Posted on 10/11/2022 3:38:48 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If you want to let someone hear what Coltrane is all about, then this is as good a place as any to start.
On October 8, 1963, John Coltrane, along with pianist McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison on double bass, and drummer Elvin Jones were at Birdland, and a part of their performance was captured on tape by Rudy Van Gelder.
Released in 1964, Coltrane Live At Birdland became ‘Trane’s second live album on Impulse!, although only three of the five tracks on the original LP release were actually from the gig at the famous Manhattan club; the other two are from a session at Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio a little over a month later.
The three tracks from Birdland are Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro-Blue,” Billy Eckstine’s “I Want To Talk About You,” and “The Promise,” a Coltrane original. The Eckstine song was originally recorded by Coltrane on his 1958 album Soultrane and here it features a superb extended cadenza that lasts over eight minutes.
A week or so after the Coltrane Live at Birdland recording the band headed to Europe where they played gigs in Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, and Stuttgart over a three-week period. The subsequent session at Van Gelder’s yielded two more Coltrane originals, “Your Lady” and “Alabama.”
The latter track is Coltrane’s tribute to the four children killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, in Birmingham, Alabama by white supremacists. The album’s original pressing accidentally included a false start, which was corrected in later copies, but restored to the CD edition that also included another track, “Vilia” which uses a melody from the Franz Lehár’s “Vivias,” with chord changes and a great deal more swing.
Critics have called this “Coltrane’s finest all-around album” and it’s impossible to disagree. The playing of Tyner is brilliant throughout, especially on “The Promise” and as we’ve already mentioned the cadenza on “I Want To Talk About You” is outstanding, made even more remarkable by the way that ‘Trane never loses sight of the fact that this is a beautiful ballad. If you want to let someone hear what Coltrane is all about, then this is as good a place as any to start.
I saw a T-shirt today, ‘The Saxophone Whisperer’. I immediately thought, No, that’a Paul Desmond, the ‘Whispering Saxophonist’.
It was the Pat Metheny Group album that brought me into the Metheny world. That and Offramp are still my two favorites.
I’m more into the old Dixieland Jazz myself, too, and Blues. I loved Louis Armstrong as a tiny little thing and still do. Never got over it.
Louis playing Struttin’ With Some Barbecue” (gotta love that title!) It keeps me going while doing housework:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ffm4rt-Uks0
The Great Satchmo’s New Orleans version of St. James Infirmary:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzcpUdBw7gs
Compare and contrast with Blind Willie McTell’s version (amazingly complex for just voice and guitar):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu_rwoAkcj8
The first “rock concert” I attended back when I was a little teenybopper was The Allman Brothers.* Their version of Statesboro Blues:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ezPZxfS1jys
Compare and contrast with the original Stateboro Blues by Blind Willie McTell recorded in 1928 (you can hear the roots of several later genres in this one — including rockabilly!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sk4Js6Q58h8
For dfwgator and 1OldPro, Pat Methany Group playing San Lorenzo live in 1977:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FJPUZX45_sA
*Little story: About 15 years later, I was living and working in Nashville. My grandmother was in the hospital and I was visiting her. Other family members also visiting were hungry, so I was dispatched to fetch food from the Taco Bell a couple of doors down from the hospital that was across the street from one of the major recording studios. Guess who held open the door for me at Taco Bell? Gregg Allman! I just thanked him kindly and did not let on I recognized him. He was very polite!
Then, about a week later, my CBS reps came down from New York to see me at work and wanted to go out on the town after the fancy dinner. So we went to The Grapevine Cafe (a little bar not as famous as The Bluebird Cafe, but much cooler musicians actually turned up there to jam back in the 1980s). Guess who came in to jam? The Gregg Allman Band! Gregg picked me out to come up and play tambourine and spoons with the band. I had a blast! (I kinda lame on tambourine, but I’m one mean spoon player lol.) It was so funny. Him: “Hey, you’re the Taco Bell girl!” Me: “Yes! And you’re the Taco Bell doorman!”
Oops! I had Pelham, dfwgator, and 1Old Pro on the ping list on my #24 above, but somehow lost them :( Sorry, guys.
Ugh! Make that my #43. Can’t seem to do anything right today :(
That’s a great story. The rare freeper to have played in the Gregg Allman Band.
My dad put himself through college in the late 1930s playing Dixieland. Clarinet and saxophone. When he retired in his 70s my sister talked him into picking it up again and he played in bands into his 90s. When he was in his 80s he played a one hour concert at the Nixon library, just himself and a piano accompanist.
Wow,that is so cool! What a cool Dad! Yay for him keeping it up into his 90s. That is really something. And what an honor to play at the Nixon Library. I love stories like this.
Wish I could have been in the audience! (And I promise I would not have played spoons. Gregg Allman was probably the only professional musician who would have put up with my spoon playing.)
