnote for purposes of this thread. If you're looking for it on Apple Music, it's filed under his name as if he was the leader, but given the heavy selection of Waldron compositions (and the original crediting of the album to the Prestige All Stars), this really isn't Trane's date. Very enjoyable listen. At some point in October, Trane records another sideman appearance, this time for Bethlehem, first issued as by Various Artists. The Winner's Circle was later reissued as John Coltrane in the Winner's Circle, but this is another sideman appearance later re-credited to Coltrane to capitalize on his star power. I haven't listened to this yet, but it's next on my list. According to Wikipedia, citing the liner notes, the musicians here were winners or first runners up of the Down Beat poll in 1957. Hence the name, I suppose. Coltrane is heard only on the even-numbered tracks, alongside Don Byrd, Frank Rehak, Al Cohn, Eddie Costa, Oscar Pettiford, and Ed Thigpen. "Not So Sleepy" subs in Philly Joe Jones for Thigpen and adds Gene Quill on alto sax and Freddie Green on guitar. On November 15, Trane is back at Rudy's with Red Garland. Two excellent albums come out of this date: All Mornin' Long and Soul Junction, both credited to Garland as the leader. I have All Mornin' Long on vinyl from the AP Prestige Mono series, and I file it with my Coltrane records. Soul Junction was first released in 1960. Standards abound, played bluesily and with feeling. Two tracks from this date are combined with three more, recorded December 13, 1957, to make the Red Garland album High Pressure, which was not released until 1962, again to capitalize on Coltrane's popularity and with his name prominently featured on the cover. Another of these was released in 1962 as Dig It!, again with Coltrane's name prominently featured but the album primarily credited to Red Garland. This album is more a hodge podge, featuring two tracks from the December 13 date, the track "C.T.A.," from the March 22, 1957 date, as previously released on Taylor's Wailers, and a Red Garland Trio track recorded Feb. 2, 1958. On December 20, 1957, Trane is at Rudy's for The Ray Draper Quintet Featuring John Coltrane, with an interesting assortment of late boppers/early hard boppers, including the album's namesake on tuba, Gil Coggins on piano, Spanky De Brest on bass, and Larry Ritchie on drums. The album was released on Prestige's New Jazz imprint in 1958. I haven't heard it, but it's going on my list, if not for Coltrane, then for the intriguing idea of tuba as a solo voice in jazz. In December, Coltrane is also recording for Bethlehem, some of which was released in 1958 as Art Blakey Big Band, including the Coltrane composition "Pristine." Other tracks appeared much later on the compilation John Coltrane: The Bethlehem Years which, according to popmatters.com's review, "makes sense for Coltrane fanatics who want to fill a hole in their history records [hello!], but as far as the casual jazz fan is concerned, it should be approached as little more than a marketing trick." Of course, this is not truly a Coltrane record, as he was a sideman in a large ensemble. I'm leaving out one very important Coltrane recording from November, 1957. Going to devote at least one post to it, next.
I love both of these records. I listen to them on OJC CDs. Love that they really stretch out on some of these tracks.
Hi folks, sorry for dropping the ball on this thread. Work-life balance hasn't been. I intended to get to the 1960 European tour with Miles in time for the new Bootleg Series release, and I blew that self-imposed deadline by a couple years in Trane's discography. Oh well; when we get there everyone will have had ample time to digest it. The very important Coltrane recording from November, 1957, that I mentioned earlier was only (re)discovered in 2005 at the Library of Congress. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall Recorded November 29, 1957 Released September 27, 2005 by Blue Note and Mosaic Restored by Michael Cuscuna and T.S. Monk With Thelonious Monk (p), John Coltrane (ts), Ahmed Abdul-Malik (b), Shadow Wilson (dr) This was an exceptionally well-received release, as it documents a concert late in Coltrane's residency with the Monk quartet. Unlike Monk's Music and With John Coltrane, the Carnegie Hall recording captures these two masters near the end of their Five Spot residency, with Trane having fully absorbed Monk's harmonic influence. The two players perform transcendently, as if on another, higher plane. Newsweek called finding this tape at the Library of Congress, "the musical equivalent of the discovery of a new Mount Everest," and that's not hyperbole. What are your favorite tracks, solos, moments?
Monk and 'Trane @ Carnegie Hall is not quite the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it'll do. Everyone, including 'Trane, says it was important to his development but what exactly did he take from his time with Monk? On the surface v. different musicians, but they share a methodicalness and devotion to finding new ways to use basic building blocks. Maybe it was just the courage to follow his muse where ever it took him?
They talk a bit about Trane's time with Monk in the Chasing Trane documentary, if I remember correctly, and I'm sure people like Ashley Kahn have written about it. For me, the proof is in the listening. He's a different player on the Monk albums and the other 1957 material covered already in this thread than the albums before. Compare his 1955-56 albums with Miles, and then listen to Milestones, after his return from his stint with Monk. If you didn't know it was Coltrane, you could be forgiven for thinking they were different players. I think, primarily, he got a freer and more complex harmonic concept from Monk.
