Alice Coltrane: The Impulse Story

Alice Coltrane is every bit as revolutionary and enduring an artist as the other nine musicians receiving retrospective CD releases in the Impulse! label's ongoing revitalisation project, The House That Trane Built: The Story Of Impulse Records. Yet of them all—the others are Albert Ayler, Gato Barbieri, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and McCoy Tyner—Alice Coltrane alone remains on the margins of critical acceptance.

To the label's credit, this latest disc isn't the first time Impulse! has tried to correct the imbalance. In '99, the label released another fine anthology, Astral Meditations: The Music Of Alice Coltrane (which duplicates only three tracks from The Impulse Story), and in '04 released Coltrane's first non-self published album in over 25 years, the outstanding Translinear Light (featuring two key collaborators from the early days, Charlie Haden and Jack DeJohnette).

The Impulse Story cherry picks seven tracks recorded between '68 and '72, Coltrane's purple period, proceeding chronologically and dipping into key albums: John & Alice Coltrane: Cosmic Music, A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery, Ptah The El Daoud, Journey In Satchidananda, Universal Consciousness and Lord Of Lords. The only important album of the period which is omitted is '71's Alice Coltrane With Strings: World Galaxy. The title track from Translinear Light closes the set.

This is a well-chosen and well-sequenced selection—from the relatively straight-ahead jazz of "Jaya Jaya Rama" through the majestic astral-jazz of "Lovely Sky Boat," "Ptah The El Daoud" and "Journey In Satchidananda," to the new star system explorations of "Universal Consciousness" and "Excerpts From The Firebird." This Impulse Story can usefully be listened to alongside the sister CD from Alice Coltrane's fellow traveller, Pharoah Sanders, who's featured on three tracks here.

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