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John Coltrane stuns the jazz world with his amazing, frantic soloing on “Russian Lullaby,” 1958
03.15.2019
10:57 am
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John Coltrane
Photo credit: Esmond Edwards/CTSIMAGES.

In 1958, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane made quite the impression with his soloing on the song, “Russian Lullaby.” His work on this track was so impressive that it inspired jazz critic, Ira Gitler, to coin a phrase to describe Trane’s groundbreaking, frantic style: “sheets of sound”.

“Russian Lullaby” is an Irving Berlin composition from 1927, and was initially performed by singer Douglas Stanbury. Written to be played at a relaxed tempo, a swinging, 1939 instrumental rendition by big band leader Bunny Berigan upped the pace considerably.
 

 
John Coltrane’s version is the closing number on his 1958 album, Soultrane. The LP was recorded was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his home studio, which was located in the living room of his parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey.
 
Van Gelder house
Photo credit: Rudy Van Gelder/the Rudy Van Gelder Estate.

In excerpts from the liner notes for the upcoming box set, Coltrane ‘58: The Prestige Recordings, writer Ashley Kahn walks us through Coltrane’s head-turning “Russian Lullaby”:

Surprise factors into the presentation in a big way: a conventional, consciously elegant introduction by pianist Red Garland (Coltrane’s fellow sideman in Miles Davis group at the time) hits an exaggerated downbeat and suddenly the tempo shifts as drummer Art Taylor resets the pace with a furious hi-hat pattern. Coltrane leaps into the tune, blistering his way through the melody and into his ensuing improvisation as stunning in its ceaseless urgency as it is in the fluid, extended patterns of sixteenth notes that wash over and into the ears in a manner most unlike the “melodic propulsion” most members of the jazznoscenti favored. It demanded a letting go of expectations, and an aural generosity.

After Coltrane was done, gone was the lull in the lullaby, the original mood and message of Berlin’s song. But he had one more thing to say—all in a brief, explosive unaccompanied cadenza near the end of the tune.

In a mere thirty seconds starting at 4:57, Coltrane outshone the fury of his prior solo, and gave this new improvisation its own character, developing ideas in its breathless flow. His lines shoot skyward and he brings them back gently: rhythmically in control, emotionally on point. It wasn’t merely the speed of the statement; the first ten-second stretch contains almost 90 notes. It was the bravado and the knowledge: the amount of harmonic information being conveyed and the soulful precision of articulation.

Here’s the newly remastered “Russian Lullaby, ” from Coltrane ’58:
 

 
The 5-CD/8-LP box will be released on March 29th by the Craft Recordings label. Pre-order Coltrane ’58: The Prestige Recordings via Amazon; bundle packages are available on Craft’s website. The set contains every track Trane recorded for Prestige as band leader or co-leader in 1958.
 

 
In 1961, John Coltrane scored a hit with his interpretation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune, “My Favorite Things.” Trane’s cover of The Sound of Music number became a signature song for him, and is a classic. Here’s Coltrane and his group performing “My Favorite Things” on the Belgium TV program, Jazz Pour Tous, in 1965:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
New boxed set reveals John Coltrane created ‘terror’ during final tour with Miles Davis, 1960
Hear a stellar version of ‘Impressions’ from the upcoming live John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy boxed set
John Coltrane meets Terry Riley in free jazz minimalist mashup

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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03.15.2019
10:57 am
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John Coltrane, Sun Ra, and many more on this stunning 12-hour mix of spiritual jazz
09.12.2016
04:24 pm
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After several decades of jazz music mainly serving as something to dance to—as Wikipedia drily notes, “the association of jazz with sex is early and extensive”—by the time the 1950s rolled around it was time to get a little more serious. Spiritual jazz is product of the late 1950s and after; it is most commonly associated with John Coltrane, whose 1965 album A Love Supreme eventually became an essential part of the record collections of impressionable college students everywhere. The trend of long-playing albums made it possible for experimental works to explore a single theme for 20 or more minutes at a time, which also lent itself to more serious explorations of divinity.

Last week the London online radio station NTS dropped a colossal, nay transcendent 4-part “history of spiritual jazz” lasting more than 12 hours in all. It starts with Fred Stone’s “Theme from Lawrence of Arabia” (originally composed by Maurice Jarre, this rendition happened in 1972) and ends with an ambitious composition by the Art Ensemble of Chicago called “Certain Blacks ‘Do What They Wanna.’” In between you’ll find remarkable music by Stanley Crouch, Elvin Jones, Sun Ra, David S. Ware, Herbie Hancock, Don Cherry, Amiri Baraka, Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Roland Kirk, Earth Wind and Fire, Art Blakey—and that’s leaving out another several dozen musicians whose names are not as familiar. (Interestingly, Charles Mingus is not represented.)

So put this on and let spiritual jazz define your week.
 
Check out all four mixes of spiritual jazz after the jump…....

