John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy: Evenings At The Village Gate

  Richard Alderson was a New York recording engineer in 1961 when he was enlisted to check out a new sound system being installed at the Village Gate. It happened that saxophonist John Coltrane was appearing at the club for the month of August, with various musicians invited to join him on stage. That’s the basic back-story behind the scintillating Impulse! release of Evenings At The Village Gate, with eighty minutes of John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy plus McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. The tapes were lost and found, and then lost again until this recent rediscovery, and every jazz fan should be thankful for the appearance of this music, no matter how belated it might be. Coltrane and Dolphy started working together earlier in 1961, on Olé for Atlantic and Africa/Brass for Impulse. They teamed up again in November at the Village Vanguard (eventually collected on the 4-CDs of The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Sessions), and then took off for a series of concerts in Europe. Some of those performances came out on bootlegs and a few appeared later on Live Trane, a 7-CD set on Pablo. The repertoire is largely familiar, starting with My Favorite Things, a rare jazz “hit” and a popular song frequently associated with Coltrane who played it very often. Here it features some prime Dolphy flute. Next up is When Lights Are Low, which might have been a Dolphy suggestion, since ‘Trane had recorded it just once, with Miles Davis in 1956. Featuring his highly expressive bass clarinet playing, this Benny Carter-Spencer Williams composition became a Dolphy favorite, and he performed the tune at his European concerts immediately following the Village Gate shows. The traditional melody Greensleeves, which Coltrane played a lot that year, gets a real workout in a sixteen minute extravaganza with a killer Dolphy solo on alto, followed by a Coltrane soprano solo that makes you almost forget the first solo. The sequencing saves the best for last, with an extended version of Coltrane’s Africa, the only known live performance of this number from the Africa/Brass sessions. Coming out of a typically volcanic Elvin Jones solo, the last five minutes with both horns wailing is the most thrilling music I’ve heard in many a moon. While the drums are too loud, and Workman’s bass is down in the mix, I imagine the system still passed the test as far as the club was concerned. The Village Gate finally closed its doors in 1994, but this music will be prized as long as there are ears to hear it. Evenings At The Village Gate is a treasure, and one of the most important releases of this or any year. Absolutely recommended. 

Impulse!; John Coltrane (ts, ss) Eric Dolphy (as, fl, bcl) McCoy Tyner (p) Reggie Workman, Art Davis* (b) Elvin Jones (d); NYC, August 1961; My Favorite Things/ When Lights Are Low/ Impressions/ Greensleeves/ Africa*; 80:15. www.impulserecords.com/#/

Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Bootleg Series, Volume 6: The Final Tour

While all of the material on The Bootleg Series, Volume 6: The Final Tour, credited to Miles Davis & John Coltrane, has been issued on various bootlegs over the years, this is the first official release for music from the spring 1960 European tour by the Miles Davis quintet - the trumpeter’s first Continental tour with his own group. Tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, in the process of getting his own band together, didn’t really want to go, but Davis could be persuasive. Some extra money from tour producer Norman Granz certainly didn’t hurt. Historian and journalist Ashley Kahn offers a lot of details in his extensive notes for the 32-page booklet, which also includes both on and off stage photos from the tour. The quintet’s European jaunt began in Paris on March 21 (heard on disc 1 & part of disc 2), and ended in Stuttgart on April 10. The Copenhagen show of March 24, the only show taken from the “original radio source,” fills the rest of disc 2. Two concerts in Stockholm on March 22 are on the third and fourth disc, with a 6-minute radio interview with Coltrane as a bonus at the end. 

At this point, Miles was fifteen years into his career, with major successes behind him. He had already established a pattern of his music changing and developing. Coltrane was a comparatively late starter, and while his music was changing rapidly in this period, he was headed in a different direction than Davis. On every song in this set, we hear Coltrane bursting out of the chord changes, trying everything all at once with an unusually harsh sound and a newly fractured style of improvising. Besides the utter rawness and grit of Coltrane’s horn as he stretches out, even drawing some catcalls in Paris, it’s the total aplomb and maximum swing imparted by the rhythm section of pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb that’s truly impressive. Wherever ‘Trane goes, they’re right there with him. To put things into historical perspective, note that at Coltrane’s last recording session before this tour, in December 1959, he had recorded original compositions including Like Sonny, Harmonique, & Naima, with the same nonpareil rhythm team. After returning to New York after the tour, the next sessions that the saxophonist did were with Don Cherry in June and July for The Avant-Garde on Atlantic. When Miles went on another European tour in the fall, Sonny Stitt took over on saxophone. 

While Coltrane is tearing it up night after night, Miles Davis stays as cool as ever, improvising at length in tip top shape. The quintet concentrated on a fairly limited repertoire for these shows, with So What, On Green Dolphin Street, and All Blues each making multiple appearances. The sound is excellent mono, with the Paris show having the best instrumental balance. Much more than a mere collection of live recordings, The Final Tour is history in the making, and invaluable documentation of the incendiary sounds generated by these giants of modern jazz. Not to be missed. 

Columbia/Legacy 88985448392; Miles Davis (tp) John Coltrane (ts) Wynton Kelly (p) Paul Chambers (b) Jimmy Cobb (d); Paris, France, March 21, 1960: Disc 1 (61:04): 1st concert: All of You/ So What/ On Green Dolphin Street; 2nd concert: Walkin’. Disc 2 (71:04): Bye Bye Blackbird/ ‘Round Midnight/ Oleo/ The Theme. Copenhagen, Denmark, March 24, 1960: Introduction by Norman Granz/ So What/ On Green Dolphin Street/ All Blues/ The Theme (inc.). Stockholm, Sweden, March 22: Disc 3 (36:24): 1st concert: Introduction by Norman Granz/ So What/ Fran Dance/ Walkin’/ The Theme. Disc 4 (52:24): 2nd concert: So What/ On Green Dolphin Street/ All Blues/ The Theme/ John Coltrane Interview. legacyrecordings.com