John
Coltrane; (tenor sax, percussion); McCoy Tyner (piano); Jimmy Garrison (bass);
Elvin Jones (drums); Pharoah Sanders (tenor sax, percussion); Carlos Ward (alto
sax); Donald Rafael Garrett (bass).I was driving back from the Nikki Iles gig at the Sage, listening to the recently released Charles Mingus live album when one of the saxophonists quoted the 4 note riff from A Love Supreme in his solo. When the disc finished I flicked to Jazz FM and the second or third track they played was Will Downing’s vocal version of the same tune. ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ’A Love Supreme is all around us.’
It is hard to
separate this version of the famous jazz suite from the legend that attached to
the original recording. Asked by the record company to record something more
commercial to match the sales of My
Favorite Things Coltrane took his group to the famous Van Gelder Studios
in Inglewood, New Jersey and came up with a response to his times instead. Something
totally uncommercial that would defy radio play and become one of the biggest
sellers in jazz history. It was recorded in December 1964 and first released
the following month. Until recently it was believed that it had only been
played live once, at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July 1965. That concert was
widely available, though not officially released until 2002 as part of A Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition. The
Seattle recording was made on October 2, 1965 and, until very recently, it had been a well-kept secret; not
only was there no available recording, no one connected with the performance
spoke of it or wrote about it.
This latest recording
also has to be set in the context of Coltrane’s development in 1965. A Love Supreme came out early in a year
that would see a gradual progression further into the avant-garde with studio
albums such as Ascension, Kule Se Mama,
Meditations and Om, and live
albums One Up, One Down, John Coltrane
Quartet Plays and Live in Seattle
with Pharoah Sanders all being recorded that year, although most would not
be released until after Coltrane’s death in 1967. Indeed, Live in Seattle, Om and this newest version of A Love Supreme were recorded on consecutive days. This phenomenal
work rate and refusal to rest on his laurels are the defining characteristics
of this great ‘Late Period’ in Coltrane’s life and this new recording is the last
flourish of the great quartet, albeit in an augmented form.
Coltrane had experimented with additional musicians during the recording of the studio album and both the Deluxe Edition and The Complete Masters (which contains every burp, fart and whistle recorded for the album) include Art Davis on bass and Archie Shepp on tenor sax. Ascension, recorded in June 1965, would take this further and would include the quartet plus seven other musicians including Sanders.
To compare the
live performances, I dug out the recording of A Love Supreme from Antibes. It is 48 minutes long whilst the
Seattle recording clocks in at 75 minutes, a continuous piece with the Interludes (see below - the studio
recording is 33 minutes long). The Antibes recording has space and, even on the
bootleg version I have on the ‘Giants of Jazz’ label (it wasn’t released, it
escaped), the separation and the fact that there are only four and not seven
musicians means greater clarity. You can hear what the members of the quartet
are doing all of the time.
Ashley Kahn’s book
A Love Supreme – The Creation of John
Coltrane’s Classic Album (ISBN: 1783786051)
- includes a nine-page
chapter on the Antibes recording but has no mention of the Seattle performance.
Interestingly, in his overview of Coltrane’s activity during 1965 Kahn writes ‘Coltrane’s
response (with Meditations) leaned
more towards the spiritual than the musical as he saw his current efforts as points
along the same continuum’. This ‘evolutionary theory’ of Coltrane’s music
during 1965 is developed without access to the Seattle recording which would
have explained and clarified much. It is the key recording that provides the
evidence that Coltrane ‘was determined to honour the past and yet face the
future.’ (Kahn, page 179)
This new A Love Supreme reflects Coltrane’s
growth during the year and applies the new approach to the familiar material.
The other recordings made around the time show huge change on the previous year
but for this concert he has put one foot back into the past (which was then
only 11 months ago) but the performance is a clear statement of where he was,
musically, by the October of 1965.
Despite the
presence of three additional musicians, this still sounds like an augmented
version of the great quartet rather than a septet. The most distinctive new
voice is Carlos Ward’s alto and the additional percussion, apparently played by
Coltrane and Sanders, fills out the sound, giving it more urgency whilst the
others solo. The four parts of the suite are played in order – Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm
– but there are also 4 Interludes in
the form of bass or drum solos in between the main parts.
A New York Times
review (quoted by Kahn) described Ascension
as ‘massive and startling’ and that applies to the first listen to Seattle;
the performance threatens to overwhelm both the music and the listener. It
starts softly with gentle sax and arco bass, tentative piano, delicate
percussion. The familiar four note figure comes in after 2 minutes and we’re
rolling. More gentle explorations of the theme follow until, after 5 minutes
the saxes start to dominate. Jones drumming is heavy and powerful, pounding
rhythms and rolls, Tyner thumping ‘Monkishly’ behind, the extra percussion
filling in any gaps to create a wall of sound. Ten minutes into Acknowledgement the music is wild and
free and has escaped the restraints suggested by the earlier recordings. Resolution comes after Interlude 1, a bass solo, and follows a
similar pattern to Acknowledgement with
the familiar giving way to the free.
After the fury and
protest of the first two parts and then Jones’ muscular heavyweight solo (Interlude 2), Pursuance features McCoy Tyner’s percussive left hand piano bombs
behind his own dazzling runs. This is a driving, high-paced performance, faster
than the studio version. Long wild sax blowing breaks for Tyner’s solo, which
feels like the first opportunity to draw breath since the start of the record.
Needless to say, the energy levels soon build, with the drum and bass, and
various other shaken percussion forcing Tyner to play more loudly and
aggressively whilst he solos. The main theme is implied as the solo comes to
its end, is repeated by the sax and Jones rolls the tune down to a halt and we
move into Garrison’s solo on Interlude 3.
The closer, Psalm, opens with a call to prayer on
the sax over booming drums, waves of cymbals and delicate piano. There are
moments of fragility in this tune and great slabs of uncompromising drumming
from Jones as if questing for some final truth. It’s a truly beautiful way to
close the album.
The Seattle recording
is a challenging uncompromising work and one that sets itself against the casual
listener. You cannot listen to it whilst
driving; it is not dinner party music though it might be a way of getting rid
of overstaying guests and unwanted sales calls. For those of us who cannot get
enough Coltrane, especially from the later period, this new release is gold,
frankincense and myrrh all rolled into one for a Christmas come early. Other
Coltrane recordings of A Love Supreme may
surface in time showing what more and what else he could do with the source
material but, until then, we sit in satisfaction at A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle.
A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle is released on October
22 through all of the usual channels. Dave
Sayer
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