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Blue Note On Blu-Ray
Just as exposure to new music casts older, familiar works in a different light, newer formats can expand a listener's perspective on the strengths and limitations of the original recordings.
—Mark Werlin
SACDs, Blu-Ray discs and hi-res downloads accurately represent the affective details of jazz performance: the swish of brushes on a snare; the subtle inflections of a trumpet player's phrasing; the timbre that distinguishes one bassist's instrument—and touch—from another; the reverberant room ambience of large soundstages, halls and churches; the slow decay into silence at the release of a sustained piano chord.
Since the first appearance of SACDs in 1999, jazz in hi-res has been produced and released by reissue specialists (Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, Audio Fidelity), smaller labels recording with state-of-the-art technology (Songlines, Chesky, Telarc, Linn, Challenge, Fonè), and corporate giants Sony, Warner and Universal Music Enterprises.
Universal, the rights-holder of the Blue Note Records catalog, assigned veteran remastering engineers Alan Yoshida and Bernie Grundman the task of transferring original analogue tapes recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in his Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs studios to high-resolution audio files, for the purposes of archiving and reissue.
Three of those recordings—all well-known jazz classics—are the subject of this column. Listening to them in hi- res is like visiting an old friend after a long absence; an opportunity to gain new insights.
John Coltrane: Blue Train
Every Sunday in San Francisco's Fillmore district, Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church proclaims the musical liturgy of its patron saint, 
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
In the decades since Coltrane's untimely death in 1967, his recordings have been repackaged, remastered and reissued, culminating in this High Fidelity Pure Audio (HFPA) Blu-Ray disc from Universal Music Enterprises, which was mastered in 2015 from the original master tapes. For all the artistic merit and historical significance ascribed to Coltrane's music, it would be na?ve not to recognize the degree to which his recordings are valued as a commodity. Original LP pressings of Blue Train command four figure prices at auction, and each time jazz collectors acquire new reissues of his recordings, we tip the balance of valuation further towards the monetary side of the art/commerce scale.
Acknowledging the sacrifices made by John Coltrane on the road that led to Blue Train can help rebalance that scale on the side of art.
Practice
The only child of hard-working, economically aspiring parents, John Coltrane was raised in the African American community of High Point, North Carolina. During his twelfth year, in the span of a few months John suffered the catastrophic loss of his father, his maternal grandfather and grandmother. The family descended from middle-class status to straitened financial circumstances. As his mother struggled to keep him out of poverty, John withdrew into a lifelong and habitually solitary obsession with music.
He practiced constantly, first the clarinet and later the alto saxophone. Driven north in search of better-paid work, the Coltrane family relocated to Philadelphia, where John completed high school and was exposed to the musical revolution of bebop. A year's service in the Navy brought Coltrane into practice sessions with a group of like-minded musicians. An amateur 78 recording of that group playing
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
On his return to Philadelphia, Coltrane resumed a disciplined regimen of practice and study. He attended classes in music theory and saxophone technique at the Granoff Conservatory; connected with the burgeoning Philly jazz scene; and pursued his own studies of harmony. In Coltrane's musical conception, there were no hard boundaries between classical, jazz, and popular vocal music; he endlessly discussed, analyzed, practiced and wrote sketches based on themes from contemporary classical composers, especially Bartok and Shostakovich, jazz tunes and pop ballads. He practiced from tattered copies of classical piano method books that he borrowed from friends. The horn was never out of his hands.
Brief stints with
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson
saxophone, alto1917 - 1988
Lester Young
saxophone1909 - 1959
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
Wardell Gray
saxophone, tenor1921 - 1955
In the shadow of the jazz world, he was beginning to express his own unique sound. The hand that pulled John Coltrane out of obscurity was extended by a musician who needed to hear that sound as badly as Coltrane needed to create it.
Arrival
Miles Davis, clean after years of heroin abuse and eager to regain his prominence in the scene, was assembling a new working quintet for engagements and recordings. His chosen pianist and drummer,
Red Garland
piano1923 - 1984
Philly Joe Jones
drums1923 - 1985
Two years of performing and recording with the Miles Davis Quintet brought Coltrane critical attention, some supportive, but much of it pejorative: he didn't swing like
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Coltrane credited his transformation from the hesitancy shown in the October 1956 Prestige session Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet to the confidence of the Blue Train date, to a personal religious awakening that prompted his recovery from heroin addiction and alcohol abuse. His wife Naima gave him the emotional and spiritual support that had been missing all the years he'd spent struggling to survive. He kicked heroin without medical treatment and foreswore alcohol use in May 1957. Coltrane (Prestige, 1957) documents the immediate and noticeable improvements in Coltrane's playing after he stopped using heroin.
