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[10] Coltrane Live At Birdland |
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Song Of Praise
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Saturday, 24 December 2005 08:03 |
Coltrane Live At Birdland
The John Coltrane Quartet
(Impulse A-50)
John Coltrane, tenor & soprano saxophones; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums: Afro-Blue ; I Want To Talk About You ; The Promise ; Alabama ; Your Lady
Bob Thiele should be arrested. Along with John, McCoy, Jimmy & Elvin. Records like this one (& there aren t many) are really dangerous: maybe Impulse should put a warning sign on the jacket to keep the record company in the clear. All the tunes are mind-twisters: listen, e.g., to what Trane does in the middle of Alabama : the sudden suspension of sound left me crawling around on the floor looking for my head....
Afro-Blue, in the same general bag as My Favorite Things and Greensleeves but infinitely more powerful than either, grabs one's ears, one's soul, one's very being, & throws it around the room, up against the walls, the floor, the ceiling, up, down, around & around until you start screaming & clawing to get out. Coltrane plays the head & turns it over to McCoy, Jimmy & Elvin until they ve got you trapped in their whirling vortex of sound; then Elvin whips Trane in with an eyes-closed, pounding, splattering orgasm of sound, screaming, crying, blasting, shouting, with the Emperor Jones bullying & pushing & crashing all under & over everyone else.
Not satisfied with this total victory, Trane begins an unbelievable I Want To Talk About You that sums up his five years work since the Prestige version (on Soultrane, LP 7142) was cut; his virtuoso a capella cadenza should make tenor players want to sell their horns. The Promise is really a fulfillment of all the promises Trane has made (& kept) in the past: beautiful & shattering, it's the loveliest promise I ve ever been made.
Alabama, as LeRoi Jones says in his hallucinogenic liner notes, is a beautiful word, but nothing to Trane's devastating playing, with Jimmy moaning away underneath him & Elvin driving through the Alabama night, through the mist & tears, through minds & hearts & loves, pleading, cajoling, caressing, forgiving, loving. . . . And Your Lady is, to quote Jones again, a lovely tune, & the four brothers are themselves lovely in their interpretation of its peculiar beauty.
Love, in fact, has a lot to do with these men & their music. The Quartet has been together now for a full two years, working continually to produce some of the most significant music of our time. McCoy Tyner is in the very first rank of modern pianists, & he plays on this record at levels he has seldom reached before. Jimmy Garrison, pitifully underrated, plays so much bass it's a shame; he's always right there with the choicest, juiciest notes, fitting his big fat sound into the group gestalt without a flaw.
And Elvin & Trane! They whip each other into frenzies of creativity & love & pure musical genius like no one has ever heard. The closest parallel I can think of is the remarkable partnership of Ravi Shankar & Chatur Lal, the Indian virtuosi. Trane & Elvin are (as has been noted) often evocative of this profoundly exciting, strangely hypnotic pair of master musicians; their own mastery is in fact at an equal level with their Eastern counterparts.
To quote LeRoi Jones once again (& his notes alone are almost worth the price of the album): If you can hear, this music will make you think of a lot of weird & wonderful things. You might even become one of them.
Detroit
Spring 1964
3.1.667 |
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