Coltrane stays with Miles into early 1960, though with one foot out the door. From Ashley Kahn's book on Kind of Blue: Miles must have regarded his live engagements during the first part of 1960 as a relief from his ongoing studio activities [recording Sketches of Spain, with lengthy rehearsals, takes, and retakes of the difficult material]. Still carrying Coltrane as part of his quintet, he played the Apollo in New York and the Regal in Chicago, finally settling into a two-week run at the Sutherland Hotel Lounge (in Chicago as well) in February. Warren Bernhardt was a budding pianist when he caught the quintet at the Sutherland: I got in and there was a circular bar with a real tall bandstand in the middle. I didn't know what Miles looked like, and this little guy in an Italian suit said, "What do you want?" I got a beer, sitting there at the bar, and all of a sudden he runs up the stairs and picks up the trumpet, and I realize, "Holy ****, it was Miles." He was tending bar while Coltrane was playing! Coltrane was playing forty-five minute solos in those days. He would never take the horn out of his mouth. Then all through the breaks, there was a couch near the bar that went into the kitchen and Coltrane would lie down on the couch with his feet up, and practice real quietly, you know, it was just like this whisper. You go to the men's room, and walk by him [and hear] a lot of scales and stuff.
From Miles' autobiography: It was now early 1960, and Norman Granz had booked me and my band on a European tour. This was to be a pretty long tour, starting in March and running through April. Trane didn't want to make the European trip and was ready to move out before we left. One night I got a telephone call from this new tenor on the scene named Wayne Shorter, telling me that Trane told him that I needed a tenor saxophonist and that Trane was recommending him. I was shocked. I started to just hang up and then I said something like, "If I need a saxophone player I'll get one!" And then I hung up. BLAM! So when I saw Trane I told him, "Don't be telling nobody to call me like that, and if you want to quit then just quit, but why don't you do it after we get back from Europe?" If he had quit right then he would have really hung me up because nobody else knew the songs, and this tour was real important. He decided to go with us, but he grumbled and complained and sat by himself all the time we were over there. He gave me notice that he would be leaving the group when we got home. But before he quit, I gave him that soprano saxophone I talked about earlier and he started playing it. I could already hear the effect it would have on his tenor playing, how it would revolutionize it. I always joked with him that if he had stayed home and not come with us on this trip, he wouldn't have gotten that soprano saxophone, so he was in debt to me for as long as he lived. Man, he used to laugh until he cried about that, and then I would say, "Trane, I'm serious." And he'd hug me real hard and just keep saying, "Miles, you're right about that." But this was later, when he had his own group and they was killing everybody with their ****.
Miles Davis and John Coltrane The Final Tour - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 Released March 23, 2018 (previously issued material on various European labels) Recorded March 21 (Paris), March 22 (Stockholm), and March 24 (Copenhagen), 1960 With Miles Davis (tr), John Coltrane (ts), Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b), and Jimmy Cobb (dr) March 21, Paris, set one 1. All of You 2. So What 3. On Green Dolphin Street Set two 1. Walkin' 2. Bye Bye, Blackbird 3. 'Round Midnight 4. Oleo 5. The Theme March 22, Stockholm, set one 1. So What 2. On Green Dolphin Street 3. All Blues 4. The Theme Set two 1. So What 2. Fran Dance 3. Walkin' 4. The Theme March 24, Copenhagen 1. So What 2. On Green Dolphin Street 3. All Blues 4. The Theme
Ashley Kahn, from the liner notes: As the 1960 [Jazz at the Philharmonic] tour opened doors, it also closed one. It proved to be not only Coltrane's last run at Miles's side, but the last appearances of his career as a sideman. The four years the saxophonist spent in Miles's group--from 1955 through '59--amounted to one of the most celebrated bondings in modern jazz, catapulting the unknown saxophonist from local obscurity to national renown, evolving from faltering insecurity to chance-taking confidence. The two had been born the same year and grown to be so different in temperament and manner. Yet, at the core, they were equals in their obsession with the inner workings of jazz, and their appetite for challenge and surprise. Upon his return home in April 1960, Coltrane got back to leading his own band and pursuing his own musical paths. Save for a guest appearance the following year on Miles' Someday My Prince Will Come album, he never looked back.
