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...

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...

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...

On January 23rd 1966 at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, the Thelonius Monk Quartet and the John Coltrane Octet performed. Canada's Coda jazz magazine reviewed the event at length. It's acknowledged that Trane's time as a regular with Monk was crucial to his growth as a musician and composer. But in the subsequent ten years, it is clear that the two musicians' trajectories were very different.  This was the couple of weeks Coltrane spent in California when he supplemented his group further with Juno Lewis on percussion and Donald Garrett on bass. McCoy Tyner had already left and the strain felt by Elvin Jones was apparent. monk and coltrane at stamford (sic) reviewed by Philip Jacka It was beautiful. Simply, this year Stanford University would investigate jazz. The scheme was not dissimilar to that Festival of the Arts which Brandeis University focused on jazz back in 1957 (hear "MODERN JAZZ CONCERT", Columbia WL127, or its twin-pack reissue, ...

In the May 1978 issue of Black Music & Jazz Review, Pharoah Sanders featured - on the back of the release of his album 'Love Will Find a Way'. Chris May wrote a two page spread on the Sanders story to date. Compared to other older Sanders' retrospectives in the blog, it's a different style, and perhaps a little lazy on Pharoah's post-Impulse output. However, it does have new information. The first paragraph I find strange in retrospect - that in 1977 and 1978 jazz was such a vigorous and influential force in popular music. And compared to 1968. Perhaps jazz had lost some of its cool then, but was it really so huge and influential ten years later ? Pharoah Sanders' latest album, 'Love Will Find A Way' has just been released. Chris May discusses his story so far. During the last two years jazz has become so vigorous and influential a force in popular music — commanding an audience of such unprecedented size and youth — that it's easy to forget the ...

The recent release of the Sam Shepherd/Pharoah Sanders collaboration has taken many people by surprise, the biggest one being how good it is. When I listened to the download the morning it was released, I realised it would have an ambient vibe right through the entire piece. And that wasn't a disappointment, it just seemed to hit the right spot at the right time for me. This hitting the right spot feeling was echoed in many of the online comments and reviews. I'm not attempting to review the album here, just attempting to place Sanders in the contemporary context of this record. When Sanders came to prominence in John Coltrane's band, Trane had been looking to move in a much more avant garde direction. During this period in 1965, Coltrane's musical development was stellar, (and fortunately much of it was recorded by Impulse). Trane wanted to expand his quartet format by adding some of the younger musicians breaking through onto the scene, in live settings, and also in t...

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...

 Knowing that 1965 was such a transformational year for John Coltrane, the one when he evolved from his "Classic Quartet", experimenting with some of the younger, more avant-garde musicians in live settings, and in some studio sessions, I decided to post each of thirteen (became fourteen) albums on Instagram that emanated from the 1965 sessions (in recording date order). Not including some other live sessions (mainly on CD). Trane was feeling the need to change by adding other musicians. He was experimenting more than usual, and recording more. The output from 1965 was immense. The second seven records are below, with information on the recording sessions. #8 in 1965. The Friday following the Monday Ascension session at Van Gelder's, there was a slot for Coltrane and the Quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival. Impulse recorded One Down, One Up and My Favorite Things and also Archie Shepp's afternoon set. The album New Thing at Newport was released early '66 and feat...