And mark almond band
The allman bros were jazzy too at times
Earlier tull too
I was on gate to terminal shuttle at Tampa airport 80s and Allman was on it with family
Country looking folks
Didn’t look happy together
I used to see Cher at China club Manhattan 80s a lot
She liked my partner who looked was pretty
Feminine handsome
Girls always loved him
She was shorter than I’d figured but very nice honestly
Her and Matt Dylan
My buddy said she smelled
BO not the other pardon the TMI and candor
Girls don’t usually have BO
My wife can lay on the beach in July and never have underarm odor
Me?
Bad
One night china club Depeche Mode was playing and Bowie got on stage and they did Route 66
Perfect
We knew the owners and my buddy did two cannonball runs with them
Two nice Jewish boys of course lol
Never heard of the Mark Almond Band. Learn something new every day. Hmm. Their “The City” (long song!) seems to be one of their better pieces?:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7xkoiODV1ZE
Somehow remind me of Les Escrocs (A French group who do tongue-in-cheek stuff sort of making fun of that genre). Or maybe I’m just weird. Their best-known song here in the States is ASSEDIC:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lwOg9HwrxxM
If you don’t speak French, here’s another group covering ASSEDIC with English subtitles (ASSEDIC is the French government unemployment insurance agency):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=klIwRQ8kxvU
Les Escrocs do some silly-funny stuff, but sometimes biting social commentary (like this one about the Muslims taking over France while the French have no babies and their new Muslim citizens have lots). It’s sort of The Babylon Bee meets Beatnik coffee house poetry reading meets Charles Trenet (and they’re kinda poking fun at the latter two, too). Loukoum et Camembert (Turkish Delight and Camembert):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qjcpE4uLrJ0
I recognize that Mark Almond tune “The City” but I didn’t know whose song it was. Reminds me of Sade. Being totally unsophisticated, I like it.
For a brief time (thank God) there was a sophisticated station in LA dedicated to “world music”, which must have been distantly related to this style but managed to be consistently horrible. Aimless sound in search of a tune. My neighbors across the way loved it and would serenade the ‘hood with their outdoor speakers. Maybe it kept the rats and coyotes at bay, I dunno. It kept me at bay.
No, you’re not unsophisticated at all for liking The City! It’s got some chops.
1971 version:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7xkoiODV1ZE
1978 version (after Steely Dan influence):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2MFb-JahDNA
Jazz fusion sometimes incorporates influences of World Music, and when it incorporates a lot, it’s called World Fusion. I’m not much into it myself, so I understand your reaction to your neighbors 😁
My neighbor had a leaf b!ower obsession. He could not stand for there to be a single leaf on his patio so he’d get out his leaf blower *every single day* in the late afternoon just when I finally got a few moments for a little screen porch time. Ugh. So I retaliated with this CD I made I labelled “Stupid French Music” (lots of Charles Trenet, a little JJ Goldman, stuff like that).
I still crack up at the “mermaid chorus” in Trenet’s La Mer (although I actually think it a beautiful song and confess amid many blushes that I actually like Charles Trenet and find it fun to sing along with him — him so well, me so badly):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rveEkv4ZM8k
If you’re not familiar with JJ Goldman, he was a pop fave in France back in the late 80s/early 90s:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zuNmzTLwjcc
As you can see in the above video, he could have been the inspiration for the song “I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt” lol.
Love your stories!
The BO thing. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, the lib young’uns had this idea deodorant was unhealthy and the girls also believed in going natural and shaving their underarms or legs. Being a lib celebrity, maybe Cher was following this fad. I had no clue about this until I went Up North (fanning myself because the thought of Up North and Yankees gives me the vapors lol), to get a Masters after deciding to change careers and we grad students were appalled at how the young lib undergrads smelled and the guys made jokes about it.
On the other hand, maybe only Yankee women get BO. Everyone knows we Southern ladies never sweat. We just glisten ;)
While waiting on the bench at the courthouse to get documents I needed awhile back, I got in a conversation with this very nice, personable gay bartender who had just moved here from out west (SoCal or Las Vegas — I forget which) He said Cher showed up at the gay bar where he worked all the time incognito in no makeup and a baseball cap. He said she a scream, but used lots of foul language.
With Jaco, it was more jazzy. The next album and offramp seemed to be more Lyle Mays influenced. Jaco was an interesting fellow. Joni Mitchell got pissed at him during the Shadow and Light tour, maybe he was off his meds.
Fantastic album. Missouri Uncompromised, is my favorite.
Another of my faves is Gary Burton’s “Passengers” with Pat, Dan Gottlieb and Eberward Weber and Steve Swallow.
Burton got me listing to Spiro Gyra, I think a NY band who recorded in VT and elsewhere, because I enjoyed the vibes so much. Rites of Summer is one of my favorites with Dave Samuels on vibraphone.
Saw Pat and Richard Bona do Bright Size Life as a trio, on the Speaking of Now tour. Richard did Jaco proud.
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