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Jazz Articles about John Coltrane
Encounters with Elvin
by Bertil Holmgren
As I mentioned in Coltrane's Music, in 1962, I had the good fortune to see and hear the classic John Coltrane Quartet in live performance five nights running, at Birdland in New York City. After Trane, Elvin Jones was the most exciting member of the group. For me then, however, Coltrane was enough, he would do. Elvin, McCoy and Jimmy Garrison were secondary for me. It wasn't until later, when deepening perception or maturity, enabled me to look beyond Coltrane ...
Continue ReadingColtrane's Music
by Bertil Holmgren
After listening often to his recordings, I first heard John Coltrane live at Birdland in June 1962. My interest had developed earlier in my young life in my home country of Sweden, considering that broadcast jazz there at the time was restricted to a half-hour broadcast on the national radio each week. It was also possible to tune in on the fading Voice of America radio-transmitter in Tangiers, Africa on the short wave band Sunday nights at ten o'clock (always ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: The John Coltrane Quartet Plays The Sound Of Music
by David Rickert
Everyone is familiar with Coltrane's classic recording of “My Favorite Things. However, what many people may not know is that Coltrane was so taken with the musical that his first project for the Impulse! label was an entire album of songs from the stage classic. Bob Thiele shelved the project after it was finished, claiming it didn't fit in with the image the label was trying to project. “We weren't looking for another Brubeck, he said at the time. Now, ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio: Traneing In
by Stephen Wood
Guitarist Pat Metheny once said that he didn't often play standards because he felt like he couldn't offer much along the way of a unique interpretation. This paralyzing sensation in the face of prodigious precedent is equally as debilitating when it comes to delivering fresh insights on the music of saxophonist John Coltrane.After listening to this Rudy Van Gelder remastering of 1957's Traneing In nothing fresh needs to be said. Reviews and insights are chock full of painstakingly ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: Traneing In
by John Barron
Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack, New Jersey studio was the East Coast destination of choice in the 1950s and '60s for small jazz labels like Prestige and Blue Note. The amount of one-day, no-rehearsal blowing sessions made up of blues, ballads and burners that Van Gelder engineered is monumental. Traneing In is a prime example of what can happen with the right musicians at the right time. Recorded on August 23, 1957, this highly advanced hard bop set was led by ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions
by George Kanzler
The Miles Davis Quintet The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions Prestige Records 2006 (1955-56)
Miles (aka The New Miles Davis Quintet), Workin', Relaxin', Steamin' and Cookin' were the titles of the original Miles Davis Quintet LPs for Prestige that make up the first three (of four) CDs of this yet-again repackaging of what have become among the most familiar sides of Davis' recorded oeuvre. (The other studio album by this band was 'Round About Midnight ...
Continue ReadingJust Plain Trane
by Rob Mariani
He appeared on a bandstand that was at least two football fields away, at the Randall's Island Jazz Festival in 1960. I had already heard him on record and read what the reviewers were saying about him, and indeed, what seemed to be emanating from the bandstand on that breezy New York summer night were those infamous “sheets of sound." He was with Miles's Kind of Blue sextet: Cannonball, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers and Miles. Miles ...
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