paul secor Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Very interesting discussion... If Coltrane for some reasons did not evolved after 56 it probably would be another to take his place in the history of jazz,I agree, but if we think in reverse - some musicians did they best while working with Coltrane and just went into ordinary after his death, I'm refering McCoy Tyner. I never had that high an opinion of McCoy Tyner's soloing, even when he was with Trane - less so afterward. What he he added to the group's overall sound with Trane is another story. Just my opinion - obviously others disagree strongly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 some musicians did they best while working with Coltrane and just went into ordinary after his death, I'm refering McCoy Tyner. I think that's some of the dumbest ignorant shit I ever seen posted here. That "edited by" notice makes me wonder what Michael really wanted to say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acoustic Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 some musicians did they best while working with Coltrane and just went into ordinary after his death, I'm refering McCoy Tyner. I think that's some of the dumbest ignorant shit I ever seen posted here. That "edited by" notice makes me wonder what Michael really wanted to say. something very bad about me, I guess ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul secor Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 some musicians did they best while working with Coltrane and just went into ordinary after his death, I'm refering McCoy Tyner. I think that's some of the dumbest ignorant shit I ever seen posted here. That "edited by" notice makes me wonder what Michael really wanted to say. something very bad about me, I guess ... Hey - Michael's opinion is his, and yours is yours - nothing more than that. Don't worry about it and keep posting. Dan Gould and I have gone at it a couple of times a lot worse than this, and I still read consider his posts worth reading and thinking about. Stuff happens here and it blows over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 That no Trane after '56 "What if?" question is one of the few of that sort that really leaves me scratching my head. At this point, I'd say that things would have been VERY different if that had been so -- and I'm old enough to have been listening to '55-'56 Trane at the time and in the context of what else was and was not going on then. Further thoughts in a few hours. About McCoy, I think he did go on for a good while after '67 to do strong important stuff, but eventually IMO the vein got played out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 reached what I think is by far and away it's fullest & deepest realization, and finally again w/Interstellar Space, where...everything came together. Isn't Interstellar space just a little bit too much influenced by Ayler? Just a thought. It always seemed to me that he was really under Ayler's spell on this one. No Ayler influence at all on that one, unless it's a "spiritual" one. Albert could never play that technically advanced for that long (which is neither here nor there except as it pertains to "influence), nor could he sustain the microstructural developement that Trane did (ditto). A lot of people hear IS as flurries of notes and sound. Well, yeah, but once you get past that, you'll hear some of the most intricate technical saxophone playing anybody's ever done. Perhaps the most intricate. Again, that's not the point of the music, but I hear some folks say that IS is just Trane freaking out, and it's anything but that. It's a new level of virtuosity for the saxophone as played in a traditional (i.e. - notes instead of shapes, conscious use of scales, motifs, and patterns to build & develop structures, all that stuff) way. Albert was like feeling the universe all at once. Trane on IS is like seeing it's every minute detail all at once, like looking into a high powered microscope from a million miles out in space and seeing the macro & micro at the same time, if that makes any sense. You get all the raw energy and you get an equal measure of precise, minute detail. It's definitely a landmark of both music and saxophone playing, and it really closes the door on using harmony (yes, harmony) as a basis for even "free" (which it is anything but) improvisation. Nothing left to "discover" in traditional music after IS except different ways to do the same things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 The "funny" thing to me is this - if you want to think that evolution follows an essentially linear path (which obviously it doesn't) , then Trane up until '65 should have happened before Cecil & Ornette. First you stretch harmony as far as it can go, then you break on through to that other side. But it didn't happen that way, did it. Compare where Cecil was in 55 to where Trane was. Or where Ornette was in 58 to where Trane was. It's almost like there was one raod with a big gap in it, only a few people were already starrting to extend the road from the other side of the gap while one guy was going like crazy to fill in the gap, which of course needed to be filled if the road was ever going to run uninterrupted. Which is why I think it's kinda funny/sad when I hear guys talk about how they gotta "work through" Trane before they can "move on", like there's something waiting for them there on that road that nobody's gotten to yet. Hell, it's already there, and it's been there since before Trane got there. Which is not to say that Trane was behind the times or anything stupid like that, just to say that when he finally made the road whole, there should be no question almost 50 years later that that particular job has been completed. But there still seems to be doubt about that, and it makes me laugh when it doen't piss me off or make me sad. Larry has talked before about "side paths" that Trane didn't necessarily have time to fully develop that certain players have been fleshing out, and that's true, but really, are they anything but that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noj Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Maybe it's just me, but I don't care about where music or art are going and where they've already been. I care much more about enjoying what pleases me, ongoing dialogues be damned; state of the art be damned. The trails were blazed by so-and-so and the ground has already been tread, but not everyone was there to witness the steps as they were taken. My viewpoint into history is tainted by what I have and haven't seen--it is impossible for me to experience it chronologically, so chronology itself is less important to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Very interesting discussion... If Coltrane for some reasons did not evolved after 56 it probably would be another to take his place in the history of jazz,I agree, but if we think in reverse - some musicians did they best while working with Coltrane and just went into ordinary after his death, I'm refering McCoy Tyner. I definitely can't