erhodes

There is more "live" material by this group than there is studio material. Rochester, NY, Town Casino – February 26, 1956 Introduction :52 Daahoud 6:36 Announcement and interview w/ Max Roach 1:09 Round Midnight 8:14 Announcement :38 Blues Walk 7:12 Closing announcement :50 New York, Basin Street Club – April 28, 1956 Valse Hot 7:43 I Feel A Song Comin’ On 5:17 New York, Basin Street Club – May 6, 1956 What’s New 3:16 Daahoud 5:22 Sweet Clifford 5:37 Cleveland, OH, Cotton Club – May 28, 29, June 1, 1956 Introduction by Clifford Brown 1:29 Take the A Train 13:39 Introduction by Max Roach 0:39 Darn That Dream (featuring Sonny Rollins) 3:55 Intermission announcement by Clifford Brown 0:35 Nice Work If You Can Get It (incomplete) 18:51 Introduction by Max Roach :44 Get Happy (incomplete) 22:21 Valse Hot (fragment) 3:43 Delilah 13.26 Diggin’ Diz (Lover)* 14:59 Jordu 17:26 Early 1956, Chicago More Than You Know (featuring Sonny Rollins) 3:50 Embraceable You (featuring Clifford Brown) 3:18 I’ll Remember April (fragment) 14:52 Wee Dot (fragment) 8:44 I’ll See You In My Dreams 4:54 These Foolish Things (featuring George Morrow) 3:17 Untitled Blues (incomplete) 14:08 1956, Unknown location I’ll Remember April 18:47 What’s New 3:50 Daahoud 10:20 Lover Man 6:32 52nd Street Theme 6:18 “Pure Genius, vol. 1”, Elektra Musician E1-60026 Norfolk, VA, Continental Restaurant – June 18, 1956 Introduction 1:07 Just One Of Those Things 20:02 You Go To My Head 8:52 Good Bait (incomplete) 15:23 One For My Baby and One More For the Road 4:07 (featuring Richie Powell) Someone To Watch Over Me (featuring Sonny Rollins) 4:04 Announcement :51 What’s New (featuring Clifford Brown) 4:04 Announcement by Max Roach :38 These Foolish Things (featuring George Morrow) 3:38 I Get A Kick Out Of You 24:33 Ending Annoucements by Max Roach All of this material has been issued by now and all of it is bootleg...or public domain...except possibly the "Pure Genius, vol. 1" release, which is the one that has the LaRue Brown-Watson quote and reference (not the GNP). A lot of these times will change depending on what discographical source you use. And there are questions about the "Early 1956, Chicago" vs. the "Cotton Club" attributions. In particular, one or more of the last three items I have down as the Cotton Club may be from Chicago. And, no, there is no specific indication in any source that the Chicago venue might be the Bee Hive. Many of the pieces marked as "fragments" or "incomplete" are really that. E.g., one lengthy fragment is mostly a Max Roach drum solo. OTOH, some of the longer tracks - "Just One of Those Things", "Good Bait" and "I Get A Kick Out of You" from the Continental Lounge and "A Train" and "Nice Work" from the Cotton Club - are unlike anything on the studio dates, if only because the length allows for some stretching out that doesn't happen in the same way on the shorter pieces. Note that there are two air checks that actually originate from Basin Street as opposed to the Emarcy studio date which is just named for it. Not the same thing. As far as whether the "Pure Genius" date was in fact a boot, I have no idea. The cover goes to greater than usual lengths to cite both Max and LaRue as being involved in the production but the truth could be quite different. The comments cited would have to be about this release, though. The GNP is another thing altogether. Ed Rhodes

I just obtained a copy of Bruyninckx's 60 Years of Recorded Jazz. (No...I did not by the $2500, custom bound version that's been for sale online for a year or so.) It seems to be intact and complete...except for one page that apparently didn't print. It looks like a production problem, since the second side of the page printed but the first side is blank. All of the other pages are printed double side. The page in question is the first page of the N's, page # N1. Can anyone help me out with a scan or something similar? I don't know if it would work from 50YORJ or 70YORJ (let alone 85YORJ) since I assume the entries change from edition to edition. All suggestions and help would be appreciated. Ed Rhodes