Committed to advancing his harmonic language, Coltrane spent the next nine months working intensively with pianist-composer
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Session
When Blue Note Records chief Alfred Lion offered Coltrane an opportunity to record his own compositions, choose his preferred musicians, and rehearse at Blue Note's expense, Coltrane selected two players on Blue Note's roster, the rising young trumpet player (and fellow Philadelphian)
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
Kenny Drew
piano1928 - 1993
Curtis Fuller
trombone1934 - 2021
Paul Chambers
bass, acoustic1935 - 1969
Blue Train was recorded in a single session at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio on September 15, 1957. Throughout the session, Coltrane improvises fluent melodic lines across the full range of his instrument in a seemingly effortless display of virtuosity. Following the opening bars of the title track, with its stately proclamation of the blues, Coltrane launches into a solo that breaks out from the conventions of bebop vocabulary. The synthesis of blues and advanced harmonic structure—stacked fourth intervals, rapid variations on short motives—and the broken rhythms and unexpected off-beat rests inspired by Monk place Coltrane's soloing outside the mainstream of contemporary jazz. His original compositions, including "Lazy Bird" and "Moment's Notice," established Coltrane's credentials as a creator of new music, not merely an interpreter.
19 year-old trumpet player
Lee Morgan
trumpet1938 - 1972
The underappreciated pianist-composer Kenny Drew, whose failure to connect with a wide audience in the US led him to join the expatriate exodus to Europe, supports Coltrane with vigorous comping. Drew settled in Copenhagen, where he performed regularly and recorded for the Steeplechase and Storyville labels.
Sound
The tracks on the HFPA Blu-Ray disc were transferred to 24/192 from the original master tape by Alan Yoshida. Bonus tracks were remastered by Robert Vosgien. At the time of the Blue Train date, Van Gelder was recording all Blue Note sessions on a two-channel tape recorder. Once the master takes were selected, Van Gelder removed those sections of tape with a razor blade and spliced them together in LP sequence onto a master reel that he used to cut the stereo and monaural LPs. The master was the actual physical tape used in the recording session, not a first-generation copy. The qualities of Van Gelder's master tapes, the fidelity to instrument sound and room ambience, the realistic balance of piano, bass and drums, are clearly audible in the transfers contained on this Blu-Ray.
Alan Yoshida, mastering engineer on the JVC XRCD and Audio Wave XRCD releases, is a member of the UMe/Blue Note team for the Blue Note 75 series of remasters. Yoshida has deep sympathy with the "Van Gelder sound." On the Blu-Ray, Philly Joe's drum kit is set well back from the horns and Paul Chambers' bowed bass has clarity and weight. Van Gelder put a close mic on Kenny Drew and gets a somewhat better piano sound than on other recording dates from the same period. The nearly 60 year-old tape reveals details that earlier transfers had veiled: when Van Gelder fiddles with the plate reverb signal at the beginning of Curtis Fuller's trombone solo in "Moment's Notice," the level adjustment is startling—and amusing.
In a direct comparison, the UMe Blu-Ray and the Analogue Productions SACD of Blue Train both present the music with detail, warmth and clarity. The Blu-Ray projects more low bass and clearer channel separation, typical of Alan Yoshida's remasters. Listening is a subjective process and listeners may have preferences between the two versions, but both are admirable. The Blu-Ray disc has two additional bonus alternate takes. The liner notes include Francis Woolf's black and white photos, very well printed.
Blue Train was a landmark recording, but far from John Coltrane's ultimate musical destination: Giant Steps, Live at the Village Vanguard, A Love Supreme and Ascension lay ahead. But the 1957 album firmly established his credentials as a composer, arranger and session leader, and justified the high estimation of his musical abilities that Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk had long held.
References
Porter, Lewis. John Coltrane: His Life and Music; University of Michigan Press, 1998; print Owens, Thomas. Bebop: The Music and the Players; Oxford University Press, 1995; print
Miles Davis: Take Off: The Complete Blue Note Sessions
Between 1952 and 1954, a low point in Miles Davis' personal and professional life, Blue Note Records label chief Alfred Lion organized a series of recording sessions that demonstrated his continuing faith in the ailing trumpet player's artistic promise. Sextet sessions engineered by Doug Hawkins at WOR Studios on May 9, 1952 and April 20, 1953, and a March 6, 1954 quartet session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio were compiled and reissued in 2001 on two RVG Edition CDs, in the CD box set Take Off: The Complete Blue Note Albums (Universal Music/Blue Note, 2014), and in 2015 on the present High Fidelity Pure Audio (HFPA) Blu-Ray disc.