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.12.2016
04:24 pm
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John Coltrane meets Terry Riley in free jazz minimalist mashup
01.08.2016
02:28 pm
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Yesterday His Name Is Alive honcho Warren Defever posted an intriguing file to his Mixcloud account, a mashup lasting in excess of 35 minutes featuring the works of spiritual jazz icon John Coltrane and minimalist composer par excellence Terry Riley.

In a mix like this it’s practically inevitable that the Coltrane numbers would predominate and hence be more readily identifiable. The mix features three single-word “A” titles from Coltrane, those being “Alabama,” “Attaining,” and “Ascension.” On the Riley side I think the first number is “Journey from the Death of a Friend” but I’m not certain.

Allow this bracing dose of spirituality to usher in a splendid weekend!
 

John Coltrane and Terry Riley by Xoxowar on Mixcloud

 
via Detroit Metro Times

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Impressions of John Coltrane’: 3 vintage TV performances
Live footage of Terry Riley and La Monte Young in the 70s

Posted by Martin Schneider
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01.08.2016
02:28 pm
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Hear a stellar version of ‘Impressions’ from the upcoming live John Coltrane/Eric Dolphy boxed set
03.02.2015
10:18 am
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John Coltrane
 
Acrobat Music is about to release the boxed set of live John Coltrane Quintet recordings, So Many Things: European Tour, 1961. The collection is billed as a sequel to Acrobat’s Miles Davis set, All of You: The Last Tour, 1960, which featured Coltrane and was his last trek with Miles. This time Trane is in charge, and the featured sideman is multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Dangerous Minds has a preview of So Many Things, a track that would become a significant Coltrane piece.

“Impressions” initially went by other names for years before it became the title song for John Coltrane’s 1963 LP. The composition was already a staple of his concerts in 1961, and would be a part of Trane’s live repertoire until 1965. One such performance of the tune took place during Coltrane’s first Finnish gig, which was held on November 22nd, 1961, in Helsinki.

In the boxed set’s liner notes, Simon Spillett writes that the version of “Impressions” from the Helsinki show “contains one of Eric Dolphy’s finest moments of the entire tour—an alto solo full of impossibly rangy lines, honks, and high harmonics,” and that Coltrane’s second solo is “overflowing with choked false-fingered passages and vocalized delves to the bottom of the horn.”
 
Live, 1961
 
So Many Things: European Tour, 1961, comes out on March 10th. Let us know what you think of “Impressions” in the comments section. We sure dig it.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
New boxed set reveals John Coltrane created ‘terror’ during final tour with Miles Davis, 1960

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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03.02.2015
10:18 am
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New boxed set reveals John Coltrane created ‘terror’ during final tour with Miles Davis, 1960
11.20.2014
11:05 am
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All of You: The Final Tour, 1960
 
In 1955, Miles Davis hired an up-and-coming musician named John Coltrane to play in his group. Over the next couple of years, the team-up produced some incredible music, but the personal relationship between the trumpeter/leader and the saxophonist was never steady. Backstage at a gig in the spring of 1957, Miles slapped Coltrane and then punched him in the stomach; Trane’s only response was to quit the band.

Coltrane returned to join Davis’ sextet later in the year, but during that short time away he had continued to make a name for himself as a group member, bandleader and recording artist in his own right. Trane played on Miles’ Kind of Blue (1959), now considered one of the cornerstones of the jazz genre, and accompanied Davis on a European tour in 1960, but mentally he was focused on his own music. Miles later admitted Coltrane “was ready to move out before we left.”
 
Kind of Blue
 
The spring 1960 European tour was spread out over twenty cities in nine countries. The new boxed set, All of You: The Last Tour, 1960 includes recordings from eight of those performances. Though the Quintet sounds fantastic as a unit, Coltrane’s solos are so unusual they caused quite a stir at the time. Kind of Blue is a lovely record that is also easy on the ears, but Trane was doing his best to make this music sound ugly.

Journalist Frank Tenot witnessed the first show of the tour in Paris: “People were very surprised why there was no John Coltrane like on Kind of Blue. So, part of the audience thinks that Coltrane doesn’t play too well, that he was playing the wrong notes, involuntarily.” Tenot went backstage after the show to tell the saxophonist, “You’re too new for the people… you go too far.” Coltrane just smiled and said, “I don’t go far enough.”

Other critics who witnessed the shows wished that Trane had held back. One reporter called his solos “scandalous,” and wrote that they “bore no relationship whatsoever with playing the saxophone.” Another writer was so horrified he equated Coltrane’s solos with the very concept of “terror.”
 
Trane in pain
 
As the leader, Davis takes the first solo during every song on these recordings, and as much as I dig Miles—his solo turns are as interesting and as exquisite as ever—after a couple of tracks, I found myself waiting for Coltrane to step up and blow me away. And he would do just that. Every time. It’s fascinating to hear him push the material—and thus, the band—especially as this was Miles’ group, not his. The fact that we now know he had mentally moved on from his role with Davis, as well as facing negative reactions to his output, only makes listening to these tracks all the more absorbing.
 