Itunes is always urging me to do this but I have read here and elsewhere that the updates, particularly for itunes, are sometimes buggy or sometimes take functionality away, e.g., the whole issue of the 1 second space between tracks. Nothing recent on this but I seem to remember a discussion about it in this forum some time ago (a couple of years?). Mzee, do you regularly update both your itunes version and your ipod software? Can you comment on your experience? And do you think newer versions of either might have an impact on apparent capacity, particularly with respect to image files? Also, per your second comment, I think they are all jpeg's. But if there were unsupported image types, any thoughts on how to find out which ones? And thanks for your response. This has been helpful. Not exactly the same thing but I see some similarities. Was it itunes or something actually in your ipod that asked you to delete images? And did it give a reason or do you think it was a capacity issue? I got no message in my episode. The synch just hung until I canceled it. And thanks for the reply. Very interesting.

This is instructive and I thank you for the response. The problem went away...perhaps temporarily...after I rebooted. That, plus your comments, suggests to me that the problem is with my computer rather than with itunes or the ipod.

Recently I've been adding album art to my ipod. I have a 64G Touch. It has a little less than 800 songs using up about 10G of storage. The artwork is almost entirely jpeg's I've found on the web plus a few that I have in my very small collection of jazz photos. I think none of it was downloaded from something like the itunes store. My ipod is synched to an old Pentium 4 computer with 2G of ram running Windows XP. I have a lot of Trane on my "pod" and I loaded a bunch of Trane pics last night, album covers and regular photos where there is no album. When I tried to synch, the process stalled. It went on for close to an hour saying that it was preparing to synch but the synch never took place. I finally canceled it using the slide switch on the touch screen. At that, it took awhile for the synch to cancel. I noticed, too, that after loading up the pics my itunes was responding sluggishly, showing delays when scrolling through my library. When I click on a song, the album artwork shows up after a noticeable delay. Itunes is acting as though the new artwork is a strain on its capacity or on its capacity within the limits of my pc and its "resources". I'm surprised...perhaps I shouldn't be...since I would assume that itunes and my ipod should both have the capacity to hold artwork for the number of songs that can be stored. And in my case, I would appear to be no where near capacity. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has run into something like this or if anyone has any suggestions, including diagnostic suggestions. I suppose I can just go in and delete a bunch of artwork but, again, it seems strange that either the tunes or the pod couldn't handle a few dozen additional jpeg's. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Interesting. I know of no commercial release...bootleg or otherwise...of the Copenhagen '67 concert. There is a "Complete Copenhagen Concert" on Magnetic but that's from 1964. Losin lists nothing for Copenhagen '67. I have three versions of the private recording that's in circulation for the '67 date. They seem to be patched together from three different sources, all with different sound and none with particularly good sound. It is arguably the most unlistenable recording from the tour, though the music is very strong. I'm very intrigued by the possibility that the new box was made from the original sound board recording or, at least, an early generation broadcast. The inclusion of the two unissued tracks from Paris is similarly interesting. If these items are actually in the box, it's as if the producers knew the ropes and had the collectors in mind. Re: the DVD, I believe it was JSngry that allerted me to the earlier issue on this board. Jazz Loft? I'm wondering if the video quality will be improved. Ed Rhodes

RVG didn't record "Night of the Cookers". The engineer was Orville Obrien (Obrian?). Ed Rhodes

Not a mistake as such but the disk 7 "Impressions" is definitely not Stuttgart. No one seems to know where it comes from but the Stuttgart performance has been widely circulated and this isn't it.

The Baquet reference seems closest to what I am looking for and I thank you all for bringing it to my attention. The window is narrow since the band seems to have left California for New York in 1916 and I'm still sticking with a pre-1917 date. But if this is not my reference it's certainly something I want to know more about. I'm going my homework. Again, thanks to all.

