New Discovery of Coltrane and Dolphy

About a week and a half ago, Impulse! Records released a new album whose full title is Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. I have no idea how much of an impact either of those names has on the current community of jazz players and jazz listeners. However, the five tracks on the album were recorded in the summer of 1961. For those of us still around to remember the Sixties, that was as turbulent an era for jazz as it was for the pop scene. It was also a poignant period, since Dolphy would die on June 29, 1964 (which means, among other more selfish reasons, that I was never able to listen to him in performance). Coltrane would die on July 17, 1967, which would have been not too long after I heard him bring his quartet to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Both Coltrane and Dolphy were associated with the saxophone. Here is a photograph showing Coltrane on tenor saxophone and Dolphy on alto:

John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy (photograph by Herb Snitzer, courtesy of Crossover Media)

However, each of them ventured into other instruments. Coltrane was known for his solo command of the soprano saxophone, an instrument that tended to be obstreperous for mere mortals. Dolphy took off in the opposite direction, bringing the bass clarinet out of the symphony orchestra (where it has resided for at least a century) and subjecting it to over-the-top improvisations. He would also explore the higher register with his flute.

As the album title indicates, the five tracks of the new album were recorded at the Village Gate in New York in the summer of 1961. Coltrane played there for the better part of a month with Dolphy joining the Coltrane quartet, whose other members were pianist McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on percussion. This was a time when we would talk about “straight-ahead” jazz. This quintet took the “straight-ahead” style and ran it at a breakneck pace.

The album consists of only five tracks:

1. My Favorite Things
2. When Lights Are Low
3. Impressions
4. Greensleeves
5. Africa

All five of them can be found on other Coltrane albums. However, the improvisations for each selection tend to run at a longer-than-usual pace. The shortest of the tracks was Coltrane’s own “Impressions,” whose underlying chord sequence is identical to Miles Davis’ “So What,” which he had played as a member of what is now known as the “first” Davis quintet. However, it was after Coltrane left that quintet that he began to work with his soprano instrument, which positively soars on this particular take, after which it could not be better complemented by anything other than Dolphy’s bass clarinet solo.

Where the rest of the quintet is concerned, Tyner tends to come up with the most engaging “responses” to the “calls” of both Coltrane and Dolphy. As Coltrane moved into more and more adventurous terrains, Tyner would often respond with full-handed chord progressions. However, back in 1961 he was still weaving rapid-fire accounts of a single melodic line, which would go on for some time before any of those progressions would emerge.

The longest of the tracks is Coltrane’s “Africa,” which runs just short of 23 minutes in duration. For this one track the bass is taken by Art Davis, rather than Workman. This performance is longer than either of the two studio recordings, made with a large wind/brass ensemble, in a single session that preceded by Village Gate residence by a month (if not less). It would not be difficult to label this new track as epic, taking “one step beyond” (for those that remember television from the Fifties and Sixties) the expansive rhetoric of the studio setting.

In other words, while, as observed, all five of the tracks had previous recordings, there is no shortage of fresh inventiveness anywhere on this new release.

O1C Concludes Month with Cornelius Boots Solos

Cornelius Boots with one of the many shakuhachis made for him (from the O1C Web page for last night’s concert)

Last night Old First Concerts (O1C) wrapped up its live-streamed series of solo recitals for the month of June. The recitalist was shakuhachi master Cornelius Boots. Readers may recall that I singled him out as one of the leading performers at SF Music Day 2019 last October. On that occasion he led his Heavy Roots Shakuhachi Ensemble, whose repertoire extends far beyond the traditional Japanese music usually associated with the instrument. Boots himself specializes in the taimu (bass) shakuhachi; but, for last night’s recital, he played several different instruments in a variety of sizes.

Many of his selections were either his own compositions or arrangements that he had prepared. Most of those arrangements, in turn, were imaginative reflections on some of the more adventurous post-bop jazz composers; and one was inspired by Jimi Hendrix. The Hendrix selection closed out the program of ten selections. This was his own unique interpretation of “Hey Joe,” whose authorship has been contested but which was copyrighted by Billy Roberts. There was little sense of acid rock in Boots’ delivery, but the sense of soulful rhetoric was unmistakable.

The jazz selections were taken from the “dynamic duo” that flourished in the Sixties, saxophonists Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane, both of whom died in that decade. Dolphy had a particularly wide command of the wind family, adding flute and both B-flat and bass clarinets to his alto saxophone work. Coltrane, in turn, extended his mastery of the tenor saxophone to include also the soprano saxophone. The Coltrane selection was “Wise One,” while Dolphy was represented with “Serene.” That piece was followed by Boots’ own “Mandrake Walks,” which he dedicated in memory of Dolphy.

There was much to be gained in listening to the diversity of sonorities and styles that Boots could elicit from his collection of instruments. Unfortunately, too much of his time was occupied with spoken explanations. He clearly had much to offer by way of useful background; but, just as clearly, he was not particularly comfortable with speaking to an audience that was not physically present. At SF Music Day the music spoke for itself, requiring little by way of introduction; and I, for one, would have appreciated more time being allotted to the music itself.

