| |
November 2004:
My picks for the two top
modern jazz bands of all time would be ‘The Miles Davis Quintet’ and
‘The John Coltrane Quartet’.
Miles Davis founded his band in
1955 when he was issued a new record contract with ‘Prestige’.
Tenor saxophonist John
Coltrane was on his front line, complemented by Red Garland on piano,
Paul Chambers on bass, and ‘Philly' Joe Jones on drums. The band
recorded a series of albums with a one word theme in the title, such as Steamin’,
Cookin’, Relaxin’, and Workin’ with the Miles Davis
Quintet. Most of the jazz
world was introduced to John Coltrane on tenor saxophone when the first Miles
Davis Quintet started
making these recordings. This (at the time) Philadelphia-based tenor saxophone player was a
controversial pick for Miles Davis, especially considering he could have
easily chosen more
mainstream horn players like Sonny Rollins or Hank Mobley. Yet
Coltrane’s garrulous ‘sheets of sound’ improvisational style blended
perfectly with the Miles Davis economy our whole jazz world had grown to
love. Miles must have been humbled by playing alongside Charlie Parker,
whose mind-blowing rapacious solos must have turned the trumpeter in the
direct opposite direction: making for a quieter, slower, and softer
concept of modern jazz music. His band would grow to redefine modern jazz for the
next two years…until John Coltrane would go off and launch his own solo
career by making Blue Train in 1957 for Blue Note Records. Miles, in his
autobiography, took partial credit for the success of Trane’s first
album: he claimed to have taught him what it takes to put a killer band together in
the pursuit of playing first quality jazz. A couple of years later, Miles
would call on Coltrane one more time, producing possibly the most
popular jazz album ever: Kind of Blue for Columbia Records.
If the Miles Davis album Kind of
Blue was considered the top jazz recording session of all time, John
Coltrane’s A Love Supreme for Impulse! Records would run a close second. This album
documented the Coltrane Quartet at its prime. The band consisted of
McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. This quartet started playing together in 1961, the year iconoclastic
tenor-man Coltrane landed an exclusive recording contract with
‘Impulse!’ The band made a self-titled album which changed the way many
people thought about jazz (including my teacher David S. Ware). The
music of the Quartet featured improvisation that served as a
transcendental vehicle of departure from reality. Coltrane went on to
record with other label mates such as seminal pianist Duke Ellington and
popular vocalist Johnny Hartman
over the course of the next two years. He was touring Europe with
musicians like alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy. There are some unbelievable bootleg
recordings of the Coltrane band from this phase in their development.
The year Eric Dolphy died in Germany (shortly after touring the continent
with Charles Mingus) the Coltrane Quartet recorded A Love Supreme
(December, 1964).
After Transition was recorded the next year, the band was
augmented once again, this time with a more free-form approach. Eventually
drummer Rashied Ali would replace Elvin Jones and John’s new wife
Alice would replace McCoy Tyner on piano. Jimmy Garrison would stay with the
band until Coltrane’s death in 1967, recording a couple of wonderful
sessions during that year including the posthumously-released Stellar Regions. It is often
believed that the remarkable success of the tenor saxophonist later in
his career gave him the artistic freedom to make more compositionally
original and spiritually honest albums.
No jazz listener should be without albums in their collection from the
‘Miles Davis Quintet’ and ‘John Coltrane Quartet’. The true
aficionado would own both Davis' Kind of Blue
and Coltrane's A Love Supreme. |
|