Stuttgart is one of the hottest shows from the tour, but why do you say turntable? My bad. I didn't know about any cd issues. The question would be is this a needle drop from the old Unique Jazz lp's or is it from a complete source? "So Long Eric", "Meditations" and "These Foolish Things" are all truncated on the lp's. So Long Eric 30:00/22:50 Mediations 30:15/20:15 These Foolish Things 7:00/3:30 These timings per Lindenmaier.

There's a single third LP on Ulysse complementing the 2LP set: "Concertgebouw", Amsterdam, Holland, April 10, 1964 Parkeriana (Dedicated To A Genius) Ulysse Musique (F) AROC 50506/07 So Long Eric - Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk - Meditations (Meditation On A Pair Of Wire Cutters) - Fables Of Faubus, Pt. 1 Ulysse Musique (F) AROC 50608 Fables Of Faubus, Pt. 2 - A.T.F.W.U.S.A. (A.T.F.W.Y.O.U.) - Sophisticated Lady - * Charles Mingus - Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vol. 1 (Ulysse Musique (F) AROC 50506/07) * Charles Mingus - Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vol. 2 (Ulysse Musique (F) AROC 50608) I think that IS complete, no? Yes, the DIW set has the same titles except that it refers to "Parkeriana" as "Ow". Didn't know about the third Ulysse lp. I have a 2-lp gatefold on Ulysse/East Coasting that's missing "Fables" and "Sophisticated Lady"

I, too, would be interested if another source had been found for Bremen, since the Ingo lp's are listed in all the discographies I have read as the reference for timings. The Ingo set is as "complete" as Bremen gets, unless there is something new on these cd's. The Unique Jazz is only a single volume. The Bremen lp quality is slightly inferior to stuff like Amersterdam but not nearly as bad as some of the early cd boots from the tour on labels like Landscape, JazzUp and Moon. The 3lp Amsterdam set is on DIW. The 2 lp set on Ullyse is incomplete. The 2 cd set is complete but it appears to be a needle drop. The original Enja Wuppertal lp's do indeed say "volume I" and "volume II". The Enja cd is volume II plus a lengthy version of "Fables of Faubus" that's not on either of the lp's. Coles is also on Olso (Jazz Icons plus some terrible cd boots on JazzUp and Landscape), Stockholm (jazz Icons plus some not quite so terrible cd's on Royal Jazz and Bandstand), Copenhagen (cd boots on Landscape, Moon, Bandstand...better than Oslo but nothing like, say, Wuppertal), Bremen and Salle Wagram. The videos actually have the best sound except for the Salle Wagram issues. Don't know if anyone noticed but the Oslo video on Jazz Icons is missing the false start at the beginning of the concert. Shanachie has the whole thing on VHS...same quality if not durability. Stuttgart is the one to hear...worth getting a turntable for that one. Unreal version of "Fables...".

This is all quite helpful. The Baquet reference is close to what I remember, though it seems to me that there was some description of a "sitting in" and that the clarinetist was playing with New York musicians. I believe it was definitely New York. My dating - prior to 1917 - is more indirect but I believe the reference was to an incident that occurred before Storyville closed, i.e., before the dispersal of many New Orleans musicians to Chicago and elsewhere. I am pretty sure the reference was not from Chicago or LA. I need to familiarize myself with Baquet. I don't know Gushee's book but I will get on it. Has anyone heard of Lorenzo Tio(sp?)? Did he perform in New York prior to 1917? Did people like Edmund Hall travel to New York prior to the closing of Storyville? Again, many thanks for these and any future insights.

Some time ago I came across a passing reference to an instance of a New Orleans clarinet player sitting in with a New York band/orchestra presumably some time before 1917. As I remember it, the description referred to the fact that the New York players were "startled" by the clarinetist's playing. Other words that may or may not be in the piece were the clarinetist's "display" or "spectacular display". My memory here is worse than usual but I am reasonably sure I read something to this effect. I thought it might be in the Hentoff/McCarthy "Jazz" book but I'm going through that now and can't find anything in the New Orleans essay or the one on the spead of the big bands. I also thought it might have been in Charters and Kundstadt (sp?) but I can't find it in there either. I've also looked at a few likely album liner notes but no cigar. Does anyone remember a similar reference? Any thoughts as to a source? Any thoughts as to who the clarinetist might have been? Absent that, does anyone know of comparable written accounts? I'm specifically interested in New Orleans soloists who came to New York prior to the closing of Storyville and who might have been an early window on New Orleans improvising for said New Yorkers. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