The performance took place in Boots’ own studio, which he calls “The Barn.” Sadly, the technology left much to be desired. Most critically, there was a wide gap of failed synchronization between the audio signal and the video images. For the most part, the best way to appreciate Boots’ performance was to avoid looking at the screen, which provided unnecessary distraction. O1C still has a way to go in establishing a solid command of live-streaming technology; but, in times like these, they still deserve credit for trying.

New Recordings of Eric Dolphy from Resonance

courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications

This coming Friday Resonance Records will release Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions, a “deluxe” three-CD album of recording sessions led by Eric Dolphy on July 1 and 3 of 1963. Those sessions resulted in two albums, Conversations and Iron Man. Several factors make this a “deluxe” release. There are two pieces that were never included on these albums (one for each album); and the third CD offers a generous supply of alternate takes of tracks from both of the albums. This all comes to 85 minutes of material that has not been previously released.

In addition, there is a 96-page booklet that includes rare and unpublished photographs, essays, and interviews. This is a valuable source of background information (which would have been even more valuable had the editors decided to include a table of contents for the essays and interviews). As can be expected, Amazon.com currently has a Web page for pre-ordering this release.

Dolphy was, of course, a prodigious multi-instrumentalist. At these sessions he alternated among alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet. Ten other musicians are listed as having participated; but only one of them performed extensively with Dolphy over the lion’s share of the tracks. That was bassist Richard Davis, who is the only musician to play with Dolphy in Arthur Schwartz’ “Alone Together,” the longest track on Conversations with a slightly shorter track in the one alternate take on the third CD. Furthermore, the two additional tracks on the Conversations CD are two takes of “Muses for Richard Davis,” which Roland Hanna wrote for Davis’ debut album. Both of these takes sound very much as if Davis and Dolphy felt a need to continue the “conversation” that had begun over “Alone Together.”

These days I no longer seem to get the raised eyebrows that used to react whenever I would casually mention listening to works by composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, or La Monte Young. It is now half a century since Dolphy’s tragic death on June 29, 1964; but I still run into people who sidle away if I want to talk about either his compositions or his partnerships with jazz giants such as Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. I would like to believe that such folks don’t think very much of “alternative performance techniques” (or think that they are fine in modern music recitals but not on jazz recordings).

The fact is that Dolphy was fearless about pushing envelopes. This involved not only adventurous approaches to improvisation but also provocative experiments in evoking unfamiliar sonorities from familiar instruments. It is easy to dismiss these as evidence that he could not play his instruments very well, but there are too many tracks that provide too much evidence to the contrary to let his detractors get away with that claim.

The track added to the Iron Man album did not come from either of the two July sessions. It was recorded in Ann Arbor of March 2, 1964 in the studios of WUOM, the non-commercial radio station licensed to the University of Michigan. This was when that university was hosting the ONCE Festival of New Music, founded by Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds, and Donald Scavarda, all of whom were based in Ann Arbor at that time. Dolphy participated in some of those festivals, meaning that he was probably rubbing shoulders with not only the founders but also the likes of adventurous composers such as Pauline Oliveros and David Behrman.

The track recorded in 1964 was called “A Personal Statement.” It was composed by pianist Bob James around a text recited by David Schwartz. It was very reflective of a simmering political climate that would soon be coming to a boil. Dolphy played all three of his instruments, joined by Ron Brooks on bass and Robert Pozar on percussion. At over fifteen minutes in duration, this is a highly politicized offering that is likely to appeal to those who remember what the Sixties were about to become. Listening to that track today is likely to feel like stepping into a time machine to those of my generation; but the memories are poignant in today’s setting in which, thanks to how easy it is to abuse Internet services, the only voices that matter seem to be those of the brutes that shout the loudest.

On the "Historical Record" of Modern Jazz

Anyone who has seen the German documentary, Blue Note - A Story of Modern Jazz, as I did back when the Ovation Channel was still in business, can be forgiven for taking it to be the story of modern jazz. However, while there is no denying the major role that Blue Note played in cultivating the necessary listening skills for the new sounds of jazz that began to emerge after the Second World War, it would be a mistake to overlook some of the other labels that issued recordings without which any historical study of jazz would be woefully inadequate. Consider, for example, those two works that had been so influential to Anthony Braxton, Albert Ayler's "Bells" and John Coltrane's "Ascension," both of which were produced by Bob Thiele for Impulse! Records. Admittedly, Creed Taylor would not have been able to launch Impulse! in 1960 had Blue Note not prepared listeners for their "new wave of jazz;" but, if we are to accept Ashley Kahn's epithet for Impulse! as "The House that Trane Built," we should remember that Coltrane's work with Blue Note was relatively modest (which is not to dismiss the significance of Blue Train) and that much of his truly formative work (including his recordings with Miles Davis' "first quintet") was produced by Prestige. I find myself writing this because I have come to realize that much of my appreciation of "emerging voices" comes from the Prestige anthologies I have acquired over the years, which include (in alphabetical order) John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins. These CD collections are products of meticulous compilation by Eric Miller (Dolphy and Monk) and the venerable Orrin Keepnews (Coltrane, Davis, and Rollins); and they are invaluable resources for anyone (like myself) who believes that both composition and performance are best understood through opportunities for diachronic listening. When I then consider the richness of the notes that accompany each of these collections, I realize how clueless "Audiophiliac" Steve Guttenberg is in his despair over a report that "projects that it won't be until 2012 that download sales surpass CD sales." However, this is not the first time I have had to recognize that Guttenberg seems more interested in listening to high-quality digital sounds, rather than high-quality performances of music!

