Last weekend’s post featuring three versions of the Miles Davis Quintet playing So What seemed to go over pretty well, so I’m going to push my luck and do another music post. Trying to keep things as educational as they can reasonably be at 3:55 AM, I’m going to stick with the same tune, with a different head and a different name. Have a look at this performance of Impressions by the John Coltrane Quintet, featuring Eric Dolphy from 1961.
Last week there were about 40 versions of this taping up on YouTube, and this week there is only this one. The video and sound quality are not great, but this will have to do. The performance was taped for a television show in West Germany a little less than two years after last week’s video and about a year after the two Mp3’s I linked to. Just for giggles, listen to this performance of Impressions recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1963.
Since it’s almost 4:00 and I really need to try get a few hours of sleep, I hope you’ll forgive me for the complete lack of analysis. I’d prefer you just listen to the five performances and gather what you will about John Coltrane’s development without me boring you to death with my thoughts.
The first person to guess who I wanted to be when I grew up gets a jelly bean in the flavor of their choice. Please note that if you win the jelly bean, you will have pay for the shipping, or go pick it up at the your local candy store using your own money.
hey Chris-If you’ve read my posts here you probably can guess i hate boring commentary as much as anyone else. But I have to say this: I was born in 1944 in a very jazz-filled household in new york city. I love miles and the music, and trane, too. I would guess your background is quite different. But the power of the music is so strong it connects us in a way even more “real” than our common membership in this “progressive community.”
Chris, thank you. Jazz is the quintessential American music, and your love for it comes through in these posts.
Hope your resting well as I type and dreaming of Miles, Coltrane, Ocscar Peterson and Charles Mingus. Or whomever.
The time!!!
The intensity!!!
The POWER!!!
God lives.
AG
The next best thing to being there. That gig would have been about five years before my birth. By that time, Eric Dolphy would have left this planet, and Trane was living on borrowed time. Intense stuff those cats did together.
I was asking myself what to do with this Monday’s open thread, and hooked up to a Pharoah Sanders clip via YouTube.
And yeah, it’s interesting to watch (and listen) to how “So What” progressed over several years. Another interesting tune that’s interesting to listen to is Trane’s version of “My Favorite Things” – which he and his bandmates deconstructed, reconstructed, and worked over to the extent that there was no way Julie Andrews would ever be able to figure out what’s up. Trane’s first recorded version (done during his stint at Atlantic Records just prior to his move to Impulse! and the formation of his classic quartet) is the tamest of the bunch. I’ve heard enough official and bootleg live versions of the tune, where it’s safe to say that the tune is completely unrecognizeable by the time of his last recorded performance in 1967.
Some cat named Scott Anderson wrote his senior thesis on Trane’s version of this tune: John Coltrane, Avant Garde Jazz,
and the Evolution of “My Favorite Things”.