"Living Space" was recorded on June 16, not June 15. There are two sets of overdubs on the version released on "Infinity". Trane overdubbed his soprano sax and then Alice overdubbed the strings and bells in 1972. A version with only the soprano overdubbing was issued on several different Impulse compilations, e.g., the "Classic Quartet", "Retrospective - The Impulse Years", etc. The "Classic Quartet" box also includes a version without any overdubbing. On the version of "Joy" released on "Infinity", Alice Coltrane overdubbed harp and vibes, Charlie Haden overdubbed over Jimmy Garrison's original bass part and Alice overdubbed with the same strings used on "Living Space". The version issued on "Feelin' Good" does not have the strings but it retains the overdubbed harp, vibes and bass parts. No unedited version of this has been issued. Regarding the February 2, 1966 session, four titles have been issued but I am certain that there are only three distinct tracks. "Manifestation", issued on "Cosmic Music", and "Leo", issued on "Infinity", are the same performance. Both are edited. The "Manifestation" version lops off the opening and closing themes and has at least one edit in the closing section with Trane and Pharoah improvising together. The "Leo" version retains the opening and closing themes but features overdubbing with the same string session as above. It also has more of the body of the performance chopped out with various edits. "Peace On Earth", as issued on "Infinity", features the overdubbed strings, Charlie Haden's overdubbed bass, and overdubbed harp and organ from Alice Coltrane. The version issued on "Jupiter Variation" loses the strings but retains the other overdubbing in a manner similar to the treatment of "Joy". No completely unedited versions of "Leo" or "Peace On Earth" have been issued and the status of the original, unedited masters from this session is unknown. "Rev. King", which is the only track on which Trane plays bass clarinet, seems relatively untouched on "Cosmic Music", though there are at least some signs of gain riding at the end. This track was not released on "Infinity" or any other issue. I don't like the overdubbing...but that's just my 2 cents. I hope to someday hear the complete unedited "Leo" but I have no idea if the masters survived. I would have prefered if Pharoah had played tenor all the way through...but that's just another 2 cents.

I don't think it happened and nobody seems to know anything. I posted to the Cecil list, I asked Ben Young... Ras Moshe said he would ask Cecil but I never heard back from him. Someone...here?...the Cecil list?...said they sent in the 5 bucks back then and never heard back. I can't find anyone that's heard the recording, let alone has the lp. If it really is from Bennington, the webmutations site has a note from a Bennington alum saying he thinks everything was erased...

The listing at webmutations is not accurate. A better online listing for this session can be found here. This corresponds directly to the record. AFAIK the two selections on Ozone 19 are complete though short. Other sources have "Octagonal Skirt" and "Fancy Pants" as two separate tracks, which would suggest that Ozone 19 is missing one.

This sort of exists, though I do not believe there has been a commercial issue. There is a set of cd's apparently dubbed directly from the Boris Rose tapes and/or acetates that is referenced in some discographies. I don't have the reference ready to hand. There is also a limited edition lp box on the BAT label that is apparently missing portions of some of the announcements but is otherwise complete. The BAT box was presumably a boot. I assume the problems for a legit release would arise from conflicting interests between the Mingus estate and the Rose estate.

Dixonia: A Bio-Discography of Bill Dixon Compiled by Ben Young Greenwood Press, 1998 A very informative book. It covers sessions that Dixon produced, as well as those in which he performed and recorded. As such, it gives a detailed chronology of sessions at the Cellar Cafe and the Jazz Composers Guild concerts. A lot of information.