I'm a big Sonny Clark fan, both for his playing and writing, but even with Trane on it Crib is hardly his best effort. The two takes of the title tune are interesting because of the very different tempos.
From the liner notes, Ashley Kahn, June 2005: 1957 was the year Coltrane truly became Coltrane--on a number of levels--and Thelonious Monk had more than a little to do with it. During that twelve month period, Coltrane's penchant for compulsive practice on his horn yielded the first phase of his signature style: slaloming through harmonic changes, playing and replaying scalar patterns, in a creative outpouring critic Ira Gitler famously dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's workaholic nature also yielded a bumper crop of recordings, including his debut as a leader (Coltrane on Prestige), the classic Blue Train album (his sole session for Blue Note), and as a sideman on seven other recordings. His return to free agent status after his firing from Miles Davis's quintet in April of that year allowed him to pursue any and all projects at will, to envision life as a leader in his own right, and--most significantly--to bring his drug addiction to a cold-turkey end. In Coltrane's eyes no event in '57 was more personally significant that his trading junk and booze for the spiritual and musical reawakening (of which he later wrote on A Love Supreme) that set the stage for the ten-year creative explosion that followed. No event, that is save for the nine-month residency with an equally generous and iconoclastic spirit. "I think Monk is one of the true greats of all time. He's a real musical thinker," the saxophonist told Down Beat magazine in 1960. "I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically." The two had bumped into each other for years. In October of '56, Monk was outraged when he saw Miles strike Coltrane backstage at Café Bohemia, and immediately offered the saxophonist a sideman gig. Their first chance to play together occurred the next April on a Monk session for Riverside Records--which led to ad-hoc instruction in Monk's apartment. "We'd already recorded one song, 'Monk's Mood,' and I liked it so well," Coltrane recalled. "So he invited me around, then I started learning all of his tunes . . . I'd go by his apartment, and get him out of bed [laughs]--he'd wake up and roll over to the piano and start playing . . . he would stop and show me some parts that were pretty difficult, and if I had a lot of trouble, well, he'd get his portfolio out and show me the music . . . sometimes, we'd get just one tune a day. Maybe." Monk's patience helped Coltrane grasp material unusual and refreshing. Where Davis had favored blues, ballads, and bebop workhorses, Monk's songbook of originals--"Epistrophy," "Ruby, My Dear," "Trinkle, Tinkle"--was riddled with strange melodic leaps and unexpected rhythmic shifts. It was challenging territory that intrigued the saxophonist and appealed to his sense of order. As Coltrane's playing reflected a love of musical logic, blowing solos based on repeated and reconfigured patterns, so the pianist's compositions revealed a passion for internal structure that followed precise and playful rules. Monk's structures laced with Coltrane's frenetic delivery sounded a good match. In Monk, Coltrane found "a musical architect of the highest order." In Coltrane, Monk found an analytical brother--a musician who shared in his intellectual approach and remained true to the sound and structure of his music. "Monk's music had been played already before Trane with different saxophonists, but I think Trane was more precise," pianist Tommy Flanagan once noted. "He was more careful about learning things exactly like Monk meant." It was July of '57 when the partnership went public. Monk's long-lost cabaret license had been renewed, and he began an extended residency at 5 Cooper Square--with bassist Wilbur Ware, drummer Shadow Wilson, and his new student at his side. "As soon as he got the job at the Five Spot," Coltrane remembered, "we went right in." Even after the home study sessions, Coltrane still seemed--to one witness at least--unprepared for their live debut. "When [Coltrane] played with Monk I was there every night I think," Steve Lacy told radio producer Steve Rowland. "It started out . . . very clumsy, very obscure, very maladroit, and then each night it got a little more relaxed." Coltrane had little choice but to find his place in the mix. He was the sole melody instrument on the bandstand. "Yeah, I felt a little lonesome up there!" Coltrane later recalled with amusement. Being the lone horn played supplied the saxophonist the chance to extend his solos further than ever before--as well as an opportunity to hear himself progress in a quartet setting (soon to become his favorite and most famous context). By the end of Monk's Five Spot run in December, "it got into a kind of security," Lacy reported. "Into a freedom and into a wild abandon. To watch that unfold was a revelation." Equally revelatory--for generations who never witnessed Monk and Coltrane together--is the recently unearthed tape of their November 29, 1957 performance at Carnegie Hall. Talk about a rare moment within an all-too brief overlap! Coltrane was weeks away from rejoining Miles, with whom he would soon pursue modal pathways and record the masterpiece Kind of Blue. Bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik had replaced Ware. In the mere 51 minutes of the group's two sets that evening, one can glean the inevitability in the Monk-Coltrane union: their appetite for reinventing old with new, shifting rhythms (check "Sweet and Lovely"!). Their adoration of Art Tatum arpeggios. Their complementary solo styles--breathless vs. halting, fluid vs. staccato--and both melodically inventive to an extreme. We may never know whether this music marked the pinnacle or merely a high point in their relationship. By all reports, it was one of many. What we can know in hearing these performances is that together they achieved a rare balance of precision and passion. Enough to propel the saxophonist on a journey to stellar regions, and to make 1957 a banner year for both.
