4/5
A Coltrane Supreme.
Posthumous albums from late, great maestros of music come out by the bucket load for your bucket list these days. Like breaking into Prince's Paisley Park vault ('Welcome 2 America'). Or Moonwalking all over all those lost Michael Jackson songs. Rappers and rock stars. They've all had their cutting room floor dusted up and turned into records on the shelves, as we still try to stay close to our artistic loved ones like photos in a frame. Sometimes it's a little lacking in taste and crassly in concert even some live shows have tried to incorporate holograms into their gigs. There is something slightly off-putting about seeing Snoop Dogg high-five a digital 2Pac. With that being said sometimes there are lost treasures to find digging in these crates and if they are left untouched and as raw and real as they came then we can get more for our catalogue collection of our favourite players. And maybe even get a different stroke of our artists too. That's what we get with the gold digging like Leon Bridges sound of 'Another Side Of John Coltrane'. The latest, lost album from the late, jazz great. With supreme love this set showcases this legend as a sideman. Mastering his craft of playing the background but never behind the notes. This is Coltrane coming of age and finding his feet and fingers next to some of the greatest in the game like the incomparable Miles Davis and the perfect piano play of Thelonious Monk. But there is meat to these salad days. This is no rookie. Instead here stands an expert sideman honoring and honing his place and artistry. It's still a masterclass of some of his best work...just from a different side.
Another album is exactly what you need when it comes to this John. The outstanding 'Oleo', perfectly produced by Sonny Rollins was the single that spearheaded Coltrane's return to the charts in 2021 and it really is a standout. On this lost album it really shows just how much this lost American art form means to music, as we are atmospherically taken back to the haze of jazz bars and clubs like smoke spirals dancing through the horn. Almost impossible to tell where they come from. Cigarettes, or the fire made on stage? Fitting in this COVID quarantined time of locked down concerts we can only watch from a YouTube distance. Set alight like how one blow can show just how hurt or heartbroken the player is behind the tones, the action of this offbeat but in rhythm, on line, but free to roam sound cuts through you more than a million words could. Coltrane captured that essence as well as anyone. Even those Miles ahead. All you need to do is hear 'A Love Supreme' if you're 'Kind Of Blue'. Or John Coltrane's superb solo on the classic closer 'Someday My Prince Will Come', playing for Davis. A cut that led Coltrane down to the line to being a part of the playing on the classic 1961 Miles Davis record of the same name and perfect portrait artwork. 'Trane on tenor sax displays a workmanlike dedication to his craft that is as awe-inspiring as it is admirable, even 'Relaxin' With the Miles Davis Quintet'. Reigning supreme on 'Aireign', in this time of hard rock, hard-bop is back.
Modern jazz greats are on full display here like a Newport Festival, but it's when Coltrane rocks 'Round Midnight' with Thelonious Monk when things get otherworldly and spiritual in this realm of jazz age decadence. A perfect time capsule to a better time to be alive in sound, as on 'Monk's Mood' the titan Thelonious masters the piano until his fingers and the keys fall off. Only a couple of sessions (like 'Epistrophy') were made between Coltrane and Monk-all in the same calendar of 1957-but boy are they something to behold. Rolling with Rollins on 'Tenor Madness' the terrific talent here is crazy and just shows in this world of beef, subtweets and shade, nothing compares to seeing the icons of a genre carved together on a darkened stage like the real Mount Rushmore of legacy makers. Who cares what was going on behind the scenes. Fights and the like. Or as the late, great comedian Richard Pryor told us-no joke-"Miles tongue kissing Dizzy Gillespie" (to each his own). On the hallowed stage, NOTHING could tear them apart. Save, the tangent of their own solos that 'Trinkle, Tinkle' in all their epic ebb and formidable flow. But they always made it back to the line, keeping in rhythm. All in perfect time like this machine of a pressed record taking us back. The 'Soultrane' just keeps on stirring all the way down the 'C.T.A.' and another album highlight in the gem of 'Billie's Bounce' getting down. You will really dig this 'Dig It' take with pianist Red Garland. As you will all the sheet of sound garnishings from one of jazz's big-three, flying next to Bird and you know who. The perfect black and white portrait blowing into the hard-worked horn on a juxtaposed yellow spotlight highlights the album artwork of some vintage music brought to the modern mainstream in this streaming age of Spotify consumption. 'Trane probably wouldn't have taken to the way we take in music these days (even I haven't really, it's just necessity). But this timeless collection proves even this generation can cater and curate their playists to his style. All the way to the scratches from pressed vinyl that are evoked like the lighting of a cigarette for just another night in the jazz bar, listening to some of the greatest musicians of all-time. There will never be another. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Oleo', 'Monk's Mood', 'Someday My Prince Will Come'.
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