The New Jazz Musings

In the March 1978 edition of Britain's Jazz Journal, Alistair Loftus gave us his own personal recollections of John Coltrane, and his perspective on his works. With a preference for the 'classic' quartet period, he still covers pretty much Coltrane's entire career. He saw Trane live during the 1961 JATP tour, so another cool input for me.  Alistair Loftus first heard — though barely understood — the music of the fully matured John Coltrane at a concert in November 1961. Now, 16 years later, he offers a personal perspective on the career of a great creative jazz artist who intended his music to be a force for good in the world.  ABOUT TEN years ago jazz lost one of its giants when John Coltrane died at the age of 40 on July 17, 1967, his full potential still to be realised. His influence was tremendous and many of the tenor players who have emerged in recent years have tried, usually unsuccessfully, to sound like him — just as aspiring altoists tried to copy Bird's l...

When Coltrane passed in 1967, Japan felt his death as keenly as the West. The extensive tour, just the year before in 1966, had been transitional for many Japanese musicians and fans. It was his only visit to the country, and during his late free period. The visit had a profound effect on John and Alice, Pharoah and the other American musicians too.  A memorial compilation album was issued pretty quickly after his death, nicely produced with a wonderful cover shot of Trane perfoming in-country. I'd wanted to know for a while what had been said in the liner notes, had OCR translated them a while back, not perfectly for sure. So just tried to make the best interpretation I could, but still being true to the original.  The famous Coltrane quote from the Japan tour of wanting to become a saint, may actually have been said in jest. But it didn't stop the creation of the California Church ! Notes “Saint Coltrane" Jazz giant John Coltrane passed away on July 17th (1967),  aged 4...

In 1940, Serge Koussevitzky, Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a mentor to Leonard Bernstein, created the Tanglewood Music Centre in Western Massachusetts. The Tanglewood Estate had been donated to the BSO three years earlier. It became the summer home of the orchestra, and a music school was established. The first faculty included the composers Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith. In 1950, what had remained of the estate including outbuildings, was purchased by a New York couple to create a performing space for folk musicians, including the conversion of one building into an Inn with accommodation. They also created what became known as The Music Barn, a venue that played host to many well known folk and jazz musicians.  In 1957 they also established a not-for-profit music school. Their faculty included Max Roach and Gunther Schuller. In 1959, just before his seminal album The Shape of Jazz to Come was released, Atlantic Records sent Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry ...

 A treat. Pianist Marian McPartland visited Alice Coltrane during early 1969 and walked away with a transcribed Giant Steps for piano. It was printed in Down Beat magazine. I've already been trying it out, super slow for now !

 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...