Information about the provenance of tape sources used in newly remastered titles is not always easy to obtain. Liner notes and press releases may or may not identify those sources in detail. In response to a query about whether the original analogue tapes or Rudy Van Gelder's 2001 digital masters were used in the preparation of this Blu-Ray release, a label representative generously shared the following information:
"Bernie [Grundman] did the original transfer work from analog masters. He "created" new high resolution masters at 192/24 that Don Was approved for all of the Blue Note 75th anniversary projects.
Bernie's task originally was to recreate the masters for BLP 1501 and 1502 -the 12" albums from Miles's BN catalog. When the idea for a complete Blue Note Takes came up, the albums needed re-sequencing and there were additional takes that needed to be added.
That's where Kevin and Bob came in. They both did A-D transfers for the missing songs and in the process, additional, unreleased takes were discovered. Kevin did the sequencing for the CD version of this release but the BD master is different and was compiled by Arvato in Munich."
The explanation is illuminating, because the differences between the 2001 RVG CDs and the new Blu-Ray disc are not subtle. Compared to the CDs, the Blu-Ray displays extended highs (within the limits of early 1950's technology) and flat, unexaggerated bass response. Gil Coggins' piano and J.J. Johnson's trombone sound much more natural and detailed.
Kenny Clarke
drums1914 - 1985
All of this sonic improvement would be of little service if these recordings were of lesser value to jazz collectors than Miles' better-known recordings from later in the 1950s. In fact, the '52 and '53 WOR sessions are worthwhile not only for the inventiveness of Miles' solos and the quality of J.J. Johnson's compositions and arrangements, but for a rare opportunity to hear the elegant keyboard style of pianist Gil Coggins.
Gil Coggins had a brief musical career; he was Miles' first choice for the 1952 and 1953 Blue Note sessions, and appeared on The Ray Draper Quintet featuring John Coltrane (Prestige, 1958), but he quit live performing and did not return to public activity until the 1990s. In his autobiography Miles praised Coggins: "He was a hell of a pianist... If he had stayed at it I think he would have been one of the best piano players around."
The 30 tracks on the Blu-Ray—including four additional takes discovered since the 2014 CD set was released— visit a transitional period in modern jazz when the initial wave of bebop was flowing into a stream of musical tributaries. The trombonist-composer
J.J. Johnson
trombone1924 - 2001
Clifford Brown
trumpetb.1930
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
From a distance of six decades, it is easy to overlook the short-lived careers of musicians like Gil Coggins who left few traces of their work for posterity. Coggins' decision to trade music for the real estate business because the income for jazz musicians was unpredictable and the lifestyle often self-destructive, could have served to bolster Miles' determination to take business matters more seriously and practice his profession with greater discipline.
By 1954 Miles had successfully kicked a 5-year heroin habit and had begun searching for a suitable framework of sidemen to reestablish his place in the top echelon of jazz trumpeters.
Discographic Note: The first six tracks on the Blu-Ray do not follow the order indicated in the liner notes and back cover. The actual track order that appears on the Blu-Ray menu:
1. Dear Old Stockholm; 2. Woody 'N You; 3. Yesterdays; 4. Chance It; 5. Donna; 6. How Deep is the Ocean.
Herbie Hancock: Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage
The third domestic HFPA Blu-Ray release of 1950s-1960s recordings from UMe's extensive Blue Note Records tape archive was compiled from Herbie Hancock's Blue Note sessions Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage. The Blu-Ray disc includes multiple alternate unreleased takes of three of the four compositions from Empyrean Isles. Empyrean Isles was remastered by Bernie Grundman, Maiden Voyage by Alan Yoshida, and the alternate takes by Robert Vosgien. 