I'm listening to the French sets and reading along with Kahn's notes: The recordings of the two sets at L'Olympia on the tour's opening night seem to include proof of Coltrane's mood, blown through his horn. Enthusiastic and expectant applause leads to the theme of "All of You," then Miles's solo, after which Coltrane's improvisations began almost immediately to leap out with a rough intensity--strange and new to the French audience. Following Miles's more subdued trumpet, Coltrane's playing stood out in stark, disconcerting contrast. By mid-solo, a breathless flurry of slurs and split-tones cascaded forth, and the audience responded with whistling and loud comments. Undaunted, Coltrane built up steam, pushing the saxophone like a racehorse, leaping between registers, pushing the tonal quality of his instrument to a harsh edge. Frank Tenot, the legendary Parisian impresario who partnered with Granz in producing the concert, said: . . . When John was playing, Miles would go backstage, you see. He didn't stay on the stage. And John was alone, and the people was very surprised why there was no John Coltrane like on Kind of Blue and the session before with [Miles], and for Coltrane, it was a new step. So, part of the audience thinks that Coltrane doesn't play well, that he was playing the wrong notes involuntarily. Too much drugs or alcohol or something like this. So they started to whistle. One can easily hear the crowd growing restless during the saxophonist's lengthy improvisations, arguments erupting as Coltrane soloed, tune after tune. For the first time, most Parisians were witnessing the raw intensity that would color much of the rest of Coltrane's career. Following Miles's habitual set-closer "The Theme," Tenot rushed backstage. So after the show, I said to John, "You're too new for the people, they don't hear much [of what] they liked in the past. You go too far." And he had always a little smile on the face. He said, "I don't go far enough." Tenot is quick to add that nonetheless, by the next year, "the audience was completely with him when he returned [to France], the year of 'My Favorite Things.' He had a big success." First impressions endure like no other; the 1960 tour introduced John Coltrane to European audiences as a live performer, opening European ears to the future, and soon yielding well-paying gigs. By 1961, promoters in Great Britain, France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and West Germany all invited Coltrane to return with his own band, the quintet he would famously record with at the Village Vanguard that same year: multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer Elvin Jones. Coltrane, like Davis, would be asked back to Europe on a regular basis. But in 1960, the French needed time. Such was the controversy engendered by Coltrane at L'Olympia that both of France's jazz publications at the time, Jazz Hot and Jazz, dedicated themselves to lengthy exegeses calling on multiple experts to deal with Coltrane specifically: What was he doing? Was it valid? Was it jazz?
I agree that it sounds like Trane really doesn't want to be there in Paris, probably even resents having to do the tour, and he just doesn't care if he doesn't fit with the band or the audience doesn't care for what he's doing. It's like his Dylan at Newport or Manchester/Judas moment ("I don't believe you! You're a liar! Play f'ing loud!"), except he doesn't have The Band going out there on the limb with him. It's interesting that the French promoter told him that he went too far. Although Trane replied, "I don't go far enough," I think you can hear him dial it back the next night in Stockholm. Listen to how his solos progress on 3/22. He starts off each set playing more conservatively, more like what audiences might have expected if they'd been keeping up with his latest records, including the new Giant Steps. His solos on the second tunes for each house are even pretty. He takes his time with the audiences, lets them warm to him, and doesn't give them much of an avant-garde dose until the last tune of the sets. Even then, it's not like Paris. From Copenhagen through the end of the tour, you can hear him gradually get more comfortable with being himself within the group and the limitations of audience expectations for him. The band seems to loosen up with him, too. That's why I prefer the later shows. The first night in Paris is a fascinating historical document, and kind of punk rock, but I don't think it was a great performance by Trane. For the occasion, he went too far. Upon reflection between Paris and Stockholm, he seems to have realized it, too.