1963 The citation for 12/31/63 Lincoln Center concert at the webmutations site may not be entirely accurate. I am aware of a WKCR broadcast around the time of the concert but it was of the Coltrane quintet with Dolphy that also appeared on the bill with Taylor. The Coltrane tape was definitely erased at the station but it may have been a performance recorded in the station itself, not a recording of the concert. AFAIK the question of whether or not any of the sets from the concert were actually recorded or whether tapes survive remains unanswered. 1964 From a very old discography by Mike Hames (London): "Cecil Taylor seems to have played very few gigs in 1964 - partly because he was attacked in May, 1964 and had his wrist broken." The February 1964 performance at the Take 3 on the webmutations site is listed as "Cecil Taylor Unit and guests" on page 67 of Dixonia. It predates the Jazz Composers Guild. The session is listed in the book as not recorded. The transcript of the April 6, 1964 panel discussion at Bennington referenced on the webmutations site is now here. Mike Hames thought that Taylor's solo performance at Bennington on the 5th or 6th might be the source of a recording entitled "Cathedrale" that was advertised in the program for a March 7, 1965 Taylor performance at Town Hall. The recording appears to have been produced by Taylor. It was offered in the form of an lp but the record never actually materialized. It is reasonable to assume that a recording did exist at one time but I have been unable to establish that it still exists or that any steps were actually taken to create the lp. Dixonia lists Taylor performances produced by Bill Dixon on October 30-31 (the last concert of the October Revolution), November 25 on a bill with the New York Art Quartet (listed as the Roswell Rudd-John Tchicai Quartet) and December 28 (the first concert of the Four Days in December series). None of these are listed as recorded. 1965 The March 1965 concert listed on the webmutations site is very likely the March 7 concert for which I have the program. Only Lyons is listed on the program. On page 363 in Dixonia the note to the session says that Taylor prerecorded the music to the track listed at webmutations as "Soft Shoe" and that dancer/choreographer Daniel Nagrin danced to it while Cecil performed it again (at least that's what it seems to say). However, the note then goes on to say that the tape was actually of another pianist "peforming a transcription of Taylor's music". No recording of the concert itself is listed in Dixonia. A tape of the June 2 Newport performance does exist. My source is very reliable (thought it is not Taylor) but I have absolutely no other details. At best, this is a very, very long way from any consideration of commercial release. The September 10 performance for "The Arts in America" television broadcast exists and has been issued commercially on Ozone 19, "Charlie Mingus - Cecil Taylor", a Boris Rose boot. The aural evidence strongly suggests that Sunny Murray is the drummer, though this does not fit with any Taylor chronologies. I had a correspondance from a Taylor collector who claimed to have seen the actual tv show. He stated that Cecil was using a birdcage to strike the strings within the piano and that Murray was definitely the drummer.

The Baraka reference comes from his “Apple Cores” series in Down Beat, specifically Apple Cores #4 (1966). He describes a gig in Newark billed as the “Detroit Artists Workshop” but the only Detroiter he names is Moore. Marion Brown, Pharoah Sanders and Rashied Ali were at the gig and he also names two Newark based saxophonists who performed, altoist George Lyle and tenorist Howard Walker. His references to Moore are quite specific. He states that Moore played a “short crackling set” and he later goes on to speak of him in the same context as Donald Ayler, arguing that, after Ayler, Moore was the strongest free trumpet player he had heard. There are two other interesting references to Moore from the mid to late 60’s. J. B. Figi mentions him in the liner notes to Joseph Jarman’s first album, “Song For”, noting that Jarman spent time in Detroit playing with Moore in a group called the Detroit Contemporary 5. Rob Backus’s little book “Fire Music” has very brief descriptions of two Detroit musicians cooperatives with overlapping memberships: the Detroit Creative Musicans Association which apparently folded and eventually morphed into Strata (which was, among other things a record label), and the Tribe (which also had its own record label). He lists Moore, Cox, Spencer and Henderson as recording for STRATA and Moore as a member of Tribe. I bought “Multidirection” back in the day after reading the Baraka and Jarman pieces and remember being mildly disappointed. I was expecting to hear a trumpet player like Eddie Gale or Ted Daniel or Lester Bowie and music closer to what one might hear on ESP or one of the early AACM Delmarks. I certainly didn’t see how the playing on the Blue Note warranted a comparison with Donald Ayler. I still have a lot of questions about that. I’ve since heard a couple of the Phil Ranelin recordings on Tribe records done in the early 70’s. Moore performs on at least two of these and they sound nothing like “Multidirection”, though they don’t sound much like an ESP either. I didn’t get the impression that either the Strata or Tribe esthetics were heavily influenced by Miles so, frankly, I’ve been wondering over the years exactly what was going on. I wonder what Moore thought of Baraka's review.

