Requisites

Coltrane’s Sound is an album credited to jazz musician John Coltrane, released in 1964 on Atlantic Records, catalog SD 1419. It was recorded at Atlantic Studios during the sessions for My Favorite Things, assembled after Coltrane had stopped recording for the label and was under contract to Impulse! Records. Like Prestige and Blue Note Records before them, as Coltrane’s fame grew during the 1960s Atlantic used unissued recordings, releasing them without either Coltrane’s input or approval.

Track Listing | 38:18 ~ Original Recording / 50:33 CD Reissue *All compositions are by John Coltrane except where mentioned

1. The Night Has A Thousand Eyes ~ Buddy Bernier, Jerry Brainin ~ 6:51
2. Central Park West ~ 4:16
3. Liberia ~ 6:53
4. Body and Soul ~ Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, Johnny Green ~ 5:40
5. Equinox ~ 8:39
6. Satellite ~ 5:59

• John Coltrane ~ tenor saxophone except for soprano Central Park West
• McCoy Tyner ~ piano
• Steve Davis ~ bass
• Elvin Jones ~ drums

• Nesuhi Ertegün ~ production
• Tom Dowd ~ engineering
• Marvin Israel ~ photography
• Ralph J. Gleason ~ liner notes

Fans of Modern Jazz know that John William Coltrane was in a league of his own as a bandleader, composer, soprano and tenor saxophonist, making some of his most substantial contributions to the music genre recording for Atlantic, Impulse and Prestige. The album up for discussion is Coltrane’s Sound (Atlantic 1419), originally recorded in 1960 at the same session that also gave the jazz world, My Favorite Things.  This album was released in 1964, three years into Coltrane’s contract with Impulse Records, capitalizing on his increasing popularity during the first half of the sixties. Though criminally underrated, it’s an outstanding program of two timeless evergreens and four original tunes that Coltrane demonstrates are just as enjoyable as the standards. This album in my opinion also helps solidify his place as one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century. Completing the quartet are McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. My copy used in this report is the 2010 Rhino Records US Stereo Audiophile Reissue (SD 1419–R1 1419).

Side One opens with a sparkling rendition of The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, written in 1948 by Jerry Brainin and Buddy Bernier.  This jazz and pop standard made its introduction in the film noir crime drama Night Has a Thousand Eyes, released that year. The movie was based on the 1945 novel by author Cornell Woolrich. The song is one of the most popular standards in The Great American Songbook and has been recorded numerous times as a vocal and instrumental. Sometimes played and sung sublimely, the quartet offers a lively theme treatment that’s inspiring. John starts the soloing charging out the gate with a vigorous performance.  McCoy heats up the closing reading with exuberant enthusiasm into the coda. Trane turns to the soprano sax for Central Park West, the first of four tunes by the leader. It opens with an alluring introduction and ends with an equally tender melody led by John who also expresses gentle feelings on the opening statement with a soft timbre. The song’s final solo by McCoy is an intimately polite presentation anchored by the affectionate infrastructure of Steve and Elvin.

The first side wraps up with Coltrane’s Liberia, returning the foursome to an uptempo beat with a sprightly theme treatment in unison.  John takes the opening statement, gradually building each verse efficiently into a passionate climax. Tyner displays his strong chops on a short closing solo that’s stunning into Trane’s reappearance for the finale. The ageless classic Body and Soul begins the second side with a midtempo rendition by the quartet. It was written in 1930 by Frank Eyton, Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour. The most famous instrumental version was made in 1939 by Coleman Hawkins for Bluebird and it’s one of the most recorded standards in the history of music. The trio led by McCoy’s cheerful piano introduces this chestnut and John provides a succulent treat of what’s in store on the opening melody and heightens the mood on the lead solo. McCoy flavors the next reading with a joyful swing to the infectious beat, then Coltrane makes a final statement that’s brief, but clever leading to the blissful conclusion.

Up next is Equinox, a slow tempo blues by John that was named by his first wife, Naima. The equinox occurs twice a year, the first one around March 21^st and the second by September 23^rd. It’s the point when the sun crosses the equator with day and night, everywhere on earth approximately at an equal length. The rhythm section opens the song sensuously into Trane’s elegantly tender opening chorus and passionate solo. Tyner concludes the readings with a delicately gentle performance over the soothing support of Davis’ bass and Jones’ elegant timekeeping. Coltrane’s Satellite, the album finale is a trio performance following in the footsteps of Sonny Rollins’ trio LP’s with just the bass and drums providing the power behind him.  This tune is a jubilant joyride with John blowing fire on the theme and excitingly fierce solo. Steve dazzles with feisty exuberance and Elvin brings the heat with aggressive brushwork behind John’s reprising the theme into the climax.

The man behind the dials of the original recording was one of the best engineers in the business, Tom Dowd and Nesuhi Ertegün supervised the album’s production. Bernie Grundman cut the lacquers from the original analog masters, utilizing premium 180-gram audiophile vinyl by RTI (Record Technology Incorporated). The sound quality of Mr. Dowd’s work has been beautifully remastered and is amazing throughout the treble, midrange and bass spectrum with a very revealing soundstage for the instruments placing the listener’s favorite chair in the center of the studio alongside the musicians. If you’re in the mood for an album of Hard-Bop and Modal Jazz, I invite you to audition Coltrane’s Sound by John Coltrane.  It’s a great LP that makes a profound statement to a legendary jazz giant and a title that should not only appease and delight the serious jazz aficionado but the first-time listener as well! See you next month and Happy Listening Gang!

~ Body and Soul (Bluebird B-10523-A); My Favorite Things (Atlantic 1361/SD 1361) – Source: Discogs.com

~ The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Body and Soul – Source: JazzStandards.com

~ Equinox – Source: The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, Wikipedia.org

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lawrence Joseph Elgart was born in New London, Connecticut on March 20, 1922,  four years younger than his brother, Les, and grew up in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Mother and father both played piano, the former being a concert pianist. He attended Pompton Lakes High School and began playing in jazz ensembles in their teens, and he played with jazz musicians such as Charlie Spivak, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Freddie Slack and Tommy Dorsey.

In the mid-1940s, the brothers started up their own ensemble, hiring Nelson Riddle, Bill Finegan and Ralph Flanagan to arrange tunes for them. Their ensemble was not successful, and after a few years, they scuttled the band and sold the arrangements they had commissioned to Tommy Dorsey. Both returned to sideman positions in various orchestras.

By 1953, Larry met Charles Albertine and recorded two of his experimental compositions, Impressions of Outer Space and Music for Barefoot Ballerinas. Released on 10″ vinyl, these recordings became collectors’ items for fans of avant-garde jazz, though not commercially successful. Putting together a more traditional ensemble they, produced what came to be known as the Elgart Sound in their recordings. This configuration proved to be very commercially successful, and throughout the 1950s, Larry and Les enjoyed a run of successful albums and singles on the Columbia label. Their initial LP, “Sophisticated Swing,” released in late 1953, was credited to The Les Elgart Orchestra, because, according to Larry, Les was more interested than his brother in fronting the band.

In 1954, the Elgarts left their permanent mark on music history in recording Albertine’s Bandstand Boogie, for the legendary television show originally hosted by Bob Horn, and two years later, by Dick Clark. In 1956, Clark took the show from its local broadcast in Philadelphia, to ABC-TV for national distribution as American Bandstand. He remained host for another 32 years. Variations of the original song surfaced as the show’s theme in later years.

In 1955, the band became The Les and Larry Elgart Orchestra, but split up in 1959, subsequently releasing his own series of LPs. Larry signed with RCA Victor and his 1959 album, New Sounds At the Roosevelt, was nominated that year for a Grammy Award. From 1960-62, he released music on MGM Records. The brothers reunited in 1963, recorded several more albums and ended with 1967’s “Wonderful World of Today’s Hits,” after which they once again went their separate ways.