John Coltrane and Miles Davis
 
The Miles Davis Quintet returned to the states on April 11th, and it wouldn’t be long before Coltrane would make his exit. By then, Trane had made a name for himself and was well on his to becoming one of the titans of jazz.
 
John Coltrane
 
Some of the recordings on the boxed set are taken from radio broadcasts, while others were captured privately by audience members. Initially, my expectations were somewhat low as far as the fidelity of these live tapes—which date from over a half century ago—but aside from a couple of muddy sounding tracks and occasional issues with how the musicians were mic’d, the sound quality ranges from very good to surprisingly great. Hear for yourself, as we have an exclusive preview track, an up tempo version of “So What,” recorded in Stockholm, Sweden on March 22nd, 1960. The faster beat and Trane’s dissonant solo result in something excitingly different than the subdued mood created for the familiar Kind of Blue version. Enjoy.

All of You: The Last Tour, 1960 will be released on December 2nd.
 

 
Here’s a 1959 TV clip of “So What” played at a pace that more closely resembles the one found on Kind of Blue, but with Coltrane beginning to stretch, feeling his way towards the type of solos he would play on his final tour with Miles:
 

 

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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11.20.2014
11:05 am
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‘Impressions of John Coltrane’: 3 vintage TV performances

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Impressions of John Coltrane is an excellent trio of television performances featuring John Coltrane,  with his own quartet, the Miles Davis Quintet and alongside Eric Dolphy. Filmed between 1959 and 1963, each performance reveals the quality and range of the great man’s playing.

The first comes from the series The Jazz Casual, originally aired in 1963. Here you’ll find the perfect line-up of Coltrane (tenor sax/soprano sax), McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums). This is said to be the only time Coltrane’s “classic” quartet was caught on camera. Together they give great versions of “Impressions” and “Afro Blue”.

The second is from 1959, and has Coltrane playing with the Miles David Quintet - Davis (flügelhorn/trumpet), Coltrane (tenor sax/alto sax), Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Jimmy Cobb (drums). They are accompanied by Gil Evans and a 15-piece orchestra. And certainly get going on “So What”, “The Duke”, “Blues for Pablo” and “New Rumba”.

The third is from West German TV in 1961, which shows Coltrane playing with Eric Dolphy (alto sax/flute), McCoy Tyner (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums), who hit the spot with “My Favorite Things” and “Impressions”.

Track list:

01. “Alabama”
02. “Impressions”
03. “Afro Blue”
04. “So What” (with Miles Davis)
05. “The Duke” (with Miles Davis)
06. “Blues For Pablo” (with Miles Davis)
07. “New Rumba” (with Miles Davis)
08. “My Favorite Things” (with Eric Dolphy)
09. “Impressions” (with Eric Dolphy)
 

 
Thanks to Jazztification
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.18.2012
08:19 pm
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Happy Birthday John Coltrane
09.23.2011
04:26 pm
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Happy Birthday John Coltrane, musician, composer, innovator, artist and space traveler, who rocketed “off the surface of the earth towards more specialized, little explored, and potentially dangerous atmospheres”.

Born today in 1926, Coltrane has been described as “the last great figure in the evolution of jazz”, who opened jazz up into a language of possibilities. He progressed from Be-Bop to Hard Bop to Free Style, and brought a spiritual sense to his music the culminated in his genius work Love Supreme.

Coltrane didn’t question his innate talent or technical brilliance, he allowed it to develop organically, seeing himself as part of a larger creative community as he descibed in a letter to Don DeMichael, in 1962:

The “jazz” musician (you can have this term along with others that have been foisted on us) does not have to worry about a lack of positive or affirmative philosophy. It’s built in us. The phrasing, the sound of the music attests this fact. We are naturally endowed with it. You can believe all of us would have perished long ago if it had not been so. As to community, the whole face of the globe is our community. You see, it is really easy for us to create. We are born with this feeling that just comes out no matter what conditions exist.

...

Truth is indestructible. It seems history shows (and it’s the same today) that the innovator is more often than not met with some degree of condemnation.; usually according to the degree of departure from the prevailing modes of expression or what have you. Change is always hard to accept. We also see these innovators always seek to revitalize, extend and reconstruct the status quo in their given fields, whatever is needed. Quite often they are rejects, outcasts, sub-citizens etc. of the very societies to which they bring so much sustenance. Often they are people who endure great personal tragedy in their lives. Whatever the case, whether accepted or rejected, rich or poor, they are forever guided by that great eternal constant - the creative urge.

Here’s Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” - the crossover track that broke free of Be Bop, brought him a mainstream audience, and demonstrated complex harmonies and repetitions into “a hypnotic eastern dervish dance”. 
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.23.2011
04:26 pm
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Miles Davis’s band members on Vans sneakers

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Here are some freakin’ amazing one-of-a-kind Vans WE Sk8 Hi’s designed by super-talented artist, Ian Johnson. I totally think Vans and Ian need to make more of these fine shoes.
 
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See more images after the jump…

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.11.2010
01:12 am
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