As fans commemorate what would have been his 95th birthday, the career of 2007 Special Citation recipient John Coltrane continues to serve as a lodestar for members of the jazz community and other practitioners of improvisational music around the world, with two new archival releases adding to his enduring relevance.
In August, Craft Recordings released "Another Side of John Coltrane," a compilation drawing on his comparatively unheralded performances as a sideman on various recordings released by assorted independent jazz labels at the dawn of the hard bop era in the mid-to-late 1950s. Alongside such staples as the Sonny Rollins Quartet's "Tenor Madness" (the only known recording to feature both Coltrane and Rollins) and Miles Davis' Prestige recording of posthumous 2006 Special Citation recipient Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight," the compilation features several Coltrane interpretations from Monk's repertoire recorded with the mercurial composer just as his own career belatedly shifted into high gear. "Billie's Bounce" finds Coltrane retreating from the vanguard withthe Red Garland Quintet, building on straightforward riffs in a session that anticipates scores of recordings by Hank Mobley, Art Blakey and Horace Silver in the 1960s. The collection concludes with a consummately elegant 1961 Davis-led take on "Someday My Prince Will Come" with the "Miles Davis Sextet," an ad hoc group that included Coltrane (who left Davis' touring ensemble for good in the spring of 1960), temporary replacement Mobley and journeyman pianist Wynton Kelly. Along with his subsequent 1963 Johnny Hartman vocal album and a small cache of Impulse! recordings from that period, it marks one of Coltrane's last engagements with the Great American Songbook, as the harmonic complexity of "Giant Steps" (1960) and his modal interpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" (1961) opened a more elliptical path.
Set for release on October 8 by Impulse!, the recently rediscovered "A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle" captures what is only Coltrane’s second known live performance of the suite, originally recorded by his "Classic Quartet" (including pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and percussionist Elvin Jones) in December 1964 and widely recognized as one of the most important albums of the postwar era. By the time the ensemble convened for this engagement in October 1965, their coherence was fraying, with Tyner pursuing a prolific solo sideline career and Coltrane on the cusp of immersing himself in the free improvisations that would characterize his final 1966-1967 recordings. Augmented by Pharoah Sanders in an early performance on second saxophone, the textured "Part IV: Psalm" offers a pleasing convergence between Coltrane and Sanders' "New Thing" aesthetics and the chromaticism of Tyner's halcyon 1970s output. Listen below.
-- Sean Murphy