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.
OK, I know this is heresy for you jazz aficionados but I can’t listen to any of this guy’s stuff. It’s fingernails on chalkboard to me. Maybe it gets better after a minute or so. I wouldn’t know; I’ve never stuck with it for that long.
I LOVE John Coltrane! Miles Davis too! Haters go suck an egg! LOL!
I like early Miles, but he lost me after Bitches Brew.
WOW! I am well aware of JC, but never listened. I am a listener NOW! Thx for the nudge!!
“fingernails on chalkboard”
That’s me, too.
I have friends who are accomplished musicians and who like a lot of the same music that I do. They tell me that Coltrane and maybe Frank Zappa are musical giants but it’s totally lost on me. I’m with the rubes who don’t get it.
Rudy Van Gelder was a legendary jazz recording engineer...and for good reason - always super high audio quality.
Wiki: "His recording techniques are often admired by his fans for their transparency, clarity, realism, warmth and presence."
Wiki: "From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in its RVG Edition series. He was positive about the switch from analog to digital technology. He told Audio magazine in 1995."
“I like early Miles, but he lost me after Bitches Brew.”
Same here .
But whatever came in the late 60's/early 70's (fusion?), I hated.
In the event you haven’t, give a listen to Coltrane’s recordings with Johnny Hartman. And also listen to him playing his composition Naima. And also on Kind of Blue listen to his solo on Blue in Green.
You will hear a sublime tenderness that reveals the great musical sensitivity he possessed. You will not be disappointed.
The best thing from Kind of Blue was Bill Evans, I became a huge Bill Evans fan after that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLDflhhdPCg
That is just gorgeous. I agree with some of the others about Coltrane sometimes being hard to listen to, but here his playing is really lyrical and accessible. The whole track has a deep moodiness about it that can grab you even if you’re not a hardcore jazz head.
Now that the pipelines are being blocked by our friends on the Left, we need more Coltranes.
(Coltrane is about as off-the-wall as I can appreciate; Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra is pure drek.)
I love the story about Max Roach decking Ornette Coleman after hearing one of his concerts.
I have the album he did with Pat Metheny, it takes some getting used to.
Saw Miles live a couple times. Always will have that memory.
I love it. But I get your point about some of his stuff, which as a sax player, doesn't appeal to me.
But really, "Ballads" is different, and quite beautiful.
Especially this one "Say it" which is the opening song of the album:
Click to play: "Ballads-"Say it"
I played this one often when courting my wife...:)
See my post above. One of my absolute favorite jazz albums.
Song X… I worked with a talented saxophonist and he introduced me to it. It was sort of like having someone’s first drink being Laphroaig
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