Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

Last night I wrote that I wasn’t going to post Fran-Dance from Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane unless somebody requested it. Somebody did, so here it is. Enjoy!

I barely ever listen to Walkin’ from Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane because it’s on a different disk than the rest of the cuts that feature John Coltrane. The majority of the four disk set features Sonny Stitt on Saxophone which is fine, but it’s not Coltrane. Coltrane, as per his unusual, tears the blues to pieces, making this track well worth a listen. One thing I find interesting is that some of his lines foreshadow some of what he what he will play on Africa Brass about a year later. See if you can hear it.

This post is going to pretty much round what I’ve got to offer from Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane. I’m leaving out Fran-Dance and the Coltrane radio interview, though I’ll be happy to post them if anybody wants me to. You can find the rest of the tracks scattered throughout the site’s music category.

The second set of Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane gets a little less attention than the first, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to it. So What is the only repeat from the first set and the tune receives a much more compact and concise treatment than it did in the first set (you can check the other version out here). This stands out as the only cut from the evening that features nearly as much Miles Davis as it does John Coltrane. Enjoy.

Somebody emailed me earlier today and reminded me that I still haven’t posted all of the tunes from Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane. Towards that end, here is On Green Dolphin Street. Enjoy.

This post is mostly for Dan Rubin’s benefit, though I hope a few of you bastards get something out of it as well. I spoke briefly with Mr. Rubin earlier this evening and he was nice enough to mention something I had posted about the album Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane. Anybody who wants to talk to me about that recording, out of the clear blue sky, earns themselves a special place in the lexicon of people I don’t know very well.

Somewhere in our brief conversation, Mr. Rubin noted that John Coltrane sounds at times as though he is trying to pass a stone on the Stockholm recording. That’s not at all a bad description. I can’t speak for him, but I think that Mr. Rubin was referring to a section of Coltrane’s solo on the tune All Blues where Coltrane employs some extraordinarily harsh saxophone multiphonics. Believe me when I say that the use of obvious saxophone multiphonics, no matter how primitive, was a fairly radical approach to the instrument in 1960. Regardless, that portion of Coltrane’s solo on All Blues has been used as an example when critics want to describe some of Coltrane’s last performances with Miles Davis Quintet as practicing on stage. To be honest, I’ve only known one person who really got the solo on his first listen. Most people just hate it. I’m not kidding when I say that it usually takes a few dozen listens before anybody really starts to really gets what is happening in that solo. There is unbelievable beauty if you are able to make the trip.

Anyway, Mr. Rubin mentioned that his tape of the 1960 performance is broken. That is awful news. Since I’ve always planned on posting the entire recording, as it has only ever been sold illegally and with no benefit to the musician’s families, tonight seem like as good a time as any to post second track for download. Enjoy.

Click here to download or play All Blues.

I haven’t posted any music in a while. Since I’ve been a bit short on words recently, this seems as good a time as any to try to make you listen to something decent. Tonight’s track is titled Cascade, written and performed by Sam Rivers (tenor saxophone) and Dave Holland (bass). Cascade is the second side of the 1976 album Dave Holland - Sam Rivers. At some point in the future I’ll discuss both of them in some depth, but not tonight. If you know little of modern Jazz, know that if you listen to this track that you that are listening to giants. The track is 21 minutes long and every second is wonderful. Enjoy.

Click here to listen or download.

I won’t say a thing. This is the last blues Coltrane ever recorded in a studio. Enjoy and feel it, if you can. Click here to listen or download.

I’m not going to say much about the tune Malaguena as it’s fairly straight forward. It was recorded by the Pete La Roca Quartet in either 1964 or 1965 (I’ve seen both) for the Pete La Roca album Basra, which is only available by import from Japan. The band features La Roca on drums, Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, Steve Swallow on bass and Steve Kuhn on piano. As I think you’ll hear the tune is a wonderful vehicle for Henderson. Enjoy. Click here to play or download. I’ll give you a jelly bean if you can name the scale or mode Joe leans most heavily on.

Most of us probably associate the song Summertime with a grainy recording played over a cheesy lemonade commercial, featuring a bucolic scene of some sloping Midwestern field, graced by a grand shade tree.

