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John Coltrane's Other Voice


Ted O'Reilly

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Have you ever heard Trane's speaking voice? Here are some interview tracks from a Dutch broadcaster, Michiel de Ruyter:

Interview MdR met John Coltrane 19 november 1961

Interview MdR met John Coltrane 1 december 1962

Interview MdR met John Coltrane 26 oktober 1963

Interview MdR met John Coltrane 27 juli 1965

Available at http://mdr.jazzarchief.nl/interviews/coltrane/

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Thanks a lot! I have the Dragon disc, but it's been a long time that I played the interview part.

Here's the Ted Blume interview:

http://www.slought.org/content/11161/

info:

This previously unreleased full recording (from June 15, 1958) has been made available in conjunction with the Slought Foundation "Coltrane." initiative. An excerpted transcription, "An Interview with John Coltrane” by August Blume, was first published in The Jazz Review 2, no. 1 (January 1959): 25. Recorded at Blume’s home in Baltimore, Maryland prior to that evening’s performance of the Miles Davis Quintet (with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) at The Crystal Caverns, Washington, D.C.
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"Here's the Ted Blume interview"

Cool, thank you.

Again I removed lots of horrible noises and did just a little noise reduction.

Re-sampled and converted to mp3@196 with a hi-end of 13500hz.

More than enough for this file.

Rapidshare.com download with no hassle. 14.7MB

http://rapidshare.com/files/186257994/John...ne_15__1958.zip

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hearing this is interesting, because Kofsky "framed" things a certain way in print, and Trane's "tone" here is not necessarily that way...

I was just re-reading Kofsky's "Black Nationalism" yesterday (got damn, was that ever a frustrating experience!), and it really struck me that his interviews with Elvin and John were beyond self-serving (the McCoy interview didn't seem quite as bad to me).

Kofsky certainly had his agenda, and he ran with any little scrap of acknowledgement of his ideas that Elvin or John offered... his ability to twist Elvin and John's responses to suit his agenda are "impressive" indeed.

I always had the impression that the audio transcripts of these interviews would reveal that Elvin and John were none too happy with the direction of some of Kofsky's questions - and especially his reframing of their responses. That appears to be true...

I wonder what Kofsky suffered from more... a pathological insecurity that he needed to cover through his actions, or just plain malevolent arrogance. Both ooze from the pages from "Black Nationalism".

Cheers,

Shane

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Well, that was a book that needed to be written, and it said some things that needed to be said.

I jsut don't know that Kofsky was the person to say them, or that the way he said them was the way they needed to be said.

Mr. Albertson has recounted some first-hand experiences with FK that certainly make one wonder about his motivations, and, perhaps even his basic sanity, at least later in life.

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Well, that was a book that needed to be written, and it said some things that needed to be said.

I completely agree. I guess that's the most frustrating thing about reading the book... there are important points made, but they often get washed away by Kofsky's paranoia/insecurity/arrogance/malevolence. I've never before read a book that's made me say "Right On!" after reading one sentence, only to be followed by a "WTF?" facepalm the next.

Mr. Albertson has recounted some first-hand experiences with FK that certainly make one wonder about his motivations, and, perhaps even his basic sanity, at least later in life.

I did read those letters... clearly Kofsky had some serious issues. I guess I should be thankful that during my time in academia I've never had to deal with anyone remotely like Kofsky in my Department. Of course, I'm not in the History department...

Please don't let Allen know I'm an academic... :w

Cheers,

Shane

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