Listening to Anthony Braxton

When Mosaic Records first announced their release of The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, my first reaction was my usual concern about space being at a premium in my condominium (the same reaction I had a year earlier when my wife received the Brilliant Classics Bach Edition as a gift). I figured that the few Braxton CDs I had accumulated would be sufficient. I certainly enjoyed those recordings, as I enjoyed the ways in which Braxton pushed the envelope of classification.

Organizing my personal collection has never been an easy matter. It took me a while to converge on a systematic approach that I could actually use when I was trying to find anything specific. I ultimately resorted to a technique I learned about 25 years ago from the librarian at KUSC. She hit on the idea of organizing everything according to the old (and now defunct) Schwann record catalog, saving back issues of the catalog to keep track of recordings that had gone out of print. (She delighted in being able to call her method "Schwann's Way.") I have pretty much picked up this method in spirit. Since Schwann is no longer with us, I have saved only one old issue each of Schwann Opus (for classical music) and Schwann Spectrum (for everything else), not for assistance in finding specific items but just as reminders of the basic categories.

Unless I am mistaken, Braxton is one of two composers whom "Schwann's Way" assigns to different categories, some recordings classified as classical and others as jazz. (The other composer is John Zorn.) Personally, I think the Schwann classifications had more to do with the publisher than with the content itself; but I have decided to honor their guidelines as best as I can.

What interests me more than his defiance of conventional categories is that Braxton is almost exactly a year and a month older than I am. Taking into account my having skipped a grade in elementary school, there are many ways in which we have probably shared listening experiences during our formative years. True, while I went straight from high school to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I then remained for my doctoral studies, Braxton entered the army after high school; and, as Mike Heffley documents in the Mosaic notes, it was during his service in Korea that "he discovered the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Albert Ayler's Bells, Coltrane's Ascension, then returned to Chicago." Barry Kernfeld's biographical entry for Grove Music Online has him spending two years at Roosevelt University "reading" philosophy and composition, meaning that he probably did not earn a degree; but, more importantly, he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and formed a trio with Leroy Jenkins and (now Wadada) Leo Smith, which recorded in New York as the Creative Construction Company and travelled to Paris in 1969. According to Heffley, the trio's nickname was "the slide rule boys." After returning from Europe, he spent "some quality time around the post–John Cage Wesleyan University" (Kernfeld's words), which probably put him in touch with Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, and Frederick Rzewski. This would have been shortly before Lucier received his faculty appointment at Brandeis University, which is when I first became aware of his work and his colleagues in the Sonic Arts Group. Braxton was thus looking for a path that would lead to innovation through innovative thinking about structure, which is basically the same sort of path I had been trying to explore in my own approach to computer music in my doctoral research. My guess is that it is only through bad luck that I missed any opportunities to hear him perform around the same time that I was encountering other composers, such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich; but, as I said, what strikes me the most is the extent of overlap in our listening contexts.

The breadth of Braxton's listening context is more evident in the Mosaic collection than it can be in any of the individual recordings I had previously acquired. Only through a project like this one would Rzewski end up in my jazz collection by virtue of a performance of Braxton's "Opus 95 For Two Pianos" along with Ursula Oppens. There is a sense of Rzewski's presence in Braxton's listening context, but this composition is still very much a product of Braxton's own voice. Similarly, the "Opus 82," conceived for four 39-piece orchestras, reflects the influences of Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis but also points the way to Braxton's later "Composition No. 165" for eighteen instruments, recording almost fifteen years later by New Albion (and classified as "classical" by Schwann). The period covered by the Mosaic collection (1974–1980) also includes innovative (but decidedly jazzy) approaches to Scott Joplin, Lionel Hampton, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy. This is a collection that takes the ear in far more diverse directions than just about any other anthology in either the jazz or the classical category. Nevertheless, as the Discography in Braxton's Wikipedia entry indicates, the 8 CDs in the Mosaic collection are actually a rather modest sample of his work; and, as far as I can determine, he is still taking that work down new paths!

My Grove Press copy of Henry Miller's Topic of Cancer includes an essay about Miller by Karl Shapiro entitled, "The Greatest Living Author." I still remember this sentence about Miller's work from that essay:

Let's assemble a bible from his work, I said, and put one in every hotel room in America, after removing the Gideon Bibles and placing them in the laundry chutes.

In a similar vein I would like to envisage a world in which one may start one's day with Braxton's music in the company of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and John Coltrane. Sadly, even with my XM satellite service, I have yet to hear anything by Braxton through a broadcast medium. I suppose that means that I shall just have to fashion this world for myself, without the prospect of sharing it with others!