I had a cassette dub of the November 12, 1966 Graz concert. Someone sent it to me in a tree or something. I made a digital copy and passed it on. "Lover" is in the key of E on this tape, a full tone slower than the version on Unique Jazz UJ 29, which may have been the source of the file on Sonny's website. I can't vouch for the absolute accuracy of this source except to say that "Nommo" by the Roach quintet, which was also part of the concert, is in the same key as the version on "Drums Unlimited", though it's played considerably faster. I may have been part of the old thread, though I think I brought it up on the Hard Bop list. That concert is spread between UJ 29 and Jazz Connoisseur JC 108 and both lp's play the trio pieces very fast, so that Sonny sounds like he's playing the world's fastest alto. I had a musician friend...a tenor player...come over to my house and help me with the speed correction. I had been told that Sonny changed up on keys all the time and it would be difficult to use records as a reference. My friend thought that Sonny was pretty consistent with keys...but we spent 3 or 4 hours digitally manipulating the pitch of the lp's until he thought it sounded "right". Turns out we wound up in E flat, a half tone slower than the tape I subsequently got. At that, "Lover" in E sounds much higher than the work on the Paris or Copenhagen dubs I have from that tour and Sonny's speed on the tenor is just this side of believable. I can't account for that...but the cassette is definitely in E.

I posted a link to this thread on the Saturn listserv and got two interesting responses that I am forwarding below. Robert Campbell is one of the founders of the Red Saunders Research Foundation, one of the authors of From Sonny Blount to Sun Ra: The Chicago Years and the author of "Earthly Recordings", the definitive Sun Ra discography. Ted Panken is a WKCR (Columbia University radio) producer. I'm interseted in this thread but I have not been well enough to participate. To be sure, it is easy to overstate Sun Ra's influence on a lot of things...I've been debating the Coltrane-Ra, Coltrane-Gilmore piece with Prof. Campbell and others on the list for more than 10 years. That said, I think some of the dismissals of such an influence that came up in this thread were too pat. In particular, I'm inclined to side with Campbell regarding Phil Corhan and Alvin Fiedler. For instance, from what I've read Corhan was in no sense peripheral to the AACM and that his presence pointed towards a real Ra influence on the newer collective. The devil would be in the detail of how substantive. There's more...perhaps a lot more...but this is all I can handle now. courtesy ted panken ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Feb 25, 2008 2:02 PM Subject: Re: [wkcrjazz] sun ra & art ensemble of chicago To: lovolution@gmail.com I'm not registered at organissimo, but if you want to forward this to somone who can post it there, feel free. 1. Sun Ra recruited his early rehearsal bands extensively from DuSable (hence Captain Dyett) alumni -- John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Davis, Robert Barry, etc. It makes sense that he would have -- they were well-trained and used to functioning under discipline. He had connections to Chicago's educational infrastructure, and was well-known amongst Chicago's musicians as an eccentric who could play. Richard Davis told me the same story about playing with Sun Ra in the Calumet City strip clubs. Herbie Hancock talks about him. So does Ahmad Jamal. So did the late Chris Anderson. So does Bill Lee. So did Johnny Griffin, Von and Red Holloway. Leroy Jenkins was aware of him, and Henry Threadgill has mentioned hearing Sun Ra rehearse at some lounge or bar not far from his house when he was a teenager. I'm also under the impression Braxton was aware of him during those years as well. That doesn't make Sun Ra a direct influence on the Art Ensemble or any other AACM formations that were crystallizing in the '60s, but I do get the impression that some essence of Sun Ra's mythopoeic narrative tropes -- please forgive the phrase -- remained in Black Chicago culture. ...and from Robert Campbell... To follow up a little on this topic... My understanding is that Roscoe Mitchell got back to Chicago in 1962. By then, Sun Ra was gone (he'd left at the end of July 1961 to go to Montreal). John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, and Ronnie Boykins had left town with him and ended up staying in New York. Pat Patrick had been in New York City since around New Year's 1960; he rejoined the Arkestra when Sunny arrived there in October 1961. Since the Arkestra wasn't traveling much in the 1961-1965 period, I doubt that Mitchell had a whole lot of opportunities to encounter John or Pat or Marshall or Ronnie in Chicago in those days. Of course, Chicago was still full of Ra alumni. Walter Strickland and Billy Mitchell had gone to Montreal with Sunny but not continued to New York; Ricky Murray had decided not to stay in New York. Art Hoyle was back in town after deciding not to rejoin Sunny in New York. Billy Howell went to New York to play with the Arkestra for a short while and came back. James Spaulding was about to move back to Indianapolis, but may still have been in town when Roscoe Mitchell returned. Lucious Randolph and Nate Pryor were around, though playing only part-time. Robert Barry and Bugs Cochran were active, and so was Jim Herndon. More to the point... One of those Sun Ra alumni was Phil Cohran, who became a founding member of the AACM. Alvin Fielder, who played drums in Roscoe Mitchell's quartet for a while, had played with the Arkestra in 1958 and 1959. Even Malachi Favors had been participated in several rehearsals, and made at least one gig with the Arkestra, back in 1957. Keep traveling the Spaceways, Robert Campbell PS. The Arkestra's appearances at the Wonder Inn (1960-1961) were, according to a number of sources, heavily attended by musicians. Phil Cohran said once that while imitators of John and Marshall and Pat's playing were not heard while Sunny was still in town, they sprung up remarkably quickly as soon as he and the Arkestra had departed.