Just curious--does anyone know why Coltrane left Monk's group? Was it just Miles offering more money and/or exposure, or was there a falling out between Monk and Coltrane?
It's funny, having grown up with the Monk and Trane studio recordings from that year, I find, as much as I love the Carnegie Hall recording and was excited when it came out, I don't really return to it that much anymore vs., say, the studio recordings of "Trinkle Tinkle" or "Ruby My Dear," which are among my favorite recordings of all time My favorite thing about the Carnegie Hall recording is that Monk is heard playing by far the best tuned and best regulated piano he was ever recorded on in the 1950s, and hearing his harmonies and chords on a properly tuned piano really make they sound, I don't know if more consonant is the right phase, because they're the same harmonies, but there's a less off-kilter quality to them on a proper piano. They're lovely. In that previously referenced Downbeat interview, Trane said of playing with Monk: "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from hi in every way -- sensually, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, an he would show me the answers by playing them on the piano. He gave me complete freedom in my playing, and no one ever did that before." Of course his period with Monk also coincided with his decision do get clean, a spiritual awaken that went along with that, and his deep dive into the Slominsy Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. So, it's hard to pull everything apart. But clearly one can hear that this is the period during which Trane's playing changes substantially and he goes from the strung out underachiever squeaking his way through "Diana" with Miles Davis, to a guy fervidly perusing his own, new, different ideas, not just trying to squeeze into a bop bag, and playing at an enormously higher level technically. Also, I think a lot of Monk's rep at the time, like "Trinkle Tinkle," provided perfect springboards for Trane going into that "sheets of sound" vertical stack fast arpeggio chord substitution bag. Monk's melody on that was already kind of a set of fast scalar runs of that time, and with Monk's tunes the melodies and the harmonies are closely intertwined that jut learning a tune like that and being asked to play it every night, sparks ideas. Plus Monk just cleared out space for Trane to explore his idea. That studio recording of "Trinkle Tinkle" is one of my all time favorite records, because it's great, but also because you kind of hear Trane becoming Trane and Monk doesn't just give him a lot of bars to work with, he even lays out behind him.
Good question. I'm sure a tour with Miles in '58, was a more lucrative undertaking than playing a couple of sets a night with Monk in a Lower East Side dive in '57. In '58 Monk also lost his cabaret card, which basically kept him from working in NYC clubs for a couple of years.
Moving on to 1958. On January 10, 1958, Trane is at Rudy's with Donald Byrd, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Louis Hayes. They record two tracks that end up years later on The Last Trane, and the title track of . . . John Coltrane Lush Life Prestige 7188 Recorded May 31, 1957, August 16, 1957, and January 10, 1958 Released January 1961 Only the title track, the Billy Strayhorn classic, was recorded on that January 10, 1958 date. I have this record from the Analogue Productions Prestige Mono series and can highly recommend it. Although it's a bit of a mishmash, and Coltrane had nothing to do with compiling and releasing it, I think it coheres. Trane's solo on "Lush Life" is worth the price of admission.
On Jan 3, 1958, Coltrane was at Rudy's with a group that included Gene Ammons, Jerome Richardson, Paul Quinichette, Pepper Adams, Mal Waldron, George Joyner, and Art Taylor. Tracks from this session appear on the Gene Ammons albums Groove Blues and The Big Sound.
Interesting that there are five pages of a Coltrane thread with no real mention of this quartet years on Impulse and his ears move to modal jazz. I find this period to be his most prolific and influential in breaking from jazz tradition and forging a new, freer way to express himself. I've been listening to his self-titled quartet debut on Impulse—one of his strongest, and possibly his best full album—as well as the posthumous album Transition, which might documents his quartet in full throttle, on the brink of moving into free jazz but still anchored in the modal paradigm. These two records, essentially bookending his quartet period, are essential listens imo.
Yeah. I'll delete the comment. Sorry. Missed it. Thought this was a "what album are you listening to" thread. My mistake. Actually, I can't delete it now. Anyhow, carry on. Following...
I dug out Lush Life. I had forgotten this is the date (half of the album) where the pianist failed to show up, so you have Trane blowing only over bass and drums, but not with intent the way he did 5 years later. This is probably one of the best Prestige albums, solid all round and some beautiful ballads as usual.