A lovely image to be sure, but things are not always as we would like them to be. Life is often more brutal than any of us would care to imagine. This is John Coltrane’s performance of Summertime, recorded in 1961 from his album My Favorite Things. Download or listen here. I don’t mean to imply that there is a lack of joy in this recording, only that I’m not feeling it now. I hear anger and I hear anguish, because that’s where my head is.

Summertime was never supposed to involve a few thousand dead, was it?

In keeping with my promise to post a non-Coltrane MP3, I present you with the Tony William’s composition Extras as performed by Tony Williams on drums, Sam Rivers on tenor Saxophone, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone and Gary Peacock on Bass. The track comes from Tony William’s album Spring and was recorded on August 12, 1965.

I’m not going to do any analysis, but I’d like to point out that Sam Rivers is one of the most influential avant garde jazz saxophone players and composers that just about nobody, other than hard core jazz geeks, has ever heard of. His influence on this album and Tony Williams’ first album, Life Time, is unmistakable. On this particular track he takes the second saxophone solo. Don’t forget to listen to Shorter either, as his solo is remarkable. Enjoy, and as always, please consider buying the album.

Click here to play or download.

Ok, after tonight there will be no more Coltrane on this site for a little while - I promise. Tonight’s track is Blues Minor which was recorded by on June 17, 1961 and is most recently released on the two disk set The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions. The personnel are John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner of piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, with Eric Dolphy conducting the orchestra. I’ve spent the last few days offering up tracks which convey loss and introspection, so I though I ought to switch things up a little. The tune itself, as the title suggests, is a minor blues (actualy a simplified modal minor blues) and is stunning from beginning to end. If you have the ears to hear, the emotion of this track can be overwhelming, but in a very different way than the other Trane tracks I’ve featured over the last few days.

As always, I encourage you to buy the Album if you like the tune. I’ve heard Alice Coltrane has a very good lawyer.

Click here to play or download.

More Coltrane. I apologize for only giving you pieces from one artist over the last few days, but Coltrane speaks to me in a way the no other musician does. This is not to slight anybody else’s tastes. This is just me. Coming from a musical background, music is often where I land when I need something stable beneath my feet.

Coltrane wrote Alabama as a tribute to the victims of the racially motivated bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama which killed four young black girls in 1963.

From the liner notes:

If you have heard Slow Dance or After The Rain, then you might be prepared for the kind of feeling that Alabama carries. I didn’t realize until now what a beautiful word Alabama is. That is one function of art, to reveal beauty, common or uncommon. And that’s what Trane does. Bob Theile asked Trane if the title “had any significance to today’s problems.” I suppose he meant literally. Coltrane answered, “It represents, musically, something that I saw down there translated into music from inside me.” Which is to say, Listen. And what we’re given is a slow delicate introspective sadness, almost hopelessness, except for Elvin, rising in the background like something out of nature…a fattening thunder, storm clouds or jungle war clouds. The whole is a frightening emotional portrait of some place, in these musicians’ feelings. If that “real” Alabama was the catalyst, more power to it, and may it be this beautiful, even in its destruction.

The track is actually two performances. The first is aborted, but includes the beginning of a solo. The second is a simple, but powerful interpretation of the head alone.

The album is Coltrane Live at Birdland. A wonderful album. Click here to play or download.

I’m making two tunes available for download tonight, both featuring John Coltrane and both of which have moved me to tears at one time or another in my life for different reasons. They both feel fitting today. I won’t discuss theory at all, as both are quite simple and I’m not in the mood.

The first track is In a Sentimental Mood by Duke Ellington. This performance was recorded on September 26, 1962 by Duke Ellington on piano, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Aaron Bell on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The track is from the album Duke Ellington & John Coltrane. You may well have heard this recording before in various movie soundtracks. Click here to download.

The second track is entitled Nancy (With the Laughing Face), which was originally composed for Frank Sinatra. The Nancy in question is his daughter, Nancy Sinatra. This one is special to me because it was the song I danced to with my wife at our wedding. Something of an odd selection, but it was one of the few Coltrane tracks we could find that we could actually dance to.

Nancy (With the Laughing Face) was recorded by the John Coltrane Quartet on September 18, 1962 for the album Ballads. You can find the personnel on last night’s post. If you hadn’t already guessed, I spent a good portion of my life wanting to grow up to be John Coltrane. As with most such wishes, it was not to be, though I’ll never regret trying. I can’t listen to this recording without thinking about my wedding and my wife. Not a bad deal.

