Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard Again
Listening today to this record originally released February, 1962—sixty years ago—information technology's difficult to understand why it created controversy and then intense that Downbeat's editor at the time invited Coltrane and Eric Dolphy to "defend" it in print. On the other hand, if y'all're looking for a jazz anthology entry point, this live album probably wouldn't exist information technology—peculiarly side two. Sixty years on, "Chasin' The Trane" might still send some running for cover (or covers, of which there'south but one on here, Hammerstein and Romberg's beautiful "Softly As In a Morning Sunrise").
John Coltrane's first "live" album release resulted from recordings made over 4 nights at The Village Vanguard during the grouping'southward two- week engagement, with Rudy Van Gelder setting up his gear on a stage-adjacent tabular array and using a dozen microphones to capture the proceedings.
The tracks here were from performances on November second and tertiary 1961. Tracks recorded November 5th were included on Impressions (Impulse A-42) released in the summer of 1963. The dorsum of that jacket says "Recorded in 1963" merely merely one track really was.
Coltrane had in September of 1961 added the then "hazardous" Eric Dolphy to the newly minted lineup featuring McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison along with Reggie Workman who left the group before long afterwards these performances. These were Workman's concluding recordings with Coltrane and Garrison'southward first, though the latter does non get credited on the album. The group had played in 50.A. and Chicago before opening October 24th at The Village Vanguard.
"Spiritual", the album opener, features Coltrane on both tenor and soprano sax. Post-obit a somber entrance featuring Dolphy's fluttering bass clarinet on the correct channel and Coltrane on the left, the tune lopes forth pleasantly anchored by Elvin Jones's shimmering cymbals and powerful snare hits and Workman's bass lines. Dolphy on the right aqueduct takes a long, serpent-similar solo punctuated past a deep pants flapping surprise followed by a Tyner left channel solo. Coltrane enters over again on soprano and it will sound familiar to "My Favorite Things" fans. If you've sat in the Hamlet Vanguard the layout RVG achieves will audio spatially familiar.
The side concludes with the Workman-anchored quartet "Softly As in a Morning Sunrise" embrace, with Jones on brushes and everyone swinging tunefully on their best lyrically lithe behavior, Coltrane on soprano.
Flip over the record and despite the credits, Garrison is on bass and Tyner is MIA. It's a trio recording that literally shook the foundations of modernistic jazz. Nat Hentoff'due south annotation calls it "A blues". And as the saying goes "The Taj Mahal is a building."
Coltrane tells Hentoff for the liner notes that "…the tune not only wasn't written, but information technology wasn't even conceived before nosotros played it." The opening sounds as if Van Gelder hit "tape" mid-tune. Minus a piano Coltrane is free to fly and off he goes! No "sheets of audio" hither. Pillow cases, mattresses and box springs besides. While at the fourth dimension many listeners found Coltrane'southward playing, with its honks and bleats ugly, in retrospect it's downright liberating and no doubt he was reflecting in his music ceremonious rights frustration that makes this music resonate all too perfectly today. Yet it's even so recognizable every bit what Hentoff called it: "a dejection." Sixty years on it's music made for these times.
Equally for the sound, information technology'southward interesting to notation that for Coltrane The Consummate 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse IMPD4-232) a 4 CD box fix produced by Michael Cuscuna and issued in 1997, "the v masters originally issued on AS-10 (this tape) and Equally-42 (Impressions)…are derived from second generation LP masters", the source for the rest of the box prepare were the original main tapes. In other words, whatever happened to the original masters of this record and Impressions had cipher whatsoever to do with "the burn".
I compared my original orange/black pressing, which I've endemic since the early '60s (I'm thinking "Chasin' The Trane" may have been the track that provoked my mother to call a jazz tape I was listening to "ill moo-cow music" and exclaim "Why don't yous go to the A.S.P.C.A.? You'll hear the same audio and it'due south complimentary!") with this new Ryan K. Smith re-master with the 2009 ORG Music double 45rpm issue cutting by Bernie Grundman on 2 45rpm records pressed at Pallas and with the CD box fix version.
First off, whatever BG used for the ORG double 45 was non the 2nd generation tape used for the CD box set version. The sound is soft, distant and muted. This was around the aforementioned time that Counterpart Productions released every bit soft sounding Impulse reissues including Out of the Absurd and John Lee Hooker's Serves You Correct to Suffer (AS-9103) that also sounded (and still audio) just wrong but were at the time "the all-time available" sources.
Somehow UMG must have tracked down that second-generation record considering this reissue cut by Ryan Smith at 33 i/3 sounds much better than the ORG double 45. It also sounds meliorate than the CD, which though information technology has more (but not better) bass, merely sounds abrasive later on a few minutes and never "you are there" real. The cymbals audio brittle and "fake-metallic", Dolphy's bass clarinet sounds like a kazoo, in that location'south no air or context around the instruments and, well enough. (Even so happy to take the complete recordings "tho").
This new Verve/Acoustic Sounds reissue is one of those "this sounds fantastic until you hear an original pressing", which means it actually sounds great.
I also compared an original Impressions that I have with the Speakers Corner version cutting at Emil Berliner Studios ("EBS") from a tape copy probably sourced from Universal's Hannover, Germany vault (now moved to the U.Yard. I believe).
Universal Tape Vault. Hanover, Germany, 1996. (Photo: Michael Fremer)
and the differences were consistent with the sonic differences between the original …Village Vanguard… and this reissue. In other words, the Speaker's Corner reissue sounds really practiced and if Impressions is ever released in this serial it likewise volition probably audio really nifty cut by Ryan Smith.
If you become a chance to compare an original A-10 with this reissue you'll capeesh how fine this reissue sounds but you lot'll besides hear greater texture to Coltrane's horn(s), far more "room sound", and especially cymbal "ring". The original is "you are there" great, in part thanks to RVG's dozen microphone mixing, but you know what? If you never become to hear the original this reissue is "you are in that location" not bad too.
I feel so lucky and privileged to exist able to merely reach dorsum and pick an original from the shelf to compare for you but if you buy this reissue, which y'all really should, you'll have a groovy sounding version for not stupid money and the privilege will be all yours too.
Source: https://www.analogplanet.com/content/coltrane-live-village-vanguard-lives-again
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