John Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings
Evan Parker
Impulse!
IMP04-232R
Recorded November 1, 2, 3 & 5, 1961
There were many partial releases using music from this 4 CD set of the complete recordings in performance at the Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, NYC on four days in November 1961. Pre-dating the CD, the two original LPs were Live at the Village Vanguard and Impressions, and at the time they clearly took the music of the Classic Quartet to a new level. “Chasin’ the Trane” (terrible title! Hereafter “CTT”) set a new bench mark for authentic live recording at nearly 16 minutes. The subsequent history of material that was gradually released is complex. (Please see The John Coltrane Reference, edited by Lewis Porter – hereafter JCR – for the complex ways in which more material from these sessions was released.)
We have the late Michael Cuscuna to thank for this complete 4 CD set with all the music that was recorded presented in chronological order. When MCA bought ABC this included the Impulse catalogue. In Ashley Kahn’s book The House that Trane Built, Cuscuna relates that when he first “went through the Impulse vaults in 1978, they had been very mistreated. I was able to find a lot of good Coltrane that was still unissued …” He goes on to say, “With Rudy’s stuff, it’s not like you have to work to make it sound better; all you have to do is tie your hands behind your back and not fuck it up. It’s that easy.” Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineer for these Village Vanguard sessions. Because Coltrane moved off mic sometimes in the height of the bass blues “CTT”, RVG had to move the mics to follow him and may have suggested the title.
This “complete” set may be complete only in the sense this is all that was recorded. The JCR suggests that other material may have been played during these days, but that there may have been contractual agreements with other record companies which meant that certain other pieces in Coltrane’s regular set list were not taped. The days were Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. It is hard to understand why they did not play Saturday 4 November. So far I have not been able to find any reference to what was happening at the Village Vanguard, but maybe Ada Lee headlined on Saturday night? The recording set up would have been fairly elaborate – the notes refer to eleven microphones – and Rudy Van Gelder will have been reluctant to break his set-up down after the Friday night only to set it all up again on the Sunday …
A note by David Wild says that “Cuscuna suggests that a canny producer like Robert Thiele would have avoided the noisy recording conditions of a Saturday night”*, but goes on to say, “It’s also possible that after three days of recording Thiele had more than enough music and was only reluctantly persuaded to tape “final” versions of ‘India’ and ‘Spiritual’ two days later.”
* so reverential and focussed on listening are the Village Vanguard audiences, the recordings of the Bill Evans Trio made that same year at the Village Vanguard are said to have had audience noise added to make the record sound more like a “live” gig.
It is possible that the Vanguard was already programmed for the Saturday night with a more commercial performer, possibly a singer. Thiele was known for recording as much Coltrane as he could, often booking studio sessions at Rudy Van Gelder’s famous Englewood Cliffs studio with no particular recording release in mind, but this was his first work as producer with Coltrane and too early for him to have established that relationship …
The Sunday recordings have a focused intensity and they are among the longest most powerful statements, along with the trio version of “CTT” on Thursday 2 November, in this extraordinary compilation. It is possible that Coltrane knew they could do better versions and that was his specific aim for this additional session. This is pure speculation on my part.
There is a wonderful photograph by Herb Snitzer showing Coltrane and Dolphy with Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison. This photograph retains its evocative power 65 years later. Here is a photograph of that photograph:
A badly cropped version of this photograph is included in the CD booklet. The “original” was copied from Downbeat magazine in the 60s.
The JCR pp 23-4 reprints an advertisement in the New York Times, Sunday October 29, 1961:
Singer Ada Lee did 20 minute sets with the Mal Waldron Trio … The trio may have played a set of its own between the Lee and Coltrane sets listed.
The musicians involved were John Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; plus, on “India” and “Spiritual”, Garvin Bushell, cor anglais and contrabassoon; and Ahmed Abdul-Malik, tamboura, oud. Jimmy Garrison, bass, added during some sets (Garrison sometimes plays with Workman and sometimes replaces him). In fact, there is detailed discussion in JCR and a strong feeling that there may be more Garrison than is credited in the liner notes. Roy Haynes played drums, substituting for Elvin Jones for “Chasin’ Another Trane” on Thursday 2 November. Abdul-Malik can be heard playing the drone of an Indian tamboura, not the Arabian oud which he is better known for.
