REVIEWS:
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: Mating Call, Romas. LOW POINTS: None
This album is an excellent example of a great artist at an early stage in his career doing something that really is off the main track of this artist's real achievement. During his break from working with Miles Davis, Coltrane recorded a number of albums on Prestige and other labels, often with former bandmates such as Red Garland. This record sees Coltrane playing on a number of Tadd Dameron compositions. Dameron was a piano player and extremely popular composer of the bebop era who many say should have been better known than he was; unfortunately, drug problems and a lengthy stint in prison prevented him from ever really making his mark on the level of a Bud Powell. Former Miles-band-mate Philly Joe Jones veteran bass player John Simmons form the rhythm section (Jones turns in a hot solo on "Super Jet" but by and large the rhythm section is in a supporting role).
Dameron and Coltrane work well together on this record, mainly because of the strength of the compositions and the group's common commitment to realizing those compositions: Dameron was a very distinctive melodist, and Coltrane concentrates hard on this aspect of the pieces, playing the heads of each tune with clarity and faithfulness. "Mating Call," "Gnid," and "On a Misty Night" are my favorites in this respect; you pick your own. On his solos, Coltrane, while unable to fully suppress his use of his rapidly growing bag of tricks, seems deliberately restrained, mainly using his improvisations to take apart and reconstruct the melodies. His commentary on "Gnid" is probably the most distinctively Coltranean work on the record; more typical of this album would be the uptempo bebop-like "Super Jet" or the ballad "Soultrane," which concentrate on soulful melodic playing, though on the latter Coltrane pulls out a few mad licks toward the end. Dameron's piano playing is far more quiet and subtle, concentrating on tasty call-and-response with his group (particularly on "Soultrane") and understated improvisations. "Mating Call" shows good contrast between the pianist and the saxophonist in this regard.
Most of the tunes stay on about the same level. "Mating Call" I like for the interplay; Jones starts out the tune with a fast sixteenth-note pattern on the hi-hat, switches to a swing beat, and then switches back to a complicated syncopated cymbal pattern. "Romas" I like for the groove: it's real slow, real bluesy, and real loose-sounding while still being quite rhythmically adroit. Nothing really predicts the kind of things that Coltrane would go on to do later, and in fact it seems to go in the opposite direction. An interesting sort of sideline for Coltrane fans, and somewhat better than some of Coltrane's work from this period, but totally atypical and its rewards are real but limited.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: My Favorite Things, Summertime. LOW POINTS: But Not For Me
Not so much an album to some listeners as a religious experience, My Favorite Things is the first real step on John Coltrane's journey of jazz-as-mysticism. It also marks his first recording of a tune that became his signature, and which he played throughout his life. Coltrane always said he was more interested in playing than writing, and that he only composed because he needed to play against certain things. I don't think this is entirely accurate - tell me that Giant Steps isn't a 'writing album' - but this is certainly a 'playing album,' and the group (McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, Elvin Jones on drums) chooses only standards. And yet, you can keep your Julie Andrews and your silver white winters - to me, "My Favorite Things" will always be a John Coltrane song.
The title track is, indeed, the crucial track on this record. Coltrane was fascinated by the song's simple chord structure and 3/4 tempo - the relative lack of a lot of chords allowed him and his group to explore melodic phrases rather than simply playing the changes, a lesson he had obviously learned from his work on Miles Davis's original minimalist masterpice, Kind of Blue, and the tempo allowed him to play longer, weirder phrases without slowing down into a ballad. Coltrane states the melody with quiet authority on soprano sax, then steps away for McCoy Tyner's piano solo. Tyner's style depended more on playing interesting chords then on runs of notes, and here he does just that, playing a solo that's simple and rich at the same time, spending a measure carefully developing a pattern of chords, then subtly altering that pattern in the next measure. Coltrane then returns, restating the theme and going into an extended, melodic solo, then returns to the theme again, Tyner & Co. keeping up a hypnotic, almost raga-like vamp behind him. It's after this third iteration of the head that Coltrane really proves his mettle. The solo that follows is, essentially, the first exploration of that weird and shimmering alternate universe of jazz that can only be called "Coltrania." Coltrane tests the final frontiers of the soprano sax, running lickety-split runs and impassioned squawks that run themselves up against the physical limits of what can be played. The solo does not so much cease to regard form so much as actually transcend it, eschewing licks with beginnings and ends for subtle, multidimensional patterns that seem like slices of infinity. It's hard to write about this sort of thing and not sound like you're channeling Walt Whitman - and I think that poet would have been pleased by Coltrane's cosmic carol. Anyway, you, whoever you are reading this right now (you see how easily we slip into the poetic voice?), have either been sold or not by this point. Suffice it to say that "My Favorite Things" is a towering landmark of improvisation.
I won't lie - after that, the rest of the album is a bit of a letdown, as how could it not be? But it's still a fine record. "Summertime," the other high point here (in the sense that Mount Everest and Mount Washington would both be high points if you put them in Ohio), takes the Gershwin standard and runs it through a different kind of wringer. "My Favorite Things" was a cosmic jam; "Summertime" is more of a jam jam, with everybody taking hot solo turns. The arrangement sounds a little different from the "Summertime"s I've known; it's more uptempo and the chords beneath the melody are more dramatic. Coltrane's solo alternates between held notes and incredibly fast runs real nicely, and Elvin Jones (at the beginning of his collaboration with Trane) turns in a fine solo as well, showing how cymbal crashes can punctuate the beat with pinpoint accuracy. "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" is a ballad, played lyrically and with a minimum of fuss. "But Not for Me" is a basic standard, played reasonably 'straight.' At the end, Coltrane starts to improvise a little cadenza, holding off the end of the tune with little suspense-building phrases, each one seeming to imply that the next note will be the last one. It's fun for thirty seconds; after two minutes, though, it becomes rather tiresome and frustrating. A miscalculation, though, wrought in the heat of the moment, and hardly detracting from the solidly earned 9.5 this album gets. When you've just played a track like John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," well, frankly, you can fill the rest of your record with the sound of beavers mating for all I care.
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