These are both very introspective and extraordinarily emotional pieces. If you have the ears to hear, I doubt I need to tell you why they were on my mind tonight.

Something I think a lot of us are struggling with right now is exactly how to deal, both emotionaly and interpersonaly, with the horor that is occuring in New Orleans. The emotion is both sharp and painful, but of little use. I don’t know that anyone has the capacity to really handle death and destruction of this magnitute and still feel totaly sane at the end of the day. We are watching and reading about human life destroyed in slow motion, accompanied by vocal cries for help. There is not a damn thing most of us can do about it other than donate and hope and pray. What the hell do you do with that?

Most of us probably have a special piece of music or a song that we listen to when we are dealing with a loss. The experience is powerful in that it can bring raw emotion to the surface and fluid to the tear ducts in ways that hours of discussion and contemplation often cannot.

For obvious reasons, I’ve decided to share one of those very special tunes from my own life with you. The tune is Wise One which was written by John Coltrane and recorded by the John Coltrane Quartet on April 27, 1964. The band features John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

I won’t get too far into what to listen for, because I think the right place to start is with the raw emotion and the introspection expressed so clearly by both Tyner and Coltrane. One interesting feature is the unusual timing of the climax in Coltrane’s solo in that it occurs within the first third of the solo, thus ignoring the golden mean. Strange as it may seem, that ratio did have a great deal of influence on the construction of his solos.

There has been a good deal of speculation that Wise One was written to commemorate Eric Dolphy’s death in 1964. This is not borne out by the fact that Dolphy died one month after the song was recorded. It does indeed feel like a lament for loved ones lost, so that speculation is probably based in good listening, rather than just poor chronology.

If you like what you hear, please consider buying the CD. The album is named Crescent and is, in my mind, one of the finest recordings ever published.

Click here to play or download.

A few hundred people will read this post. A tiny fraction of those people will download the tune I’m offering. A tiny fraction more will understand that what they are listening to is a revolution. I won’t go into details, as I doubt I’ll be able to convince any. The musician in question is pianist John Taylor and the album is Rosslyn. In my mind, Taylor’s musical conception is a revolution in serious American art music, though he is an Englishman. His music is the future and, I hope, the shape of jazz to come. His harmonic concepts and use of melodic development, are alone enough to give him the status of giant. His intensely creative and tasteful use of metric modulation in their employ, puts him on a whole new playing field and pushes the envelope of the jazz idiom. Taylor is a revolutionary in the mold of fellow pianist Bill Evans, in that the casual listener will never know that what they are hearing is a bold and dynamic step into the future. Subtle revolution is never an easy sell.

The tune is Irving Berlin’s How Deep the Ocean as performed by The John Taylor Trio. The personnel are John Taylor on piano, Marc Johnson on bass and Joey Baron on drums. Please do have a listen and consider buying John Taylor’s album Rosslyn. Play it for your kids and support the revolution and the revolutionaries. Download here.

Postscript: I wrote some of this in November of last year and recycled tonight. So sorry to repeat - I know it’s in bad form.

Since I don’t have any free minutes I’ll spare you my giggling school girl routine, but the news that a newly discovered tape of Monk and Coltrane performing at the Five Spot in 1957 is about to be released by Blue Note is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. It even has Nutty (giggle)! I used to have a tape of the other live performance Dan discusses, and the quality is as bad as he says, though I would say that it’s listenable and useful to the learning musician, even if you may require a little, er, help getting in the right head.

In the comments on his post, Dan mentions the Miles Davis Live in Stockholm recording. I’ve got the recording of So What from the first set of Live in Stockholm here, if you’re interested in downloading it.

Since I seem to have really rubbed some people the wrong way by writing about my thoughts on some of the previous tunes I’ve put on the site for download, I won’t bother with analysis this time, other than to say the tune is really super swell and I like it. Fair enough?

The tune is Hat and Beard by Eric Dolphy, from his album Out to Lunch. It was recorded on February 25, 1964 and features Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Bobby Hutherson on vibes, Richard Davis on bass and Tony Williams on drums. There are any number of really interesting things to listen for, but you’ll have to find them for yourself. Click here to download or play. As always, if you like what you hear, go out and buy the whole album.