In the blog below, the 2nd writer in the 1962 article is Michel Poulain. He talks about a young man in the Olympia audience being agitated and shouting Miles ! during Trane's solo. This was followed by whistles from some who thought he 'went too far'. I had thought it may be a Rite of Spring event, but on first hearing it's not, and it is cool to listen to such a response. Trane is also getting great applause during the band announcement and after his solos. Poulain then talks about Coltrane's return a year later on the JATP tour with Dizzie Gillespie headlining. It seems there was also a midnight performance at the Olympia, and by then all the older jazz fans were gone. There wasn't even one protester at that show he says. Poulain talks about the incredible progress in Coltrane since a year earlier. Incidentally he also says there is no discernible progress from Dolphy by comparison since he was last in Paris with Charles Mingus. John Coltrane in France
Yes, I would say that the response in Paris was mixed, many fans were supportive, but it's remarkable that you can hear jeers and whistles on the recording, at all. I mean, in all of the live recordings you've heard and concerts you've attended, how often have you heard a sizeable part of the crowd heckle a musician? As I recall, you don't hear it on any subsequent dates from that tour, either (maybe because Trane reconsidered his approach). I'm struggling to think of any other jazz recordings that capture that kind of thing.
I think Rite of Spring was more dramatic - more uproar, many walkouts. Of course we don't have a recording to judge whether it's been blown out of proportion !!!
Right. I've also read that people walked out on Miles in the early '70s, they were so angered/bewildered, but on the recordings I hear nothing but appreciative applause at the end of the sets. I've wondered whether the accounts of rioting at the Rite of Spring premiere have been exaggerated because it's just good publicity hype; if nothing else, a good narrative. I see on Wikipedia that the tales of 40 ejections are uncorroborated, and there is disagreement about the extent of the audience disturbances and whether people actually were angry about the music or the dancing. Apparently there were rival factions within the audience--one critic suggested another performance when, "we could at least propose to evict the female element"--but people had mostly settled down by Part II, and there were several curtain calls in the end.
The Paris performance reminds me of Dylan's 1966 tour. There are factions in the crowd, those whistling and shouting thinking that Trane's lost his way, and those erupting in applause at the end of each of his solos. Listening to Trane's solo on "All of You" from that first show of the tour, I noticed that he ventured further from the recognizable melody with each successive chorus, but just when he got his most multi phonic and the crowd at its most agitated, Trane would effortlessly return to a line from the melody, perfectly in time, rhythm and harmony with the piano and bass. Even when he was venturing farther and farther out, he never lost his tether to the essence of the song. Fred Kaplan noticed the same in his review for Slate: Then, Coltrane enters with his solo. He starts out in a simpatico spirit, a harder tone but a gentle sway. In the second chorus, he throws in a few very fast triplets. By the fifth chorus, he’s unleashing volcanoes of notes—chords on top of chords, scales zipping through the stacks, so dense, so ferocious, so fast. A few years earlier, the critic Ira Gitler had described Coltrane’s style as “sheets of sound,” but these are blizzards of sound, implosions of pure energy. Four minutes in, he spends an entire chorus experimenting with multiphonics (sounding two or more notes at the same time), then he goes back to the blizzards, or languishes on a single chord, turning it a dozen ways in as many seconds, as if sifting all the angles of a prism. Yet at the end of each chorus, he rings out some phrase of the melody, and it doesn’t sound out of place because, through all the frenzy (this becomes startlingly clear on repeated listening), he never lets go of the song, he stays tethered to some harmonic or rhythmic hook. He may seem to be unleashing chaos, but that’s the opposite of what he’s up to. To me, this sounds like Trane's actually toying with the crowd--not just exploring for his own sake, but pushing the boundaries of acceptable performance at that time, in that space, to a place where half the crowd is ready to call for his head, then returning to the melody with a knowing wink. But I could be reading too much into this. Someone upthread mentioned that the Paris show is a very punk performance, and this is the attitude and spirit I'm trying to get at. I hear it, too.
Trane gets multi phonic again during "All Blues" in the first Stockholm set, and then Wynton Kelly kills during his solo. Miles shoots daggers during a brief second solo before the group rather peacefully closes out the song. Not sure I've heard a more thrilling version of this song.
It’s also a symptom of these package tours with the (perhaps) Oscar Peterson fans whistling and the Coltrane fans applauding. Elsewhere people may have been less vocal (or less rude).
John Coltrane on Instagram: “Two iconic and influential #JohnColtrane albums #GiantSteps and #MyFavoriteThings both earn Gold status 60 years after their release.…” According to the John Coltrane Instagram account, Giant Steps and My Favorite Things have been certified Gold after 60 years. Click through for a pic of Ravi accepting the awards.
