My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport

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My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport
Live album by John Coltrane

Publication
(s)

2007

Label (s) Impulses!

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

6th

running time

79:14

occupation

production

Bob Thiele

chronology
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays
(1965) 		My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport Ascension
(1966)

My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport is a jazz album by the John Coltrane Quartet , recorded on July 7, 1963 and July 2, 1965 at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island . Some of the recordings were already released on Impulse! In 1966 under the title New Thing at Newport ! Records released. Additional tracks John Coltranes appeared posthumously on the albums Selflessness featuring My Favorite Things , The Mastery of John Coltrane and Newport '63 . The recordings with the edition My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport published in 2007 are available in full .

John Coltrane's Newport Appearances

prehistory

While John Coltrane had visited Rudy Van Gelder's studio a total of eight times in 1962 to record material for the three albums John Coltrane and Duke Ellington , Coltrane (album) and Ballads , Coltrane only came to the studio three times the next year. In addition, a number of live recordings were made, for example from the Newport Jazz Festival in July, from a European tour ( Afro Blue Impressions ) and the Birdland on October 8th.

When the John Coltrane Quartet performed in Newport in the summer of 1963 , Coltrane's drummer Elvin Jones was undergoing drug therapy. As a replacement for him he chose Roy Haynes , who at the age of 37 was already considered an experienced veteran who had played with saxophonists such as Lester Young , Charlie Parker and Stan Getz . In November 1961, Haynes had jumped in for Elvin Jones at Coltrane's concert at the Village Vanguard; he should take part in some studio recordings this year ( Dear Old Stockholm ).

Newport Jazz Festival, July 7th, 1963

After his first appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, Coltrane and his quartet continued to appear in 1961, 1963, 1965 and 1966, but only the second and third appearances were recorded by his producer Bob Thiele .

Thiele recorded both Coltrane and McCoy Tyner with his band in Newport; there was his first live album for Impulse! ( Live at Newport , AS-48). Coltrane's concert, which ended the festival on Sunday, remained unpublished during the saxophonist's lifetime.

Before Coltrane began to play, Willis Conover gave a short speech, which also served to calm the audience down after a furious appearance by Jimmy Smith ; consequently Coltrane began his concert with a ballad, "I Want to Talk About You". "The material is broken up by John Coltrane through a multi-tonal quarters playing style that uses the underlying chord as the tonal center," wrote Gerd Filtgen and Michael Auserbauer in their review of the Newport recordings, "One third of the piece consists of one long tenor saxophone solo cadenza. As with My Favorite Things , Coltrane uses Arabic scales to some extent, which, however, and this is clear evidence of his ability, never lets him lose the melodic reference to the topic. "

Ashley Kahn considers the Newport appearance in 1963 to be the high point of the collaboration between Coltrane and Haynes; According to Coltrane biographers Filtgen and Auserbauer, Haynes is “a drummer with a more rhythmic conception.” Another title in his repertoire at the time was the standard “ My Favorite Things ”; the saxophonist extended his improvisations on the Rodgers / Hammerstein classic to over 17 minutes. “The tonal component of his soprano playing is also very clear here. The tone is very nasal in the lower area, brilliant and radiant in the upper area. Coltrane integrates the natural tonal impurity, the intonation fluctuations of the instrument into itself (...) Its tonal spectrum reflects a polydiatonic way of playing several diatonic scales. ”This was followed by a 23-minute version of“ Impressions ”, which Coltrane has been using since his Village Vanguard appeared in the band's repertoire in 1961 ; After a brief thematic introduction began a six-minute solo by Tyner, which was followed by a short interlude by bassist Jimmy Garrison . Coltrane started again with the "Impressions" theme and - after the piece had lasted ten minutes - the whole thing ended in a duet by Coltrane and Haynes until shortly before the end, when the saxophonist brought the improvisation back into the theme.

Newport Jazz Festival, July 2, 1965

When he appeared in Newport in 1965 - again with Elvin Jones - the classic John Coltrane Quartet was almost at the end of its existence. "Half a year after A Love Supreme , a tendency towards tonal freedom can be felt here, which had just reached a culmination point with Ascension ," wrote Filtgen and Auserbauer. The new musical developments of Coltrane, Archie Shepp , Albert Ayler , Pharoah Sanders , John Tchicai and others in the mid-1960s were then subsumed under the term "New Thing"; "New Thing at Newport" was then also the title of the Impulse! Album, on which parts of this Newport concert ("One Down, One Up" and, on LP only in abbreviated form, "My Favorite Things") appeared in 1966, coupled with four tracks that Archie Shepp played with his quartet in the afternoon.

