Archive for the 'birthday' Category
John Coltrane’s birthday
b. medusa 23 September 2007 12:00:19 am
September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967
Coltrane has been credited with reshaping modern jazz and being the predominant influence on successive generations of saxophonists. Along with tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Sonny Rollins, Coltrane fundamentally altered expectations for the instrument.
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During the latter part of 1957, Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York City’s Five Spot Cafe during a legendary six-month gig. Unfortunately, this association was not extensively documented, and the best-recorded evidence demonstrating the compatibility of Coltrane with Monk, a concert at Carnegie Hall on November 29, 1957, was only discovered and issued in 2005 by Blue Note, along with another of their recordings, The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings. His extensive recordings as a sideman and as a leader for Prestige have a mixed reputation. Blue Train, his sole date as leader for Blue Note, is widely considered his best album from this period.
He rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October 1958, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term “sheets of sound” to describe the unique style Coltrane developed during his stint with Monk and was perfecting in Miles’ group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, as if whole solos passed in a few seconds, with rapid runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with, in due course, alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley; pianists Red Garland, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly; bassist Paul Chambers; and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb. During this time he participated in such seminal Davis sessions as Milestones and Kind Of Blue, and the live recordings, Miles & Monk at Newport and Jazz at the Plaza. Also towards the end of this period he recorded his own influential sessions (notably Giant Steps whose title track is generally considered to have the most complex and difficult chord progression of any widely-played Jazz composition).
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Coltrane formed his first group, a quartet, in 1960. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete LaRoca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Art Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner, from Philadelphia, had been a friend of Coltrane’s for some years and the two men long had an understanding that the pianist would join Coltrane when Tyner felt ready for the exposure of regularly working with him.
While still with Miles, Coltrane had signed a contract with Atlantic Records, for whom he recorded the aforementioned Giant Steps. His first record with his new group was the hugely successful My Favorite Things, whose title track, a catchy waltz by Rodgers and Hammerstein (as well as Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye”), featured Coltrane on soprano. This new sound was coupled with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwin tune “But Not for Me,” Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement of his Giant Steps period (movement in major thirds rather than conventional perfect fourths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression.
Shortly before completing his contract with Atlantic in May 1961 (with the album Olé Coltrane), Coltrane joined the newly formed Impulse! label, with whom the “Classic Quartet” would record. It is generally assumed that the clinching reason Coltrane signed with Impulse! was that it would enable him to work again with recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had taped both his and Davis’s Prestige sessions, as well as Blue Train. It was at Van Gelder’s new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey that Coltrane would record most of his records for the label.
By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman. Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn around the same time. The quintet had a celebrated (and extensively recorded) residency in November 1961 at the Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane’s new direction. It featured the most experimental music he’d played up to this point, influenced by Indian ragas, the recent developments in modal jazz, and the burgeoning free jazz movement. Longtime Sun Ra saxophonist John Gilmore was particularly influential; the most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues, “Chasin’ the ‘Trane,” was strongly inspired by Gilmore’s music.
excerpted from the wikipedia
i could go on, but you can read the whole thing by clicking the wikipedia link above.
i wanted to put up a performance of Spiritual but couldn’t find that one on youtube. and then i saw this:
i had this version of Alabama on a cd that was stolen from me (never been able to replace it). sooo good to hear it again.
Fred Hampton’s Birthday
b. medusa 30 August 2007 12:45:10 am
what an honor it is to share a birthday with this beautiful brother, so young, so wise, & taken from us much too soon.
EDIT: i set this post up to appear today a little over a week ago so that i could get away from the computer on my birthday. since then i was designated a Blogger for Justice, so i’ve edited this post to ask that you pick up a banner similar to the one on the far right sidebar (graphics may differ, but links provided beneath the banner are the same). i also invite you to visit (or revisit) this post. also visit BlackPerspective.net for a list of other Bloggers for Justice.
EDIT: in my haste to update this post, i forgot to include this important piece of information (which was the main point of the day of blogging for justice): please contact news organizations on this media list and ask them to cover the story. its not too late; email, call, or write the organizations on the list so we can get better coverage of this story.
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