"'Do you feel angry?' the Swedish deejay Carl-Erik Lindgren asked Coltrane after their first set in Stockholm the night after they played Paris. "'No, I don't,' Coltrane replied. 'I was talking to a fellow the other day, and I told him, the reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, I'm trying so many things at one time. I haven't sorted them out.' "Coltrane was sorting a lot out at the time--his sound, his compositional approach, his departure from the Miles collective--so it's easy to see how these could be conflated to explain his playing at the time. Coltrane was building his own band and booking his own gigs through most of 1959. Miles even extended a hand, hooking him up with his booking agent and his lawyer, the latter who helped Coltrane start his own music publishing company--Jowcol Music, end his contract with the small Prestige label, and sign a more lucrative contract with the midsize Atlantic Records. "Miles's assistance deferred the inevitable; it was with reluctance that Coltrane agreed to do one last tour with Miles, bringing with him a more withdrawn attitude, and a bristling, changed saxophone sound. 'That's the way he played every night, you know?' recalls Jimmy Cobb. 'By that time he was through playing Miles's stuff. He had outgrown everybody's band except his own.' "'I heard you were splitting the Miles group here, and trying something on your own,' the deejay asked Coltrane after the show in Stockholm. "'Yeah, I am,' was his curt answer." From Ashley Kahn's liner notes.
"Cultivating greatness at the right moment is one thing; knowing when to let it go, that's a different skill. Decades after the hubbub and applause of these 1960 concerts faded, Miles was speaking with the great jazz journalist Ralph J. Gleason. The writer noted that Miles's music had become complicated enough to demand five tenor saxophonists. Gleason remembered, He shot those eyes at me, and growled, 'I had five tenor players once.' I knew what he meant. "John Coltrane was Miles' first and greatest discovery. He knew that; he never stopped knowing that." From Ashley Kahn's liner notes.
John Coltrane & Don Cherry The Avant-Garde Recorded June 28 and July 8, 1960 Released in 1966 With Don Cherry (tr), John Coltrane (ts), Charlie Haden (b) (June 28 session only), Percy Heath (b) (July 8 session only), and Ed Blackwell (d). 1. Cherryco (Cherry) 2. Focus on Sanity (Coleman) 3. The Blessing (Coleman) 4. The Invisible (Coleman) 5. Bemsha Swing (Monk) "There was a lot happening in 1960, including a new black alto saxophonist named Ornette Coleman coming to New York City and turning the jazz world all the way around. He just came and ****ed up everybody. Before long you couldn't buy a seat in the Five Spot, where he was playing every night with Don Cherry--who played a plastic pocket trumpet (Ornette had a plastic alto too, I believe). Charlie Haden on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. They were playing music in a way everyone was calling 'free jazz' or 'avant-garde' or 'the new thing' or whatever. A lot of the 'star' people who used to come and see me--like Dorothy Kilgallen and Leonard Bernstein (who, they tell me, jumped up one night and said, 'This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to jazz!')--were now going to see Ornette. They played the Five Spot for about five or six months, and I used to go and check them out when I was in town, even sat in with them a couple of times." - Miles Davis "Miles didn't like [Coleman], complaining to a journalist, 'Just listen to what he writes and how he plays--if you're talking psychologically, the man is all screwed up inside.' By contrast, Coltrane went to the Five Spot almost every night, transfixed, and talked with the band for hours afterward, Coleman giving him lessons on nonchordal improvisation. (A few years later, Coltrane sent Coleman a check amounting to $50--the equivalent of more than $300 in today's dollars--for each lesson.)" - Fred Kaplan From A.B. Spellman's liner notes: 1960, when this record was made, was a crucial year in jazz. The fifties had ended, and in some jazz quarters it was felt that the varieties of bebop employed by the main streams of the fifties had played themselves out. The recrudescence of Monk and Monkism had given impetus to some new forces, however, and the old guard was being assaulted on three main fronts: harmonic (Coltrane), tonal (Cecil Taylor), and rhythmic-melodic (Ornette Coleman). Two of those three elements are represented here along with Percy Heath, one of the most consistent, intelligent and far-sighted musicians of the fifties. Heath was no stranger to the concept of group improvisation that Blackwell and Cherry (and Charlie Haden, the bassist on "Cherryco" and "The Blessing") brought to this date from Ornette Coleman's group. Heath had recorded with Ornette on Ornette's first date. (Two of the tunes used here that Ornette composed, "The Invisible" and "The Blessing," are