On March 6, 1963, saxophonist John Coltrane was at Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. Between 1 and 6 p.m., Coltrane's "classic quartet" recorded 14 songs, including two untitled Coltrane originals that were recorded just once. As I write in my Wall Street Journal review of the album this week (go here), the newly discovered music is astonishing and hugely important.
The recording session was held on the afternoon of March 6 so the quartet could make their gig that evening at New York's Birdland. While Impulse refers to this release as a "lost album," I don't believe these tapes represented an unrealized LP. It was more likely a recorded run-through of new material Coltrane wanted to get down on tape for future performance and recording. Producer Bob Thiele probably booked the studio on March 6 as a rehearsal for the "John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman" album the next day. Thiele wouldn't have scheduled two different album projects back-to-back.
Or, he more likely scheduled March 6 and 7 for the Johnny Hartman session, but Hartman couldn't make the 6th. Or Coltrane and Hartman didn't think the 6th was necessary. So Thiele kept it anyway to record Coltrane playing whatever he wanted as a limber-up session. Thank goodness he did. The music is bold, soulful, hair-raising and deep. I've listened to the music about 20 times, and I love it more each time. The recording is thrilling, like flying along a series of wilderness zip-lines and watching the scenery change.
Admittedly, Coltrane's free-form playing in the 1960s is sophisticated music that requires your attention and your heart. You have to let yourself go and drift with the exotic, percussive winds stirred up by Coltrane's expressive tenor and soprano saxophones, and the quartet as a whole.
The material on this two-CD set was recorded at an interesting time for Coltrane. Newly signed to Impulse in 1961 by Creed Taylor, Coltrane was handed off to Thiele when Taylor joined Verve and Thiele took over at Impulse. Despite Coltrane's saxophone prowess, he wasn't winning vital magazine polls in 1963, and critics were blasting his approach as "anti-jazz." So Impulse wanted Coltrane to record easy-going albums that would change critics' and listeners' minds by featuring music that wasn't so demanding.
Thiele (above) was under pressure from Impulse parent ABC-Paramount to deliver. Interestingly, Coltrane was fine with the corporate mandate. He happily recorded Ballads and relaxed albums with Duke Ellington and singer Johnny Hartman. In between, however, Thiele recorded Coltrane in the studio playing the type of jazz he performed on tour and at clubs such as the Village Vanguard and that Impulse recorded and released. To avoid heat from ABC-Paramount's executives, many of whom questioned why Thiele was recording way more Coltrane than the label could ever hope to release, Thiele came up with a work-around.
He stopped telling his bosses what he was going to do and just did it. He'd come in and say he had recorded Coltrane at the studio the night before. Fortunately for us, Thiele understood the urgent importance of documenting Coltrane's new form of "black jazz" that yearned for a return to his African roots. Thiele viewed these sessions as a calling. He sensed that if he didn't tape Coltrane in the studio, the music would be lost forever.
Coltrane appreciated Thiele's devotion and dedication, which is probably why Coltrane was happy to record the more relaxed albums. By A Love Supreme in 1965, however, Coltrane no longer had to record songbook albums. The acclaimed album made him a poll winner and a jazz star in his own right. As national tensions heightened by the mid-1960s, the hymn-like and thrashing quality of his music made more sense.
On this album, we have two untitled originals that were simply designated with numbers, since they were never named. One features multiple takes. There are four takes of Impressions, each more exciting than the next; Nature Boy and two takes of Vilia are lyrical standards; and two takes of One Up, One Down.
So where was this tape hiding all these years? After the quartet departed that day for Birdland, the master tape reels sat on the shelf at Van Gelder’s studio [above] until Coltrane died in July 1967, when Impulse executives arrived to retrieve them. After ABC Records relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, the tape went into storage. Soon, cost-cutting measures led ABC to discard reels of warehoused tapes that hadn’t been released as albums. Coltrane’s March 6 recording was part of the purge.
Fortunately, Thiele had run a separate tape reel in the studio that day in 1963, a common practice that allowed Coltrane to take the music home for evaluation. When Coltrane and his first wife, Naima, divorced in 1966, he left the reel with her. Years later, the family found the reel, and it became the source for the newly released Both Directions. The sound is fantastic.
As readers know, I love all great jazz—from New Orleans to the abstraction of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra and beyond. If my heart skips a beat as I listen, I love it. Pretty simple. The new Coltrane album, due June 29, is exciting and among the most hypnotic and revelatory legacy recordings I've heard in some time. Tyner (above) is at his turbulent peak, Garrison tears into the bass, and Jones sounds like three drummers at once.
As you listen to this music, remember that John F. Kennedy was in the White House, the Beatles weren't here yet and wouldn't arrive for 10 months, civil-rights protests were just heating up and only a handful of Americans could find Vietnam on a map. Coltrane was that far ahead of his time. The music anticipated everything that would follow and influenced the hard rock of Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Led Zeppelin and so many other artists.
As I note at the close of my WSJ review, "It’s impossible not to hear the feeling of Both Directions in Coltrane’s solos on his Johnny Hartman album. The two are now forever linked."
JazzWax tracks: You'll find John Coltrane's Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (Deluxe Version) here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Untitled Original #11383...
And here's the same group backing singer Johnny Hartman one day later...