I don't want to take any credit for finding anything. I reproduced the entry from the Coltrane Reference chronology pretty much verbatim. Chris DeVito did the chronology work for the book and I'll let him know about "Change". That's the kind of detail he's very much concerned with. I initially thought about posting the entry to the revived Sun Ra/AEC thread...I have some comments but I'm recovering from surgery and didn't have the strength to jump in. Been laying up in bed with the book and this was the first entry that really grabbed me by the throat. The comment of Roscoe seeing Ayler when he was in the service is news to me. I think it's very relevant to the other thread. The relationship of the AACM to Sun Ra to the NY "avant garde"...the complex web of connections and influences...warrants a lot more attention. There are a lot of people who position themselves as essentially self-realized, without any external influences. I tend to be suspicious of such claims but the devil is always in the details.

From "The John Coltrane Reference", pp. 343-344. There doesn't appear to be a tape. John Coltrane Group PERSONNEL: John Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones; Pharoab Sanders, tenor saxophoane, flute; Roscoe Mitchell, alto saxophone (possibly Friday only); Alice Coltrane, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; Jack DeJobnette, drums March 2-6, 1966 (Wednesday through Sunday, one week; Sunday matinee, 4:00-6:00 p.m.). Plugged Nickel, Chicago, IL (1321 N. Wells). "PLUGGED NICKEL / opening Tonight) / Till Sun. Only / JOHN COLTRANE Sextet / Note: Sunday Matinee March 6, 4-6 p.m. / Everyone Welcome No Age Limit / Fri. March 11 Art Blakey / 1321 N. Wells" (advertisement, Chicago Sun-Times, Wednesday, Mar. 2, 1966, p. 51). Reviewed in Variety (Mar. 16, 1966, p. 65; reprinted in Simpkins, 1989, pp. 202-203). "The review mentions that Coltrane played very long sets during this gig, Some of them so long ("reportedly" over three hours) that the band played only one long set per night. Reviewed by J. B. Figi (“Coltrane & Co. at the Plugged Nickel: March 2-6, 1966,” available at http://www.jazzinstituteofchicago.org/jour...figi_trane1.htm, accessed Oct. 9, 2004; original publication unknown): Coltrane’s week here confiremed Ascension, mde it clear that John intends to extend himself into a spasm of "mystic" experience. Which explains the music, and why he, is digging into soul and pocket to enlist the young lions, aligning their powers with his. Wednesday night sounded as though giant hands were breaking open the earth, great sounds and chunks of things coming loose. John was blowing against a wall, which tottered but wouldn't fall, then backing off into the stomach-lurching rollercoaster of his more familiar style. Two drummers are pertinent to the music, functioning in a way comparable to a guitar team; while DeJohnette played "rhythm", Rashid wove "melody", a steady pattern of rhythmic filigree similar to the flying carpet Ed Blackwell spreads. But the most urgent voice of the night was Pharoah Sanders, toes plugged into some personal wall-socket, screaming squealing honking, exploding echoes of encouragement among the audience. Pharoah was a mad wind screeching through the root-cellars of Hell. Friday night. How do you review a cataclysm? Evaluate an earthquake? An apocalyptic juggernaut that rolled across an allusion to My Favorite Things into a soundtrack from an old Sabu movie-jungle-fire, animals rampaging in panic, trumpeting of bull elephants? You can only describe with impressions saved