The first Coltrane Album I got was with Dolphy doing Rogers & Hammerstein's "Favourite Things" which is approachable, haunting, beautiful, and listed in this article as the breakout hit. Coming to it almost 20 years after (it was a 1961 release, the year of my birth) it blew me away. Songs of my childhood (saw the sound of music every year on holiday for a while there. The 60s didn't have a lot of new films in circulation close to cheap caravan parks apparently.)
Coltrane played with amazing theories of chromatic chord structure[0] which he diagrammed, Like the Bauhaus design theorists did for their colour logic models
If I'm not mistaken that diagram comes from a legendary sax lesson he gave Yusef Lateef. It was the first lesson he gave Lateef and was apparently something like 8 hours long.
One interesting tidbit about "My Favorite Things" is that it came out several years before the movie [1]. So it was a Broadway hit, but not yet at the universally-known level the movie propelled it to.
For those of you who think they don't "get" jazz, Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" is a great eye opener. It's a bit long but the tune should be very familiar and recognizable. If you pay attention, and jazz is a type of music that is best enjoyed with attention, you can easily follow what Coltrane is doing to that tune. It gets played, extended, deformed, touched, hinted, lifted and lowered by the creative forces of a great artist. And that's really what jazz is all about.
One of my favorite songs of all time. I love Michael Brecker but McCoy is incredible here as well obviously. It feels like they are just pulling music out of each other https://youtu.be/InshjZ9paQE
Reading all these comments in this thread has me adding all the suggestions to a playlist. I wish Apple Music would do for Jazz, what it did for Apple Classical Music.
I used to do my best to play many of the tunes Coltrane did. Never near as good as him, and when it came to Giant Steps, there was just no way. I kept trying as long as I played.
We should not forget “playing outside the changes,” or “playing out,” for short.
This concept was pioneered back in the 1950s and ’60s by innovative jazz legends John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others.
I hope you didn't give up, there's 2 ways to approach this, start with a book of arpeggios and construct some kind of sound, and transcribing and making it your own.
Thanks, there's some serious music theorists in HN, below thread has the vibe of type theory and topology/abstract algebra threads, i pondered over "non-homeomorphic embedding of chromatic circle into torus" for awhile and forgot about it:
I was driving home late one night and this extraordinary, experimental jazz piece comes on the air (KUVO, Denver). I was captivated and my daughter who was with me correctly identified the instrument as the bass clarinet which she had played in her middle school orchestra. I later found out it was Eric Dolphy - God Bless The Child. I hope you have a chance to listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ1c3ixoa4
That is awesome she plays bass clarinet. Dolphy practically owns that instrument.
Andre 3000 - Look Ma No Hands is a really cool newer bass clarinet piece with Andre on bass clarinet instead of rapping. Obviously he is a Dolphy head.
For people who haven't heard Coltrane, I would highly recommend "Ballads" and "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" as a very very lovely and gentle intro. I have successfully got people who don't even like jazz into Coltrane with those. "Ballads" was done sort of as a riposte to critics who said that he was basically a stunt sax player who could only play fast and crazy and it comprises some of the most beautiful playing of ballads from the standard repertoire you'll ever hear. And the album with Johnny Hartman shows how to play with a singer. The versions of "My One and Only Love" and "Lush Life" on that recording will always be definitive but it's all fantastic. You could also add "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane" to the same category. It's amazing to hear them together but it's more of a thing for people who already like jazz. The version of "In a sentimental mood" from that recording is an all-time great.
Then for the golden period obviously "A Love Supreme" is the one everyone talks about and rightly so because it is a masterpiece, but I would recommend "Crescent". Just an incredible recording which has everything. When I got it I was a student and people in my place of residence thought I had lost my marbles because I literally played the entire recording from start to finish 8 times in a row. It remains my favourite album of all time.
Then I would recommend the album called "Coltrane" and "Coltrane plays the blues" both great, but honestly anything from that period is wonderful.
From there the world is your oyster - I some of the more bonkers stuff (eg the stuff with Dolphy) but if you like crazy, high energy improvisation, the one that jazzers often talk about and shake their heads with awe is "Amen" from "Sun Ship", seriously nuts.
