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John Coltrane: Coltrane (Prestige 7105)

John Coltrane: Coltrane (Prestige 7105)

Analogue Productions  CPRJ 7105 SA

Mono Hybrid

Jazz


John Coltrane (tenor saxophone)
John Splawn (trumpet)
Sahib Shihab (baritone saxophone)
Mal Waldron & Red Garland (pianos)
Paul Chambers (bass)
Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums)


John Coltrane, is in a sense, as Ira Gitler wrote in the liner notes to Coltrane’s 1957 self-titled album — featuring his first session as a band leader — a new star, "but he has not arrived through high-pressure press agentry. He has been building on more solid ground."

From the time of his joining the Miles Davis quintet in late 1955 through to his brilliant work with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot Cafe in the summer of 1957, Coltrane steadily increased his accomplishments on his instrument and gained new admirers for his playing among his fellow musicians and the serious listening public. For this date Coltrane chose his musicians, he contributed several compositions and he also wrote some of the arrangements.

"Bakai" (meaning "cry" in Arabic), by Cal Massey, opens side one. Its handsome minor theme is expounded by pianist Red Garland, Coltrane (whose horn really cries), and baritone saxophonist Sahib Shihab. The rest of side one is handled by the quartet featuring Coltrane and Garland. Two ballad standards, "Violet for Your Furs," and "Time Was," are the subjects; the former receives a sensitive ballad treatment while the latter is done in bright medium time.

Side two opens on "Straight Street," a Coltrane composition and arrangement featuring solos by Coltrane, trumpeter Johnnie Splawn and pianist Mal Waldron. An interestingly different Coltrane interpretation of the seldom-done "While My Lady Sleeps" is Coltrane’s alone until Splawn joins him for a final errie note. Coltrane’s "Chronic Blues" is the closer and gives all the horns and Waldron solo room.

Originally released in 1957

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All
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Recording
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Analogue recording
Tracks
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1. Bakai
2. Violets For Your Furs
3. Time Was
4. Straight Street
5. While My Lady Sleeps
6. Chronic Blues
Reviews (1)
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Review by Mark Werlin - August 9, 2015

Another fine release in the Prestige Mono Series that documents the beginning of John Coltrane's leadership of his own recording dates, and a dramatic improvement in his playing after years of study, practice and struggle.

BACKGROUND
The session was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder on May 31, 1957, barely six weeks after Coltrane recovered from years of heroin addiction, and a month before he joined the Thelonious Monk quartet for an extended residency at the Five Spot club. "Coltrane" stands apart from much of his work for Prestige due to the presence of Al Heath on drums, the introspective Mal Waldron replacing Red Garland on three tracks, and the added horns of Johnnie Splawn and Sahib Shihab.

MUSIC
On this date, 'Trane is finally able to shape longer and more coherent solos. He experiments with the 'sheets of sound' approach that would soon become his dominant mode of expression as evidenced in the July 1957 Riverside sessions with Monk, and the March and May 1958 RVG sessions for Prestige, "Settin' the Pace" and "Black Pearls", Here, weaving partial scales into melodic variations of the main theme in "Violets for Your Furs", Coltrane indicates his readiness to move outside the tight bebop framework that had kept him penned in during the previous two years playing in the Miles Davis Quintet.

Cal Massey's opener, "Bakai", reflects the incorporation (and in a larger historical sense, re-incorporation) of North African melody and rhythms into the stream of African-American musical language by musicians of the era such as Art Blakey, Sun Ra, Randy Weston and Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Coltrane continued to explore non-Western music throughout his life, notably in the November 1961 Village Vanguard performances with Eric Dolphy. On the delicate ballad "Violets for Your Furs" and the mid-tempo "Time Was", Coltrane appears as the solo horn player over Red Garland's smooth-as-silk block chords and sympathetic comping.

The next three tracks feature the innovative composer-pianist Mal Waldron, who was equally adept backing singers Billie Holliday and Abby Lincoln, and writing and performing with the avant-garde leaders of new jazz in the early 1960s. Leaving behind New York, Waldron settled permanently in Europe, living in Munich and Brussels; he recorded for ECM, Enja, the Swiss label HatHut and the Italian label Soul Note. Here, Waldron is playing inside the changes, but his chord voicings and solo structures are as forward-looking as Garland's are retrospective.

"While My Lady Sleeps", a popular work by Hollywood film composer Bronislaw Kaper, receives an unusual arrangement with Waldron and Heath suspending the rhythm and opening space for Coltrane's carefully constructed solo. Trumpet player Johnnie Splawn's entrance in the last chorus is unexpected, and when 'Trane drops out of the final bars leaving Splawn as the solo voice, the effect is almost ghostly. The set concludes with "Chronic Blues", featuring the full band including Sahib Shihab on baritone.

SOUND
Prior to this new Analogue Productions SACD, the most recent reissues of "Coltrane" were a DSD-mastered 2012 Universal Japan RBCD release and RVG's 24-bit remastering in 2009. For purposes of this review, I'll compare the AP SACD with the Universal Japan RBCD.

Based on the evidence of a listening comparison, and with no further information to identify what source tape was used, I think it is possible that the Universal Japan issue was sourced from a later-generation copy—it sounds distinctly different from, and inferior to, the AP SACD. Either EQ was introduced or already present on the tape; the cymbals and snare drum sound artificially brightened. Coltrane's tenor sounds flatter and cooler on the CD, more detailed and three-dimensional on the SACD, which should be expected when comparing a copy to an original master source. Acoustic Sounds states unequivocally that original master tapes were the source for the mono and stereo Prestige series SACDs:

"…they’re all – all 50 – mastered from the original analog master tapes. In the case of the monos, that’s the original mono masters. "

A postscript on the condition of the source tape for the AP SACD: A few minutes into "Straight Street" there is a noticeable tape dropout—I listen through monitor speakers at a distance of 12 feet away and heard it very clearly. Some tracks are in better condition than others, but this is not the best-preserved RVG tape from the period—all the more reason for it to be transferred to DSD and conserved for future generations. "I Hear a Rhapsody", the last track on the Fantasy release of John Coltrane: Lush Life Fantasy, and the Analogue Productions release John Coltrane: Lush Life, was recorded at the same May 31, 1957 session as the "Coltrane" album.

Although Van Gelder had begun recording Blue Note Records sessions simultaneously on full-track (monaural) and two-track tape machines beginning May 8, 1957 for "The Stylings of Silver", this Prestige session may have been recorded only on the full-track machine.

Copyright © 2015 Mark Werlin and HRAudio.net

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