His biggest exposure came in 1982, with the smash success of a recording titled Hooked on Swing. The instrumental was a medley of swing jazz hits – In the Mood, Cherokee, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, American Patrol, Sing, Sing, Sing, Don’t Be That Way, Little Brown Jug, Opus #1, Take the A Train, Zing Went the Strings of My Heart and A String of Pearls.  The album became so popular it cracked the US Billboard Pop Singles chart at #31 and Adult Contemporary chart #20. This was the final hit for any artist in the year-long “medley craze,” that lasted from 1981 to 1982.

Continuing to tour internationally and record into the 2000s, alto saxophonist Larry Elgart, who over the course of his career recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and recorded two-dozen with his brother, passed away at a hospice center in Sarasota, Florida on August 29, 2017 at the age of 95.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lenny Tristano was born Leonard Joseph Tristano on March 19, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, the second of four brothers. He started on the family’s player piano at the age of two or three. He had classical piano lessons when he was eight, Born with weak eyesight, and then with measles, by the age of nine or ten, he was totally blind. He attended the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville, Florida for a decade around 1928. During his school days, he played several other instruments, including trumpet, guitar, saxophones, and drums and by eleven, he had his first gigs, playing clarinet in a brothel.

Back in Chicago, Tristano got his bachelor’s degree in music from the American Conservatory of Music but left before completing his master’s degree, moving to New York City in 1946. He played saxophone and piano with leading bebop musicians, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach among others. He formed his own small bands, which soon displayed some of his early interests – contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility, and rhythmic complexity. His 1949 quintet recorded the first free group improvisations, that continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings.

He started teaching music, with an emphasis on improvisation, in the early 1940s, and by the mid-1950s was concentrating on teaching instead of performing. He taught in a structured and disciplined manner, which was unusual in jazz education when he began. His educational role over three decades meant that he exerted an influence on jazz through his students, including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.

Through the Fifties to the Sixties he would go on to record for the New Jazz label which would become Prestige Records, and Atlantic Records, he founded his own label Jazz Records, create his own recording studio, tour throughout Europe, played A Journey Through Jazz, a five-week engagement at Birdland, s well as other New York City jazz haunts. His last public performance in the United States was in 1968 but continued teaching into the Seventies.

Having a series of illnesses in the 1970s, including eye pain and emphysema from smoking for most of his life, on November 18, 1978 pianist, composer, arranger, and jazz improvisation educator Lennie Tristano passed away from a heart attack at home in Jamaica, New York.

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Three Wishes

Pannonica made an inquiry of Al Doctor as to his three wishes and his answer was: 

1. “Family changes.”
2. “I want to play my horn as much as possible, that’s all.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Woody Witt was born on March 16, 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska and started on the clarinet in fourth grade and switched his focus to saxophone the following year. A professional musician from the age of 16, he studied at the University of Houston, earned a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas, and a doctorate from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.

As a saxophonist, Witt has recorded ten albums as a leader and over twenty-five albums as a sideman. He has collaborated with major jazz artists such as Randy Brecker, Tim Hagans, Jim Rotondi, the late James Moody, David Liebman, and Tim Armacost, Conrad Herwig, Larry Ham, Joe LoCascio, Mark Levine, Louis Hayes, Adam Nussbaum, Billy Hart, and Nancy King. He has worked with the Houston Symphony and Houston Ballet and has been featured on major third-stream works that blend together jazz and classical music.

The winner of the 2010 Chamber Music America French American Cultural Exchange grant and the 2014 International Jazz Saxophone Competition in Taiwan, Woody is the booker and the artistic director at Houston’s top jazz club, Cezanne. He has taught at Houston Community College since 2000, is an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston, and conducts a countless number of workshops and masterclasses throughout the United States, France, Romania, Germany, and Asia. Currently, saxophonist Woody Witt is involved in several different group projects.

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