Postscript to add: I joined a big band when their bassist was fired and had just one rehearsal before a gig at a festival. All the music was really difficult and I was sightreading. Our slot was late so I went to the main gig which was an absolutely mindblowing solo piano gig by McCoy Tyner (Famous for being the pianist on most of the recordings I mentioned above with Coltrane). I figured noone would be at our gig after McCoy but not only was the entire place completely packed out but McCoy was sitting at the very front at a table about 3 or 4 meters from me. He spoke to us in the break and was really nice and encouraging.
There are recordings of early Coltrane playing alto which very clearly sounds like he's imitating Charlie Parker, I also think some of his early recordings is more about mastering the bebop language instead of experimenting.
As someone that has always preferred Parker to Coltrane, I’d love to hear this. Are these widely distributed releases or something obscure I’ll need to search for?
I assumed "experimental phase" meant when he was doing free jazz with a lot of atonal stuff that most listeners who aren't already fans find a little less than inviting.
He was not in an experimental phase on March 7, 1963, when he recorded a sublime, but very much non-experimental album with Johnny Hartman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUnyG01x7uk
But he was in an experimental phase on March 6, 1963, when he recorded what became "Both Directions at Once" with the same band, minus Hartman: https://youtu.be/qs1YZdfimE4?t=551
I think if Dolphy had lived longer, he would have eventually been viewed at the same level as Coltrane or Mingus. His sound was sometimes like Monk playing brass.
He sure left the stage early and for all the wrong reasons, but to this saxophonist-flautist at least, Dolphy already is on that level. At the Five Spot changed everything.
For me it was "Out To Lunch" and the live concert in I think 64, with Mingus. He just shone. A few years back I did an exhibition of jazz portraits at the now defunct Cafe Stritch where he was one of the bigger prominent works: https://www.deviantart.com/zeruch/art/eric-dolphy-v5-1936648...
I think its the phrasing that just does it for me.
To me the quartet is at their creative peak when they're playing with Dolphy, there are lots of bootleg audio of those on Youtube, every one is pure gold.
Im love jazz (especially fusion) and one of my favorite artist (Christian Vander from Magma) list him as the best jazz artist ever to the point he contemplated suicide when he died.
That said i have never understood what was so great about coltrane. "My favorite things" is Nice, sure, but i never found it so special. Maybe i just like more dissonant / disturbed stuff. Its interesting to see the comments since everyone seem to have its own story with the song. Will def listen to all the other songs mentionned here
Christian Vander is wonderful. If you are looking for more "out there" selections, Coltrane's Interstellar Space is about as weird as music gets. (More sophisticated listeners get more out of this, I just think it's delightfully crazy.) Two people make this noise!
The snippet sounds a lot like "Live at the Village Vanguard" which was recorded a few months later. But it's a great era in Coltrane's output.
Also, I had not realized that Reggie Workman was still alive. Now that McCoy Tyner is gone, he's one of the last performers of the Coltrane/Dolphy ensembles around (amazingly, Roy Haynes, who played on one track of the "Live at the Village Vanguard" box set, is still performing at age 98).
Somebody should make Coltrane AI-generator. I once tried script that plays random 30 second snippets from 20 albums. Quite entertaining but little too jerky.
I honestly have a mixed feeling about the book. On the one hand, it is cool to see the author tie together a bunch of interesting ideas about physics and math with the music of John Coltrane and other jazz artists. On the other hand, it feels like he is hand waving a lot and often spouting technical terms. But, perhaps that is just like Jazz! It was a fun read most of the time.
File this under "you usually prefer the version you heard first"
Their live version of My Favorite Things on the black double album (which I was unable to find on Discogs just now) is the first I ever heard and still my favorite. The solo opening notes, and emotional intensity of it still sends chills up my spine.
And at the end, the announcer intones slowly, "John Coltrane. McCoy Tyner. Jimmy Garrison... Roy Haynes!"
I'm most taken by the fact that the recordings were lost, found, lost, then found again. This is a cautionary tale of the risks to culture from issues with archive management.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 95.7 ms ] threadColtrane played with amazing theories of chromatic chord structure[0] which he diagrammed, Like the Bauhaus design theorists did for their colour logic models
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltrane_changes and https://www.openculture.com/2017/04/the-tone-circle-john-col...
[1] https://twitter.com/ethan_iverson/status/1479513450900377603
We should not forget “playing outside the changes,” or “playing out,” for short.
