Coltrane: Both Directions At Once (lost album)

[Scott Dolan]

Forgiven (regrettably). 

So does it also depend on who paid for the recording sessions? And I really do ask that you give me some leeway for my ignorance on this issue. 

Is the record label on the hook, or is the musician, at that point. I guess I get the property rights thing, but whose actual property is it? Or is a case by case thing? 

[Chuck Nessa]

Label pays for session, others are "persons for hire". 

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

Nakamichis for all!!!! 

[bertrand]

Hmmm...

So let's say another machine was running and someone walked out with a copy. Where are those copies now?

Assuming they could be located, would these be a potential source for a CD reissue rather than the vinyl in cases where the master tape was lost, e.g. Jody Grind and Sweet Honey Bee?

I also apologize for any naivete on my part regarding these matters.

Bertrand.

Maybe I will try to ask some of the Blue Note leaders who are still around if they got copies.

Bertrand.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I can't find the link right now, but I just read a story that said that when ABC Records hit hard times in the 70's, they threw out the masters for any session that was not issued at that time. So when they released "The Definitive Jazz Scene Volume 3" in 1965, they still had the master tapes. Maybe they even excised out "Vilia" out of the master tape to make a master tape for this comp LP and that might be the tape where Steve Hoffman got it.

[JSngry]

3x thru Disc 1, 2x thru Disc 2...I like it. It's good to hear those voices again in a not-yet-hardwired presentation. Familiar voices, known language, new conversations. .

No illusions, just a good time.

Im'a-gonna need to re-sequence this thing, though, wish they had included session order (if they still have it...). If nothing else, I really want to hear the takes of "Impressions" in the order they were played.

And what do you tell the mythical new-to-jazz listener who hears this and like it? That's easy - keep going!

[Scott Dolan]

The session order isn’t listed in the liner notes? That’s an odd omission, unless there was no documentation with the recordings. Though that would also be odd. 

[jcam_44]

5 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

The session order isn’t listed in the liner notes? That’s an odd omission, unless there was no documentation with the recordings. Though that would also be odd. 

Documentation of the session order isn’t needed since it’s a tape of the session. Playback would give you order no?

[Scott Dolan]

Ah, so the entire recording only came from a single tape? 

As you can tell, I’ve done absolutely no homework on this. 

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, jcam_44 said:

Documentation of the session order isn’t needed since it’s a tape of the session. Playback would give you order no?

Not sure what that means, did they just copy the tape as is onto the CDs? They do give take #s, but not recording order. Impressions is in some kind of backwards order, and I think you can hear it develop if played in recording order. If you want to.

I like to play that game sometimes, did it with the big Miles/Trane Prestige sessions and a few others. Sessions can have their own organic flow, neither better nor worse necessarily than product order, just different. Different flow, different perception. Same music. Let it roll like a big wheel.

[Scott Dolan]

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Not sure what that means, did they just copy the tape as is onto the CDs? They do give take #s, but not recording order. Impressions is in some kind of backwards order, and I think you can hear it develop if played in recording order. If you want to.

I like to play that game sometimes, did it with the big Miles/Trane Prestige sessions and a few others. Sessions can have their own organic flow, neither better nor worse necessarily than product order, just different. Different flow, different perception. Same music. Let it roll like a big wheel.

Oddly enough, I actually agree with all of this. 

I still find it odd they didn’t document it any better than that. And I find it hard, but not impossible, to believe that this entire album came from a single tape. These were, in essence, jam sessions. Were they even recorded on the same dates? 

[jcam_44]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Not sure what that means, did they just copy the tape as is onto the CDs? They do give take #s, but not recording order. Impressions is in some kind of backwards order, and I think you can hear it develop if played in recording order. If you want to.

I like to play that game sometimes, did it with the big Miles/Trane Prestige sessions and a few others. Sessions can have their own organic flow, neither better nor worse necessarily than product order, just different. Different flow, different perception. Same music. Let it roll like a big wheel.

I didn't say the release was the same as the tape. i made the comment that the tape Naima had was a session tape, thus it was  a recording in the order it was recorded...because it was taken with "tape rolling". The need to document when each song was recorded isn't needed because the tape don't lie. Do they give us the order of each song on the tape is a different issue. 

[JSngry]

Naima did not have a session tape, she had a reference dub of the session tape. Probably the same order, but not 100% certain.

[medjuck]

16 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Oddly enough, I actually agree with all of this. 

I still find it odd they didn’t document it any better than that. And I find it hard, but not impossible, to believe that this entire album came from a single tape. These were, in essence, jam sessions. Were they even recorded on the same dates? 

On 7/3/2018 at 5:56 AM, Stefan Wood said:

Who's getting wound up?  It's a marketing push, for sure, of an artist long dead, pilfering through what scraps of unissued material remains.  That it still makes for good listening, even for a rehearsal session, says a lot about the high standards of performing everyone involved did.  It's just different now.  Jazz is different now. 

Well if one is to believe the liner notes they were all recorded on the same days.  Also, I don't think these were "rehearsal tapes".   Why would the musicians travel  so far to rehearse when they had a gig that night?  And (again) according to the notes, Impulse was pissed at Thiele for spending so much money recording Trane. They wouldn't have been happy paying to record rehearsals. 