There are many ways of hearing the chemistry of the Classic Quartet but the musical understanding between Coltrane and Elvin is the bedrock on which everything rests. Elvin Jones is very well recorded in this relatively small club. There is an unaccompanied drum intro to “Spiritual” from the Sunday best heard through headphones for extraordinary detail. After a few seconds you can hear the level of drums to tape being reduced.
Virtuoso multi instrumentalist Garvin Bushell was born September 25, 1902, and lived until October 31, 1991.
He played with Fletcher Henderson and Fats Waller.
He also plays on the Dolphy recordings originally on Douglas recorded July 1 and 3, 1963.
He recorded “The Joint is Jumpin’” with Fats Waller in 1937.
From the sleevenotes:
Wednesday 1 November, 1961
India 10.20
Chasin’ the Trane 9.41
Impressions 8.42
Spiritual 12.29
Miles’ Mode 9.53
Naima 7.33
Brasilia 18.35
Total time 77.13
Thursday 2 November, 1961
Chasin’ Another Trane 15.26
India 13.14
Spiritual 15.03
Softly as in a Morning Sunrise 6.25
Chasin’ the Trane 15.55
Greensleeves 6.08
Impressions 10.49
Total time 83.16
Friday 3 November, 1961
Spiritual 13.31
Naima 7.02
Impressions 14.45
India 13.55,
Greensleeves 4.51
Miles’ Mode 15.12
Total time 69.16
Sunday 5 November, 1961
India 15.06
Spiritual 20.29.
Total time 35.35
A week later on Saturday 11 November, the Coltrane Quartet plus guest Eric Dolphy started their European tour in the UK, playing opposite the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet. They played each night that week. The last concert was on Friday the 17th at the Granada Cinema in Walthamstow. After the concert Elvin Jones went to an all niter (sic) at Ronnie Scotts and sat in until 5am.
On the 18th they played two shows, 6.30 and 11.30pm local time, at Olympia in Paris.
While none of the UK concerts were recorded there are official and unofficial recordings from France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany.
Footnote:
Coltrane in Walthamstow 1961
Setting out from Ashford in Middlesex in a battered Ford Popular on a cold day in November 1961, we were going to hear John Coltrane in Walthamstow. A week after the original Live at the Village Vanguard was recorded, Coltrane was starting the first European tour with his own band, a quintet with Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones.
Excitement levels were high, but the car quickly showed us why two school boys could have afforded it. We had clubbed together to buy it a few weeks earlier and had done little more than drive around the neighbourhood. (Our plan was that my friend who had a license already would teach me to drive – somehow that never happened and I have remained a grateful passenger ever since.)
According to the map it was easy, we had to get on the North Circular and follow the signs. The car started to cough and splutter very soon after the start and by the time we got to Acton it breathed its last. Fortunately – Sun Ra’s “Fate in a Pleasant Mood” and John Stevens’ “The Cosmics”? – we were very near Acton Town station and the map showed that we could get to Walthamstow on the tube. We pushed the car into a side street and lost no time to get on the train. We got to the cinema to find the first of the two concerts of the evening had begun. After the first concert we asked the usherette (as they were called then) if we could stay in our seats because we had missed the start of the first concert.
After it was over we went round the back and looked for a stage door. I remember we took turns to peer through a crack hoping to see our heroes. We were fairly sure we could see Elvin for a second or two but there was no obvious way to ask for an autograph and we were nervous about getting home. We gave up and went back across London to the far western suburbs.
It seems likely that we heard Coltrane playing on the mouthpiece that he used for the legendary “CTT” at the Village Vanguard that was later ruined by one too many strokes of the file in pursuit of perfection.
There are things in his playing on “CTT” that he never got back to – he discusses this in his interview with Frank Kofsky in 1966 – and it seems almost certain that we heard him playing on that same mouthpiece.
Photographs show that there was one microphone for the horns and perhaps there was one on the piano, but most of what we were hearing was the acoustic sound of the band in the room.
I have listened to all the recordings from that tour that have been issued since but there are shamefully none from the UK concerts.
Evan Parker improvises on the tenor and soprano saxophone, and has performed live and recorded extensively across the UK and internationally. Evan has a few releases on False Walls, including The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc., 4 CDs of solo recordings with a book.