This concept was pioneered back in the 1950s and ’60s by innovative jazz legends John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16570489
i do remember being disappointed that he didn't write about any response from Y. Lateef:
https://medium.com/@lucas_gonze/coltrane-pitch-diagrams-e25b...
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrrdbS2spkQ
Olé's base melody comes from this old Andalusian Folk Song called "El Vito". It's beautifully mesmerising https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAKPWxcnDas too.
Andre 3000 - Look Ma No Hands is a really cool newer bass clarinet piece with Andre on bass clarinet instead of rapping. Obviously he is a Dolphy head.
For people who haven't heard Coltrane, I would highly recommend "Ballads" and "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" as a very very lovely and gentle intro. I have successfully got people who don't even like jazz into Coltrane with those. "Ballads" was done sort of as a riposte to critics who said that he was basically a stunt sax player who could only play fast and crazy and it comprises some of the most beautiful playing of ballads from the standard repertoire you'll ever hear. And the album with Johnny Hartman shows how to play with a singer. The versions of "My One and Only Love" and "Lush Life" on that recording will always be definitive but it's all fantastic. You could also add "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane" to the same category. It's amazing to hear them together but it's more of a thing for people who already like jazz. The version of "In a sentimental mood" from that recording is an all-time great.
Then for the golden period obviously "A Love Supreme" is the one everyone talks about and rightly so because it is a masterpiece, but I would recommend "Crescent". Just an incredible recording which has everything. When I got it I was a student and people in my place of residence thought I had lost my marbles because I literally played the entire recording from start to finish 8 times in a row. It remains my favourite album of all time.
Then I would recommend the album called "Coltrane" and "Coltrane plays the blues" both great, but honestly anything from that period is wonderful.
From there the world is your oyster - I some of the more bonkers stuff (eg the stuff with Dolphy) but if you like crazy, high energy improvisation, the one that jazzers often talk about and shake their heads with awe is "Amen" from "Sun Ship", seriously nuts.
Postscript to add: I joined a big band when their bassist was fired and had just one rehearsal before a gig at a festival. All the music was really difficult and I was sightreading. Our slot was late so I went to the main gig which was an absolutely mindblowing solo piano gig by McCoy Tyner (Famous for being the pianist on most of the recordings I mentioned above with Coltrane). I figured noone would be at our gig after McCoy but not only was the entire place completely packed out but McCoy was sitting at the very front at a table about 3 or 4 meters from me. He spoke to us in the break and was really nice and encouraging.
I'd also add, after "Ballads", another very gentle recording: "My Favourite Things".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w
Love it all.
But he was in an experimental phase on March 6, 1963, when he recorded what became "Both Directions at Once" with the same band, minus Hartman: https://youtu.be/qs1YZdfimE4?t=551
His styles don't really follow a linear timeline.
I think its the phrasing that just does it for me.
That said i have never understood what was so great about coltrane. "My favorite things" is Nice, sure, but i never found it so special. Maybe i just like more dissonant / disturbed stuff. Its interesting to see the comments since everyone seem to have its own story with the song. Will def listen to all the other songs mentionned here
https://youtu.be/TkrMkxIGti0
I would not describe it as "disturbed", but it's certainly more intense than "My Favorite Things".
Also, I had not realized that Reggie Workman was still alive. Now that McCoy Tyner is gone, he's one of the last performers of the Coltrane/Dolphy ensembles around (amazingly, Roy Haynes, who played on one track of the "Live at the Village Vanguard" box set, is still performing at age 98).
https://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Physics-Between-Structure-Univer...
I honestly have a mixed feeling about the book. On the one hand, it is cool to see the author tie together a bunch of interesting ideas about physics and math with the music of John Coltrane and other jazz artists. On the other hand, it feels like he is hand waving a lot and often spouting technical terms. But, perhaps that is just like Jazz! It was a fun read most of the time.
McCoy Tyne in My Favorite Things, for example.
Their live version of My Favorite Things on the black double album (which I was unable to find on Discogs just now) is the first I ever heard and still my favorite. The solo opening notes, and emotional intensity of it still sends chills up my spine.
And at the end, the announcer intones slowly, "John Coltrane. McCoy Tyner. Jimmy Garrison... Roy Haynes!"