The New Jazz Musings

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

Martin Williams interviewed Pharoah Sanders for Down Beat magazine in late 1967 or early 1968. By then Sanders had been living in New York for five years and more recently had been closely associated with John Coltrane, and had released one solo album with Impulse Records. Before his move to New York he had been living in the Bay Area of California. What's clear is that Coltrane knew Sanders before he moved East. He and Trane became closer after the move, and he first sat in with Trane's group in January 1964 at the Half Note. Surprisingly, Sanders says in the interview he never became part of John Coltrane's group. However, it could be said that after the classic quartet, Trane never actually formalised another band. There was just too much fluidity. In a 1970 taped interview with Alice Coltrane, she talks about Sanders, 'who was in John's band.' Pharoah Sanders by Don Schlitten Pharoah's Tale by Martin Williams P haroah Sanders is 27 years old, and, surpri

The French writer Frank Tenot was in New York during October 1960, and was invited to the "My Favorite Things" session on October 21st. In the January 1962 edition of the French "Jazz Magazine" Tenot contributed a piece to the Coltrane special, which was featured across multiple pages, and had articles by two other writers. I've been reading about the 2022 remastering of "My Favorite Things" and this inspired me to complete the English translation that I had started in 2018. Some of the originally translated article formed the blog entry  John Coltrane the Obsessive I must practice, I must practice... I still have to train and improve. It is with these words that John Coltrane replied more than a year ago, to the warm congratulations I gave him at the end of the Atlantic Studios recording session for "My Favorite Things".  His forehead was lined with worry as he stared at his soprano sax like it was a poisonous snake. Yet everyone thought the

Eighteen months after Eric Dolphy's untimely death, Jazz Monthly published a comprehensive Dolphy retrospective by Jack Cooke, an excellent writer who has several other featured pieces in the Blog. His very detailed extensive retrospective has encouraged me to review some of my own thinking on the Dolphy output I own. Photo of Eric Dolphy by Bill Wagg Eric Dolphy BY JACK COOKE ONE THE CURRENT exploratory scene in jazz-the new wave, the avant-garde or what one likes to call it-is notably different from the music that immediately preceded it in that it is essentially a group music. In the early 1960's Ornette Coleman, George Russell, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Don Ellis were all essentially bandleaders as much as musicians; they didn't usually turn up on other leaders' dates. There were exceptions, of course, like the George Russell-Don Ellis partnership of 1961, and these days there is a great deal of polarised activity in areas where a definite leader doesn'