from the storm. DeJohnette walking away blanched and shaken from the demands of the music. Mrs. Coltrane sitting sedately by, occasion¬ally edging in with comment. Garrison plugging away, helping hold things together. Pharoah, a mongoose shak¬ing a snake. Roscoe Mitchell, sitting in on alto for the night, breaking loose with lashes of short-range lightning, some of the most exciting playing to come out of the mass. Saxophonists reaching for tambourine, claves, beaters, etc. whenever resting the horn. Rashid coming through undaunted near the end with a fresh new drum-dance. A locomotive of horns, Pharoah-Trane-Roscoe in a row blowing at once, spinning wheels, throwing cinders. Roscoe becoming "possessed" with revival-frenzy. And the big punch of Coltrane, somehow keeping his head in the melee, breaking through time after time with groaning lyricism. Like a convulsion they had induced but no longer seemed able to control, it ground on and on, beyond expected limits of endurance, past two hours, past closing time, until the management intervened and closed it clown. The audience filed out into the morning, stunned and bludgeoned. The comfortable had been disturbed. The merely hip had been driven back to protests of cacophony, anarchy, disorder. And even the most open ears had become numbed by the continual barrage-one of the problems of the music. What do you carry away from an ava¬lanche besides awe? Another problem-the piano solos and Garrison's long masterful bass solos remain interludes, adjuncts unaccepted by the bulk of the music. But there were elements of order at work even if we were eventually deadened to them. A peripheral order that contained the inner disorder (pigs fighting in a gunny-sack, the sack enclos¬ing their thrashings). Order from the momentum of the rhythm which pulled things along with it. Maybe a second bassist, say Donald Garrett, would have added that much more. And order from the herding sweep of John's tenor, Even at its best, the music never achieved the free flow of Ornette (the comings together and conversation of Free Jazz), or the arranged blossoms of sound-clusters of Sun Ra, or the paradox of complete control/freedom clarity of Albert Ayler (those open ringing bronze Bells, vibrating to their own self-shaping song and logic), but it does have excitement and immense raw power-an experience in itself. What they did prove was just how hard they could try. That they could beat themselves bloody pounding at the farthest reaches of experience and come back with only their effort as an answer. Perhaps that alone is their answer. [Reprinted by permission of the author's estate. All Rights Reserved.] Roscoe Mitchell recalled sitting in (Down Beat, Apr. 6, 1967, p. 47): "I feel that I can go and play with anybody who's playing free. Trane was here in town at the Plugged Nickel. I went there and played with him. [...] It was just like we had been playing together for years. I felt everybody there was strong in what they were doing, and there was no problem for me to adjust." Jack DeJohnette recalled this gig (Down Burt, Nov. 2, 1978, p. 52): "I even played again with Col¬trane at the Plugged Nickel. [...] And I mean I worked that gig. We'd start around 9:30 and go until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and I'd be so wiped out from the gig that I'd go home and sleep until four the next afternoon. On the breaks Coltrane would go into the back and practice, and Rashied [Ali] and I were like at each other's throats at that time." [Additional data from Chicago Sun-limes: 3/4/66, 49.]