The New Jazz Musings

 It's so great I found these words from Stanley Crouch in a 1991 reissue of two recordings from 1969. There isn't much information available, and when Stanley really puts what was happening on the West Coast in perspective it's gold dust. "We are fortunate that Thiele saw his way to make these recordings". Amen "In 1969, when the John Carter-Bobby Bradford Quartet and the Horace Tapscott Quintet made these recordings, Los Angeles was no longer considered much of a jazz town. Even though musicians like Lawrence Brown, Lionel Hampton, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Mingus, Art and Addison Farmer, Teddy Edwards, Frank Morgan, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry, Gary Peacock, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins and others were either born and bred there or put together their music in that land of smog and movie stars, the scene these two bands found themselves in the middle of was essentially quite bleak. Long gone were the good times that rolled along the black community...

In my search for articles I'm finding that quite a few are articulate, intelligent, incredibly insightful and interesting. None more so than this 1971 piece by Barry McRae, published in the Jazz Journal. McRae writes about John Coltrane - The Impulse Years, but expands further outside for perspective and his contemporary position during the 1960s. I've noticed some earlier British articles on Trane miss out versus US journals because it was more difficult to get all the albums. Here however, McRae references not just Trane's Impulse output, but also that of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. John Coltrane - The Impulse Years by Barry McRae That jazz has moved forward in both spiritual as well as a musical sense in the sixties is an obvious fact. Preoccupation with aesthetic values has sometimes obscured the total evolutionary picture, however, and a great number of words has been dissipated on the significance of the music rather than its style and format. The early free f...

 A couple of weeks back on my Insta I posted the CD reissue of a 1977 double album of (mostly) tunes from Coltrane's Stockholm concerts in 1963. Two being from Berlin. Norman Granz had organised another annual tour of Europe for the John Coltrane Quartet, playing eleven venues in eight countries. They played two shows at the Stockholm Konserthuset, the first date on the tour. Four days later they played the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The 2nd show didn't start until midnight and there seemed to be some issues. Perhaps Michael James was feeling a bit peeved due to the late start since his comments don't seem to gel with the actual recordings from a few days earlier. Having said that, perhaps the performance did suffer. Anyway, interesting review. The JOHN COLTRANE Quartet in Amsterdam by Michael James THE SCENE IN Amsterdam's Concertgebouw at midnight on Saturday, 27th October, was to my mind more typical of a rock-and-roll concert, and an ill-organised one at that, than...

paul bley by Len Dobbin. In 1950 Paul Bley went to NYC to study composition and conducting at Juilliard. He did quite a bit of jamming around town while he was in NY. My first meeting with Paul came in 1952 when the executive of the Emanon Jazz Society was meeting at Pat Sorrentino's home in the town of Mt. Royal. I had heard about Paul but had neither met nor heard him play. We lived in the same general direction and had a long conversation on the way home on the bus. He left inviting me to drop in on a rehearsal of his group. The next day after school was out I wended my way down to the Latin Quarter where Paul was rehearsing with Bob Roby, tenor sax, Neil Michaud, bass and Billy Graham, drums. The group was an excellent one and I was looking forward to dropping down to hear them in action but fate stepped in with a fire at the club and they never opened. Around this time Paul recorded some mambos which were released on the local Silver label. One was a very melodic original call...

1966 was a quieter recording year for Coltrane compared to the year before. He had evolved from his "Classic Quartet" and had settled into a new quintet format, but he still continued to experiment and add other musicians, especially at live concerts.  On Instagram I had posted all of Coltrane's output in vinyl from 1965. I then created two blog entries based on the posts :  1965 John Coltrane Recordings Part One  ,  1965 John Coltrane Recordings Part Two Having just created Trane's 1966 as six posts on Insta, I've now brought them together into this blog post. #1 of 5 for 1966. On Jan 23rd '66 Trane played at Stanford. Elvin and Rashied both on drums, but it was the night that Elvin called it quits, "The roof fell in". Click Link in Bio for a full description of the concert click here for link . The group minus Elvin then had a two week run at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, during which a recording session was held at Coast Recorders on Feb 2nd...

Apart from the occasional quote I've not actually seen any full reviews from Coltrane's 1961 tour of Britain, until Jazz Monthly from February 1962. Norman Granz's tours of Europe always had more than one headline act. In late '61 it was the double bill of Trane and Dizzy Gillespie. The first concert at the Gaumont State cinema on Kilburn High St in London was one week after Trane's last night at the Village Vanguard in NYC. The four night run that gave us Live at the Village Vanguard. In another blog entry  John Coltrane's Only British Tour  Steve Gray remembers the Walthamstow show, but as a schoolboy, not a critic. This review by Ronald Atkins paints an accurate picture of the Jazz music scene at the time, and the excitement of hearing the very modern in the shape of John Coltrane and his quintet. John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie in Britain by Ronald Atkins Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the John Coltrane Quintet's music, which set it apart from any ...

First of all, this is another great interview by Val Wilmer made some time after Ornette Coleman's famous August 1965 concert at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, south London. Coleman also played there in April '1966 which could tie in with this interview.  The August '65 concert was recorded and released in 1967. It included a written piece, performed by the London Virtuoso Wind Ensemble, then a performance by the Coleman trio.  Of all the jazz writers during the 1960s, especially in Europe, Wilmer shines especially bright - and her photographs rank with the best from both sides of the Atlantic. Ornette Coleman by Valerie Wilmer  Ornette Coleman talks to Valerie Wilmer ORNETTE COLEMAN leaned forward in his chair. He talked shyly, in quiet, slightly hesitant phrases, unable or unwilling to express himself eloquently, yet serious, and determined to communicate. It was hard to associate this gentle, mild-mannered man with the leading protagonist of the avant-garde jazz movene...