from that record.) He and John Lewis had introduced Coleman and Cherry to the Ertegun brothers of Atlantic Records who brought them east to attend the famous Lenox (Mass.) School of Jazz, and he had been among the first to put his considerable reputation on the line by declaring that Coleman and Cherry were innovators. Heath belongs to the self-enriching tradition in art wherein a man constantly reassesses his own values and thereby regenerates his craft. His strong but inquisitive work on this date shows that he obviously made this date as much to learn from these new emerging forces as to give them the benefit of his experience. The same can be said of John Coltrane. The Avant-Garde was cut just after Giant Steps, and listeners who know the work just prior to and just after that fascinatingly pivotal record know the kind of mind-searching Trane was into. It was indeed a crucial period for him. He had just left Miles Davis' group where, though he established himself as the co-leader (with Sonny Rollins) of modern tenor saxophone playing, he was inhibited by the leader's group idea. He was after new patterns, structures and sounds which could provide an ever-opening release for him. He had been listening to Ornette Coleman at the Five Spot, and there he saw the possibilities in the liberation of the rhythm section in the elimination of the gap between soloist and accompanist. This is much of what The Avant-Garde is about, and Coltrane's involvement with it is utter. . . . "The Blessing" includes John Coltrane's first recorded soprano solo, up-dating "My Favorite Things" by a few months. . . . [He] switches from tenor to soprano to take the tune ["The Invisible"] out.
Despite a lot of the reviews, I like this album. I like Coltrane's vibrato-less sound. I like the recording, I like the playing - it could be said this really is a transitional recording from Trane, playing Coleman's compositions with his band.
I like the album alright. Trane doesn't sound totally comfortable and it's not among his greatest recordings, but it's a fun diversion.
I find I like it more if I think of it as a Don Cherry record, for some reason. A diversion is a good way to put it when placing it in Trane’s discography.
I wish I knew enough about music theory to write an informed post like this. All I can say about Giant Steps is that some of the tracks remind me of the feeling you get when you’re trying to solve a math problem or a crossword puzzle, and I mean that as a compliment. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that listening to Giant Steps is like watching a genius solve a math problem.
John Coltrane The Roulette Sides Recorded September 8, 1960 Originally released on John Coltrane and Lee Morgan - The Best of Birdland, Vol. 1 With John Coltrane (ts), McCoy Tyner (p), Steve Davis (b), and Billy Higgins (dr). 1. Exotica 2. Exotica (alternate take) 3. One and Four (a/k/a Mr. Day) 4. Like Sonny (a/k/a Simple Like) This is another interesting diversion in Trane's catalog--a half-LP for Roulette done with Atlantic's permission. The compositions are all Coltrane's, and have been joined with the Ray Draper/Coltrane 1958 session, A Tuba Jazz, to produce the CD release Like Sonny. The 1960 session here was cut to vinyl for Record Store Day in 2016. The session is particularly notable as the first time Coltrane recorded with a version of his own quartet, including McCoy Tyner, who would stay with him through 1965. Coltrane had previously recorded a Tyner composition, "The Believer," more than two years prior. Steve Davis would remain in the quartet until replaced by Reggie Workman and, later, Jimmy Garrison. Billy Higgins, of the Ornette Coleman group (and soon to be a Blue Note mainstay), would soon after this session be replaced by Elvin Jones. Another alternate version of Exotica, not heard here, would be recorded at the Oct. 24, 1960 session, and appeared on 1970 posthumous compilation The Coltrane Legacy as "Untitled Original." "Like Sonny" is based on a line that Trane heard Rollins play. It was also recorded in several versions with Cedar Walton and Lex Humphries at the first session for Giant Steps, which can be heard on The Heavyweight Champion box set, and again at the December 2, 1959 session, which version ended up on Coltrane Jazz. "One and Four" (a/k/a "Mr. Day") also would be recorded at the Oct. 24, 1960 session, and used on Coltrane Plays the Blues. There's a nice Tyner solo on this version. Overall, I'd say this session sounds a bit protean, and for that reason is inessential, but worth checking out for the compositions, performances, and once you've had your fill of the other Coltrane quartet recordings of the periods and you find yourself wanting more. I was unfamiliar with these recordings for years, then waited for two years before buying the Record Store Day release because I didn't really know what this was, and I would imagine a number of Coltrane listeners fall into the same boat.