agree with that view of Tyner. Maybe if you compare him "now"...but not during the late 60's into the 70's. Far from ordinary I would say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Albert was like feeling the universe all at once. Trane on IS is like seeing it's every minute detail all at once, like looking into a high powered microscope from a million miles out in space and seeing the macro & micro at the same time, if that makes any sense. You get all the raw energy and you get an equal measure of precise, minute detail. Yeah, was trying to show similar the oth' day, playing contemporaneous Trane and Ayler recordings. It was obvious... but you put it very well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Two things about '57-61 Trane in the context (musical and social-commercial) of those times as I recall them 1) He was the first widely known/highly respected player whose music virtually proclaimed (in the nature and emotional tone of his specific peak performances and in its rapid and often surprising evolution) that some sort of major upheaval was in the works -- this being evident at least from the time of "Blue Train." 2) He more or less laid the ground work, in that regard, for the already evolving/existing music of Cecil and Ornette to be accepted, to the degree that it eventually would be. Note, for instance, the way Trane's presence was used by the producer of Cecil's "Love for Sale" album (Tom Wilson?) in attempt to place Cecil inside the circle of the extreme but legitimate/acceptable. All I'm saying is that if Trane's music hadn't been telling us that underneath the soil of Hard Bop etc. there were deep pools of superheated magma at work, those like Cecil, Ornette, and Ayler who had different but related things to tell us might have had an even harder time being heard. In fact, it's not hard for me to imagine that in a Traneless-after-1956 world, the music of Ornette and Ayler might never have been heard outside of L.A. and Cleveland. It's not like either of those guys had a self-generated publicity machine inside them, and I think the history of how they emerged into the national limelight (in Ornette's case via Lester Koenig, the Lenox School of Jazz-John Lewis-Martin Williams-Nesuhi Ertegun et al.) suggests that those key early steps on the road to exposure took place in a world that was conditioned to some significant degree by Trane's music to think that, again, upheaval was on the come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Good points all, and well-written. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Berger Posted January 23, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 (edited) Now, if all we had was the Trane of 1956, what would we have? The things w/Miles, a few PC dates, and a few more Prestige sides. On none of those is his playing fully formed (the date w/Dameron is probably his cleanest playing, but it's also his most calculatedly controlled. I'm sure he respected the occasion and wanted his shit to be right). Certainly one can hear the passion, the intensity, the searching, and the moments of brilliance. But I don't think there's anything there that, if that was indeed all we had, would make us say. "Man, this cat was a MOTHERFUCKER!" I tink it would be more like, "Man that Coltrane cat was deep. Shame he didn't get to do more, I bet he'd have been a motherfucker." I was listening to "Tenor Madness" (May '56) earlier today and while there are glimpses of later Coltrane, there are also clearly spots where he struggles and doesn't quite get there. Still, you have to give the guy props for taking chances -- particularly when matching wits with the top tenor of the time. A lot of other musicians would have instead hunkered down and played it safe, afraid to embarrass themselves. FWIW, I also got the feeling that Sonny didn't approach this performance with the aim of "beating" or "cutting" or "outplaying" Trane. Instead the whole thing has a friendly tone about it -- very different than "The Eternal Triangle" w/Sonny Stitt. Guy Edited January 23, 2007 by Guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 23, 2007 Report Share Posted January 23, 2007 Just to be specific about the relationship between Coltrane's struggle to stop using narcotics and the advent of his new style/new level of mastery (you can put the first "new" in quotes if you feel that the newish ideas were mostly there beforehand but the ability to execute them was, for the most part, not), Lewis Porter's Coltrane bio quotes Jackie McLean, who was working with Art Blakey at the Cafe Bohemia in April 1957, opposite Miles, that Trane "stopped using drugs at the beginning of that job ... but he came to work every night being sick. Of course he was drinking quite a bit and trying to fight it [withdrawal symptoms] off. [Eventually] he was feeling better and from that moment on, he played really awesome." I would say that if you listen to the seven recording dates (five for Prestige, one each for Blue Note and Riverside) that Trane did from March 22, 1957 to May 31, 1957 (the "Straight Street" album, first one under his name), it's clear that on the first of these, "Interplay," he's not the same man, idea-wise, who recorded with Dameron on Nov. 30, 1956 (his last previous date before the "Interplay" session) and that the firming up of ideas and execution ascends fairly steeply to the May 31, 1957 date. I would say that the Trane of the latter part of '57 can be heard close to fully formed on the date just before that, "Cattin' with Coltrane and Quinichette" (May 17, 1957). How Trane sounds on the other date recorded that day -- with Idrees Sulieman and Sahib Shihab -- I can't say for sure; I used to have that one but don't seem to anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 24, 2007 Report Share Posted January 24, 2007 on 'later' 'trane: re: his well-know sweet toof: a question: are jellybeans 'narcotic'? nice writing & great to see a Magma reference, LK!! this post has been translated from the Kobaïan by elder clementine About jellybeans and the like, we should ask Von Freeman, who as I recall dotes on hard candy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frankie Posted January 24, 2007 Report Share Posted January 24, 2007 FWIW, I also got the feeling that Sonny didn't approach this performance with the aim of "beating" or "cutting" or "outplaying" Trane. Instead the whole thing has a friendly tone about it -- very different than "The Eternal Triangle" w/Sonny Stitt. Guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 24, 2007 Report Share Posted January 24, 2007 I think it might have been more of a "cutting" session if it had taken place a year or so later. In May 1956 Sonny could have had little doubt that he was the superior player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcello Posted January 24, 2007 Report Share Posted January 24, 2007 If I remember correctly, Tenor Madness was not planned but of course, the Eternal Triangle sessions were. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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