John Coltrane's performance ended the Newport Jazz Festival in 1965; Thelonious Monk , Carmen McRae , Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakeys Jazz Messengers had played on the rainy day . Father Norman O'Connor acted as emcee that evening and announced the Coltrane Quartet. The following, almost half an hour long appearance by the band began with the title "One Down, One Up". Filtgen and Auserbauer wrote about this piece: “The theme is based on two whole-tone scales, the contents of which are not identical, which is also underlined by McCoy Tyner, who plays a long and brilliant solo here. Towards the end of this solo, the density of the music increases. After a very high intensity that can hardly be increased, Coltrane begins his solo. Here it becomes completely clear what energy and technical skill Coltrane had achieved to date. The most conspicuous of these techniques, which serve his emotional statement, is the play of notes that are considerably above the normal register of the tenor (...). This creates a sound that resembles a scream. (...) He uses the stops of the saxophone in a contrasting manner; that is, he plays sequences of high notes and rubs them seamlessly against notes of the lower register, creating a call and response effect that sometimes gives the impression of hearing two saxophonists. "

Coltrane ended the evening with another version of the classic "My Favorite Things"; he switched from tenor to soprano saxophone. According to Ashley Kahn, this is where the tensions in the band became apparent in terms of musical development: While Tyner adheres closely to the 1961 original version of the standard, Coltrane's improvisation is already breaking into future directions of tonal freedom.

Coltrane returned to Newport a year later with his new quintet of Alice Coltrane , Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali and Jimmy Garrison; he played an hour-long set with versions of “Leo”, “Peace on Earth” and again “My Favorite Things”, which was not recorded.

The Archie Shepp recordings from the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival

The four tracks played by saxophonist Archie Shepp's quartet in Newport on the same day formed the B-side of the New Thing at Newport album. Shepp and his fellow musicians played the tracks "Rufus Swung His Face At Last To The Wind, Then His Neck Snapped", "Le Matin Des Noire", "Skag", "Call Me By My Rightful Name" and "Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Boy ". Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson , bassist Barre Phillips and drummer Joe Chambers played with Shepp in the afternoon .

Rating of the album

Richard Cook and Brian Morton only rated the original album New Thing at Newport with the concert recording from 1965 in the Penguin Guide to Jazz with the grade of three stars. Al Campbell gave the album New Thing at Newport the second highest rating in the All Music Guide .

Editorial notes

The tracks "I Want to Talk About You" and "My Favorite Things" from 1963 first appeared on the album Selflessness featuring My Favorite Things (Impulse AS-9161) after Coltrane's death in 1969. "Impressions" was shortened (15:40 ) on the album The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. II - To the Beat of a Different Drum (Impulse IZ-9346). All three tracks from the July 1963 concert then appeared in the 1968 mix on the Newport '63 CD (GRD-128) in 1993, as Impulse! belonged to GRP label. The extended original version of "Impressions" remained unpublished until the 2007 edition was published. The spoken introduction, "One Down, One Up" and a five-minute version of "My Favorite Things" were part of the album New Thing at Newport (AS-94), which was released in 1966; the 1965 version of the track "My Favorite Things" was first published in 1978 on the album The Mastery of John Coltrane, Vol. I - Feelin 'Good (IZ9345-2). The CD edition of New Thing at Newport (314543414-2) documents the complete concerts of Shepp and Coltrane in 1965.

The titles

  • John Coltrane Quartet - My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport (Impulse)
  1. "I Want to Talk About You" 9:41
  2. "My Favorite Things" (Rodgers / Hammerstein) 17:20
  3. "Impressions" 23:30
  4. Spoken Introduction 1:08
  5. "One Down, One Up" 12:42
  6. "My Favorite Things" 3:14 pm
  • John Coltrane / Archie Shepp: New Thing at Newport (Impulse AS-49)

A-side (Coltrane)

  1. "One Down One Up" - 11:42
  2. "My Favorite Things" - 5:22

B-side (Shepp)

  1. "Rufus (Swung) His Face At Last To The Wind, Then His Neck Snapped" - 6:14
  2. “Le Matin Des Noire” - 6:33
  3. "Skag" - 7:30
  4. "Call Me By My Rightful Name" - 7:30

literature

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Ashley Kahn : The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records . (2006) WW Norton, ISBN 0393058794 , p. 95
  2. ↑ <cf. Liner Notes (1993) by Francis Davis.
  3. ↑ John Coltrane discography
  4. ↑ According to A. Kahn, Thiele concentrated on recording the second Village Vanguard appearance and Coltrane's Japan tour.
  5. ↑ a b quotation from Filtgen & Auswerbauer, p. 192.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Filtgen & Auserbauer, p. 191 f. Here, too, through the natural “impurity” of the soprano, they emphasize the closeness to Arabic scales.
  7. ↑ a b Filtgen & Auswerbauer, p. 184.
  8. ↑ Since 1991 (GRP 11052), this piece of the Coltrane appearance has also been fully documented on the CD New Thing at Newport .
  9. ↑ The fifth track "Gingerbread, Gingerbread Boy" first appeared on Shepps album On This Night and was also released in 1991 on New Thing at Newport .
  10. ↑ On CD 1991 14:44
  11. ↑ On the CD New Thing at Newport (GRP 11042) also 7. "Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Boy" - 10:15