Since last night’s selection was a little heavy, I figured I would post a something a little more fun. Tonight’s track is II B.S. by Charles Mingus from his album Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus. Yes, the song title means just what you think. The track was recorded on September 20, 1963 in New York and is a reworking of his earlier piece Haitian Fight Song. The entire album consists mainly of the reworking of earlier compositions that Mingus didn’t feel were represented properly in their initial recordings. He felt that with the Impulse label, he finally had the chance to present his music the way he wanted it to be heard. You may recognize the opening of the tune from some silly commercial from a few years ago. The personel are as follows:

• Charles Mingus on bass
• Eddie Preston and Richard Williams on trumpet
• Britt Woodman on trumbone
• Don Butterfield on tuba
• Jerome Richardson on soprano and baritone saxophones and flute
• Dick Hafer on tenor saxophone, clarinet and flute
• Booker Ervin on tenor saxophone
• Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone and flute
• Jaki Byrad on piano
• Walter Perkins on drums

In order to keep this above board, I need to urge you to go buy the CD. Consider yourself urged. If you would like to download other MP3 files from the site, have a look at the music archive. Granted, not many to download yet, but if I keep running out of things to say, the archive could grow pretty fast.

Tonight’s track, and the album it’s from, played a big, disorganized part in my life, so forgive me if I lack some coherence. The album is entitled Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane and the track is So What. I would ordinarily feel the need to ask you to buy the record in order to cover myself legally, but since none of the musicians ever received a dime for this, do as you please.

The band features Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The track itself was recorded in Stockholm, Sweden on March 22, 1960 at the Stockholm Concert Hall as part of a live radio broadcast. It is the last significant live recording of the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane. He left the band a few weeks after the broadcast to form his own quartet.

While the entire performance is wonderful, I’d like to ask you to focus specifically on John Coltrane’s solo. I don’t think you will have any trouble doing it. What we hear is the culmination of five years of turbulent, brilliant growth and a foreshadowing of what was just about to come. We hear a shot across the bow of the tradition. Just as a listening exercise, focus on the extensive harmonic substitutions over the plain modal backdrop, and then again on the beautiful madness that occurs when Wynton Kelly’s piano drops and Coltrane is left almost entirely to his own devices. If you can, compare this performance to any of the performances of Impressions by the John Coltrane Quartet recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1961.

Forgive me for getting a little personal here, but this performance is one I hold closer to my heart than nearly any other. This is a performance that has haunted me since the day I first heard it and haunts me to this day. While I was still an aspiring musician, Coltrane’s solo on this track left me awake many, many nights asking myself two questions:

1. Is there anything left to be said?
2. If there is, can I ever say it?

My answers are yes and no. There is, indeed, quite a bit left to be said. Coltrane, and many others since, have answered that question beyond any shadow of a doubt. As for the second question, the answer was, for me, a very brutal no. Needless to say, I quit playing music altogether and without regret. Musically, I have nothing to add. Such is life and such is music.

That is the power of this performance. Please do have a listen. If you don’t get it at first, listen to it over and over until you do. I know you won’t regret it.

If you didn’t catch all of the other links to the MP3, click here to get it. The file is a little over 15 megabytes so expect a fairly long download if your connection is a little slow.

I learned recently that the record companies look the other way when bloggers post a single track from a record and urge their readers to buy the whole album. Consider yourself so urged. Speaking of urges, today’s track, El Barrio, is from Joe Henderson’s album Inner Urge recorded on November 30, 1964.

The album, one of Henderson’s very best, features Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums and Bob Cranshaw on bass. If you don’t understand the magnitude of that lineup, then I’m not sure what I can do for you other than urge you to have a listen and find out. I picked El Barrio itself because it’s fairly short and is not as well known as some of the other tracks on the record such as Inner Urge or Isotope. I think it captures some of the brutal passion of Joe Henderson quite well and is very good listen. Click here for the tune.

On a personal note, Joe Henderson is one of my musical heroes. He had a completely unique sound that digs into the inner recesses of your soul if you just let it. He’s a guy who’s playing I always used to torture myself with by making the most brutal of comparisons between my own playing and his. When I was in college I spend a few weeks transcribing some his solos from his album State of the Tenor, which brought me near the brink of a total meltdown. His phrasing and sense of time are so very peculiarly his and so very intricate that sometimes a few measures would take hours just to decipher cleanly on manuscript paper. What an experience though.