Previously unheard recordings of John Coltrane, captured by Frank Tiberi
jazzwise.com
jazzwise.com
Someone did a lot of work to restore these recordings!
[1] https://manualmachine.com/concertone/tr100/8544644-schematic...
What does a bias oscillator do that would help, and is the ips speed slow ie it's a low "resolution" (so to speak) analog recording?
Anyway, rather than call it "low resolution", loss of high-frequencies (low pass) is closer to the mark.
The microphone in the OA pictures looks pretty basic as well, and perhaps intended for voice recording mainly. So we have limited high frequencies from comparatively slow tape speed, rumble from the dc bias, and a microphone that perhaps isn't catching low frequencies.
I'm also curious if R22, the thermistor, would have been just for thermal protection, or if it was actually used to set the operating point for the output transistors in normal operation? Would it have switched on loud and angry before the transistors warmed up and the bias point cooled down, the opposite of a tube amp?
For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.
Maybe my impression here comes from the fact that by the time I began listening to him in the mid 2000’s an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common (to no fault of his own). It’s that flavor of jazz where you get the impression that the players are enjoying this way more than the audience. It’s not for me.
I felt exactly like this about Coltrane for years, which I think now was a consequence of primarily being exposed to Coltrane via his work with the first great Miles Davis quintet. Coltrane's albums as band leader come a bit later in his career and he drops a lot of the Art-Tatum-translated-to-sax "sheets of sound" approach in favor of a more lyrical yet still unorthodox style. Any of the late-50s or early-60s albums with Coltrane as band leader and McCoy Tyner on piano are really very good. From my perspective Coltrane had the fire and competitiveness as well as the pop sensibility of a player like Sonny Rollins and the thoroughly studied devotion to "the new thing" of players like Eric Dolphy.
Anyway all that is to say that I heard screeds like this from Coltrane devotees for years and there is really something amazing there. The albums with Coltrane as leader are quite good and worth giving another chance if you're in the mood to listen to some good jazz recordings.
He did a lot of stuff too which is not dense at all and very approachable - Naima, A Love Supreme, My Favorite Things, Kind of Blue with Miles, a lot more, enjoyable, classic albums.
Dig deeper
Giant Steps is more abstract but still worth dipping into once in a while.
Here is a musical analysis of Giant Steps (basically the Circle of Fifths):
I love Coltrane - I find the complexity lyrical, like Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt in their respective disciplines - or if you throw back, Liszt, Chopin, the other bloody show-offs who could sing with an instrument. I dunno. It talks to me, but I guess at the end of the day it’s all just taste.
>an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common
The worst of this to me is at straightahead jazz jams when sax players run out of ideas or lose the form and then just start honking lol
There's no accounting for taste. There's lots of stuff that I would say the same thing about that everybody loves that I don't like.
With that said, I don't see how you can listen to My Favorite Things or Love Supreme and not just find yourself in utter awe.
If you don't own it you should. Preferably the deluxe edition with his Greensleeves takes.
As far as his sheets of sound stuff, I think Sun Ship is ridiculously underrated and is a bridge between his classic quartet and Pharoah Sanders/free jazz era stuff. Really really good if you've never listened to it.
I don't see any other musician creating harmonies as rich as him. Yes, not even Miles Davis, Bill Evans or Tom Jobim (other jazz musicians that I like a lot).
It is surprising how fresh and accessible his music remains today. He never became a top hit, but also never stopped being relevant.
I can't even begin to comprehend how you can't understand that someone can write harmonically rich music.
Aside from that, Coltrane's contribution to modal jazz is significant. Though not singularly from him (or anyone else), he contributed quite a few standards and recordings to a style that was a pretty radical and rich departure from functional harmony. And if you don't consider the harmonic system this resides in (Russell's LCC is a common one used to analyze it) as "rich" then I think you might be too harsh a critic.
For those of you who don’t know…John Coltrane is a legend in jazz music. Posted a YouTube link to an excellent work of his above.
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