276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

£7.285£14.57Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (“My Favorite Things”, “Impressions”, “Greensleeves”), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on “When Lights Are Low” and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition “Africa”, from the Africa/Brass album. A year before his vaunted classic quartet took shape, Coltrane assembled a band and then replaced individual members—not because their contributions were lacking, but because each iteration told him what to do next.

Ostensibly a timekeeper, Jones was the wildest member of Coltrane’s ’61 quartet, and perhaps as a result he was the last player of this era that Coltrane would replace.Tyner’s piano is muffled enough on “My Favorite Things” that his parts can sound like ghostly percussion unless you focus on them. By the end of the year came another three Coltrane LPs, all of them capturing the sound of an artist in a constant state of flux and evolution. John Coltrane moved from Atlantic to Impulse this year, developing his signature Sheets of Sounds and exploring new heights.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. On the next track, “When Lights Are Low,” Dolphy’s bass clarinet simmers below Coltrane’s tea-kettle sax tones. At the end of the year, Workman left— his father was sick and Coltrane had a new trajectory in mind.

The booklet is beautiful, with my only caveat being that it’s a bit difficult to work out who wrote what.

The dog days of summer were in full swelter, and the venue had to lure listeners out of their homes and onto the sticky Village streets for dinner (bad service, but apparently tasty food! Dolphy’s feature on bass clarinet on ‘When Lights Are Low’ has something of a bassoon-ish quality that is hauntingly eerie. After the first track the listener gets acustomed and you're ready to enjoy Coltrane and his sparring partner Dolphy in full glory. Or, maybe, it's the nostalgic memories of having lived together in that era that makes it so, I'm not sure.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 is another major John Coltrane discovery of a quintet performance at the Village Gate, New York City during August, 1961. His constant transformations illustrated a quintessential ’60s metaphor: Coltrane’s music rolled along too hard and fast to gather any moss. Another “new” album by John Coltrane, this recording was rediscovered in the New York Public Library, where it had been deposited in the late 1960s or early 70s.

With Evenings At The Village Gate both adjectives are at play, but the LP is at its best when you don’t rightly know which one it is that you’re feeling, or, as Dolphy puts it in the same interview, “It swings so much I don’t know what to do… it moves me so much. Coltrane even carried a photo of Dolphy with him after he died, at 36, in 1964, from a diabetic coma, hanging it on the walls of hotel rooms while he traveled. In the edit page, go to the 'Metadata' tab and add your Juno artist, label or release page for listeners to purchase your release / releases. The sound quality is not up to Impulse’s own recordings of Coltrane with the same group made three months later, originally issued as Live at the Village Vanguard.

Critics tout Coltrane’s soprano saxophone as the key that unlocked the door to spiritual jazz, yet Dolphy’s similarly unconventional instrumentation greased the hinges. The set ends with a 22-minute version of Africa, the Tynerarranged big band number from Africa/Brass stripped back to quartet, but with the addition of second bassist, Art Davis. Beginning with a version of My Favorite Things, with Elvin Jones drumming clean, hard hypnotic patterns, Reggie Workman’s bass sure and steady, and McCoy Tyner’s piano intense and beaming, Coltrane repeatedly sounds like a man trying to find a way over, under, through or beyond his own sound, taking his squalling soprano sax out to heights too dizzying, before coming back to the grounded surface melody. Recorded with the same line-up as this album, it’s a euphoric, exploratory masterclass in what Coltrane was capable of in 1961. The songs on the album are all songs that were played frequently at the time, with the exception of "When Lights are Low.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment