Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

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Evenings at the Village Gate,” which captures the height of the Coltrane Quintet, was never recorded with commercialization in mind. It was recorded by an engineer without Coltrane's permission and the tape was eventually found in the New York Library of Performing Arts by a Bob Dylan archivist. There were precedents for composers using two bassists, but arguably no one before Coltrane had saddled one bassist with roving lead parts and another with a stationary, raga-inflected drone. LondonJazz is a not-for profit venture, but may occasionally take on work as a paid publicist and/or sell advertising packages.

Africa/Brass was Coltrane’s most unusual album in the busy year of 1961, and it landed on shelves near the end of his run at the downtown venue. The rest of jazz soon followed suit: A decade later, musicians far and wide explored the spiritual caverns and world-spanning vistas that Coltrane uncovered at the dawn of the ’60s. On the next track, “When Lights Are Low,” Dolphy’s bass clarinet simmers below Coltrane’s tea-kettle sax tones. Tyner’s piano is muffled enough on “My Favorite Things” that his parts can sound like ghostly percussion unless you focus on them.In reality, had Coltrane lived to ripe old age, he would have continued to try out different styles, bands, influences and ideas, no doubt jamming with past collaborators along the way. This basement remained a venue, Le Poussin Rouge, after the Gate closed 30 years ago; the ground floor, naturally, has become a CVS. The original purpose of this recording was to asses the sound system of the newly opened Village Gate club. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Coltrane and club owner Art D’Lugoff never meant to cut a record, but Alderson captured a couple of evenings and then forgot about them.

Dolphy, meanwhile, plays a high bird-song flute that seems to dance above it all, offering Coltrane possible paths for a lighter flight. Alderson placed his single mic near Elvin Jones, whose elastic drumming feels like a marvelous solo act. Just imagine, this was recorded on an evening at the Village Gate which also included the groups of Horace Silver and Art Blakey. The result was the risky, perennially underrated Africa/Brass, which updated the big-band ensembles of yore with transatlantic clave beats and polyrhythms. Eighty minutes of never-before-heard music from this group were recently discovered at the New York Public Library.His solos and ‘Impressions’ and ‘Favorite Things’ underlinine what an important component of Coltrane’s quartet/quintet he was becoming. John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy Evenings At The Village Gate Reviewed: Newly rediscovered sessions show a genius in transition". But the beauty of their interplay was tightly wound in the tension of two self-directed men with irrepressible appetites for innovation.

Basslines are sometimes difficult to unearth from the tumult, with the notable exception of “Africa”—ditto Dolphy’s more delicate trills. The whole track possesses luxurious space, hypnotic mystery and tension that has the audience audibly gasping. Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy is a live album recorded in 1961 featuring jazz musicians John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, released on Impulse! Andrew Male of Mojo gave this release 4 out of 5 stars, praising several tracks, including the concluding recording of "Africa" as being like a "historic moment", and also notes the extensive liner notes from Ashley Kahn.By 1970, Coltrane’s former boss Miles Davis was using two bassists on a game-changing release in a far different vein, Bitches Brew. Anomalous on the surface, such albums offered a blueprint for Coltrane’s future: screeching, unsettled melodies; bottom ends that churned and thrashed; a sprawling palette that mixed in music from India and Africa.