The New Jazz Musings

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...

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 ...

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...

JACK COOKE - Jazz Monthly, September 1967 JOHN COLTRANE died in hospital in New York City on July 17th. He was forty. This sudden end to the career of one of the most gifted musicians in jazz must come to everyone as a considerable shock: for me, and I’m sure for many others, it has the dimensions of a major tragedy. Most readers of this magazine will be at least familiar with the basic fact of Trane’s biography, and in any case it would take more words than I want to write at the moment to outline who he worked with, how his music evolved, the total of his achievements and what changes he brought about in the music during his career.  Perhaps it would be best at this point to try instead to pay some tribute to him as a man, for behind his music was a strong and forthright personality, and I am sure it was no coincidence that the really wide implications of his work and his greatest musical successes developed after he began to lead his own group. Trane grew slowly but inevitably i...

When Coltrane first came to France in 1960 with Miles Davis, French audiences were expecting sweet and romantic solos from Coltrane, but they got broken notes, tortured arpeggios and aggravated variations instead. The stubborn stammering of someone unable to master his instrument. So says the French Jazz Magazine from January 1962 in an eight page Coltrane special, including a two page poster. He also got the front page and a full page ad placed for Africa/Brass. The editorial is spread across three writers, the first appears to be an interview after a French performance. In this section Coltrane describes, for example, his difficulties in finding suitable reeds. They take a month to be perfect then only operate for a couple of days in peak condition. It also describes his introspective personality, for example him not wanting to eat in a restaurant, preferring to buy two apples and eat alone in his hotel room. The article below, mainly a review of the Paris concerts, was written by Mi...

In a blog post from May this year, I presented Jack Cooke's Late Trane retrospective from 1970. Link below. This time it's a feature written by John Norris, from the May 1968 edition of Canada's Coda magazine, which became a Coltrane memorial issue. If you are interested in a contemporary take on Coltrane's records from The John Coltrane Quartet Plays to Expression, read on.  Late Trane Retrospective From 1970 John Norris was a regular contributor to many jazz publications, including Coda, was jazz critic for the Globe and Mail, and was a jazz music host on Canadian radio and television. THE FINAL LEGACY by John Norris Until very recently, jazz musicians were static as artists. Every musician evolved a style and remained true to that, with minor variations, for the remainder of his career. In this sense the jazz musician paralleled the course of practitioners in other art forms prior to the Twentieth Century. Today it is much different. Musicians are trans forming thei...

Jazz Monthly published a very comprehensive Late Coltrane retrospective by Jack Cooke in its January 1970 publication. Cooke was a drummer in the 1950s who transitioned to journalism during the 1960s. He was a regular contributor to Jazz Monthly. Cooke, in his piece, makes many insightful observations and comments, especially on the final transition from the 'classic' quartet (on the album Meditations). This marked the final stage of Coltrane's experiment, with the new shape of his music becoming clear. Of course, in 1970 we didn't have the hindsight of the un-released albums, so as a Late Trane retrospective, it is incomplete for 2020. But nevertheless, it is the most comprehensive (contemporary) piece from the period I've seen. A really useful and insightful addition to this blog. LATE TRANE / JACK COOKE JOHN COLTRANE'S contribution to jazz, as an instrumentalist, bandleader and innovator, over the years of his career and in the hundreds of recording...