My guess is that they went into  the studio not to make a thematic album but to lay down some tracks that would be  released on perhaps more than one Lp.  (Even Ballads was recorded over three different sessions, on two of which other things were recorded. )   

In a 1968 interview in Coda Thiele said:  " The material that is unreleased is from the period of 1963..... This unreleased material is not inferior, it is just that he became quite busy in the studio. "  (He also talks about material from California.  Anyone know what that might be?)  

OTOH, there are two cuts where Trane seems to go slightly off mike at the end of his solo as if he were turning to Tyner to indicate it was the pianist's turn to solo-- not something you would expect in a recording session. 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2018 by medjuck

[JSngry]

The reason it seems like a rehearsal tape to me is the way almost all of the cuts play out. Nothing is really fully developed, it's more like head, solo(s) that seem to end in a musically "arbitrary" fashion, and then they take the tune out. It doesn't sound like they were doing intentionally short takes, like for a short-take album either. It sounds like Trane wanted to run through some things with the band, touch a base or two, and then take it home to let it soak in for further review.

"Rehearsing" a band doesn't always involve preparing for a specific performance or anything, sometimes a rehearsal is just playing to see what happens with material both new and familiar. That a band of this level can make what to me seems like a rehearsal session and still hit it that hard is simply a testament of how high a level they were at.

No matter - Jimmy Garrison continues to satisfy. All of that SPROINNNNNG that goes on back and forth between Trane & Elvin happens like it does only because Garrison is providing the foundation like he did. Other guys gave it an equally strong foundation, but not THAT foundation.

All praise is due to Jimmy Garrison.

[Scott Dolan]

Two excellent posts, gents. 

[Dan Gould]

Well I just received the basic CD Amazon waited for the Dexter/Kenny Drew in Tokyo to release.  Looking forward but really not enough of a Trane fan to hear the whole thing. I'm fine with the takes considered "masters".

Anyway I am really wondering how people view this marketing blitz, and the apparent success.  Full page ads in dying print media and it was where, 20th seller or something? Is it just a combination of marketing muscle plus a name people know?  I never thought a marketing blitz could put a legit jazz album to these numbers.  

Where did the Errol Garner set end up in sales?  If there was a Miles record that had disappeared and got this kind of push, would it peak this high? 

[joshuakennedy]

On 6/29/2018 at 2:07 PM, Scott Dolan said:

Which begs the question, when DID they hold back? I mean, serious. When? Because those tapes are yet to be released. 

 

Whether Ballads was a “commercial concession” is a debate I’ll stay out of, but that album is arguably one of the best the Classic Quartet ever recorded. Bar none. 

Now, I will humbly concede that if you hit me up for a spur of the moment “top five Coltrane Quartet albums” Ballads likely wouldn’t be mentioned. But it damned sure SHOULD be! It’s funny. They didn’t cut loose on that session, nor did they make any of those tunes their own. But somehow they made them “perfect”. Just. Fucking. Perfect. 

Along with Crescent (due to it being overshadowed by A Love Supreme in the ‘64 canon), Ballads is THE most overlooked and underappreciated albums that band ever recorded, IMO. 

I agree. Ballads is amazing. Just a beautiful album. 

[erwbol]

Ballads never did anything for me. I don't get the affection for that album.

[Ted O'Reilly]

16 minutes ago, erwbol said:

Ballads never did anything for me. I don't get the affection for that album.

There's a hole in your life.    It's beautiful.  Got no time for beautiful?

[erwbol]

9 minutes ago, Ted O'Reilly said:

There's a hole in your life.    It's beautiful.  Got no time for beautiful?

The later Impulse! albums are much more beautiful IMO. 

[Ted O'Reilly]

Well, maybe.  But that doesn't mean "Ballads" is unworthy of affection.  By me, and I'd guess many thousands of others.  (Suggest me the much-more-beautiful later ones, please.  Always looking for Beautiful...)

[erwbol]

I don't know if technically Dear Lord can be considered a ballad, but it's worth more to me than the whole Ballads album, for example. Also much more beautiful, and certainly no ballad, is Consequences from Meditations, where around 5:44 the horns fall silent and McCoy Tyner gets some solo space supported by an uplifting bass figure by Jimmy Garrison. Especially on the latest Japanese remaster where the bass is no longer distorted, this is an incredibly beautiful moment after all that came before.

But, there is nothing wrong with preferring Ballads, of course. ;-)

[Ted O'Reilly]

Good points.  Those might be 'spiritual' moments more than 'beautiful' moments, but dang...some times I just like pretty more than moving.  Tinsel-shallow of me, I guess.  (Undistorted bass is always welcome.)

[Scott Dolan]

First Meditations is just as beautiful and moving as Ballads, and an even better album (it’s actally my favorite Jazz album). 

But that takes nothing away from Ballads, which is a masterpiece all its own. I actually put off buying it for years because I wasn’t interested in the “slow stuff”. When I finally got it and listened to it I really how silly that stance was.