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John Coltrane: The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording
Yet on this recording it is Pharoah Sanders who truly has his way with defiling Coltrane's more melodic past. His runs are beset with scratching, brittle, upper register notes occasionally mimicked by Coltrane or augmented by his wife, Alice, on piano. As for the venue itself, the Olatunji Center was a converted gymnasium in Harlem and sounds like it; this is the loudest, most tightly packed Coltrane on record, the sound entirely boxed in and over-amped.
At one point, a car horn is audible from the street below and becomes, like the breaking of glass in the Velvet Underground's "European Son," a prelude to cacophony by way of found sound; the engineer flips off the mic by the window—God forbid any traffic noises joined the din—and everything that follows comes out of one channel. Twenty-five minutes into the second and final song, "My Favorite Things," one can pick out a snatch of melody, but by then it's hopeless. There isn't going to be the sustained reward of anything familiar, affirming, nothing, just gaping maw.
An Endgame for the jazz set.
This article first appeared on Goldmine. Reprinted with permission.
Track Listing
Introduction by Billy Taylor; Ogunde; My Favorite Things.
Personnel
John Coltrane
saxophone
Pharoah Sanders
saxophone, tenor
Alice Coltrane
piano
Jimmy Garrison
bass, acoustic
Rashied Ali
drumsAlgie DeWitt
percussionAlbum information
Title: The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording | Year Released: 2001 | Record Label: Impulse! Records
About John Coltrane
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