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
In an article posted on the blog jazz.com, jazz historian Ted Gioia offered a succinct description of what he calls the "Chicago school" of modern jazz piano:
"The essence of this music is a judicious balance between the linear momentum of bebop and the vertical conception of [Art] Tatum and [Earl] Hines. These Chicago keyboardists were two-handed players, with an ear for lush, resonant harmonies, and a knack for balancing the cerebral and emotional components in their music. When most players were emulating the spare left-hand work of
Bud Powell
piano1924 - 1966
By the time Herbie Hancock arrived in New York in 1960, he had mastered the sound of the Chicago school. After hearing him play with Donald Byrd's group, Alfred Lion signed Hancock to Blue Note Records, and by 1962 the 22 year- old pianist was leading sessions of his own compositions. Within a year, Miles Davis' teenage drum protégé Tony Williams encouraged Davis to hire Hancock in the critical dual role of pianist-composer.
The two Blue Note recordings that are collected on this disc have not been out of print since their initial release, due, in no small part, to the wide exposure Hancock received as a working member of the Miles Davis group. Hancock actively supported Davis' New Directions electric music, and had considerable success with his own jazz-funk LP Head Hunters (Columbia, 1973) and the mega-hit song and landmark MTV video "Rockit." There are very few pianists of Hancock's generation as adept at balancing the demands of the muse against the realities of the record business. It is a curious coincidence that his immediate successors in the Miles Davis group,
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
Keith Jarrett
pianob.1945
Empyrean Isles
Recorded at Van Gelder studios on June 17, 1964, Empyrean Isles, performed by a quartet of trumpet, piano, bass and drums, was the fourth session in two years under Hancock's leadership. Hancock has said that the absence of a saxophone necessitated reducing the head arrangements to very brief melodic statements. The personnel, Hancock's rhythm section partners from the Miles Davis Quintet, bassist
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
Tony Williams
drums1945 - 1997
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
The fast-tempo opener "One Finger Snap" starts off with a rapidly shifting melodic turn then launches straight into an aggressive Hubbard solo over modal changes. "Oliloqui Valley" follows, a more introspective composition that allows space for Hancock to explore the light-touch balladic style he would develop further during his tenure in the Davis group. Hubbard plays long melodic lines with controlled vibrato and a clean, brassy tone.
In the early years of his performing career,
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Booker Little
trumpet1938 - 1961
Kenny Dorham
trumpet1924 - 1972
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
Ornette Coleman
saxophone, alto1930 - 2015
"Cantaloupe Island" conforms to the well-tested template of "Watermelon Man" and "Blind Man, Blind Man" from Hancock's earlier Blue Note sessions. The two-handed piano approach lends rhythmic drive to a very simple, funky hard-bop composition. Hancock's proficiency at writing popular tunes would become a hallmark of his electric bands, but even at this early date it must have been a relief to Blue Note that his fourth LP for the label contained at least one track that would get radio and jukebox play.
The last and longest piece (14 minutes) does not appear among the alternate tracks because it was a spontaneous, unrehearsed take. "The Egg" opens with a rhythmically insistent (fast 6/4) piano riff based on a single chord that gradually transitions into substitutions on the original chord. Tony Williams churns a marching drum roll on his snare while Hubbard runs up and down the trumpet—scales, angular riffs, bebop lines, arpeggios, anything that comes to mind— trying vainly to find something interesting to contribute. At the five-minute point, Hancock must have indicated to the band that the first segment was over. Hubbard abruptly drops out, Williams switches to free-time hand percussion accents, and Carter picks up his bow and plays a two-minute arco solo veiled under a layer of studio reverb. Hancock's rejoinder, an orchestral passage of chromatic lyricism, shows the influence of Debussy and Gershwin; he is moving in a direction that would be explored further by many pianists in the coming decades. By the eight-minute point, Williams and Carter begin keeping straight time and Hancock sketches out a fairly conventional improvisation, but ultimately, the music is too fragmentary to cohere. "The Egg" is described in the liner notes as unplanned, and while it may have felt liberating to the musicians at the time of the recording, spontaneous composition was not this band's métier—they were not free improv players.
The multiple alternate takes of the three shorter tracks are all interesting performances and a good use of the extra-long capacity of the Blu-Ray platform. Moreover, the physical tape on which those takes were recorded was probably untouched for 50 years, so the alternates sound better (from a purely aural perspective) than the master takes.
Maiden Voyage
On March 11, 1965, Hancock returned to Van Gelder Studios with a quintet that included Hubbard, Carter, Williams and the recent ex-tenor saxophonist of the Miles Davis Quintet,
George Coleman
saxophone, tenorb.1935
The record is so well-known that it doesn't bear extensive descriptive notes; the pieces are played constantly on jazz radio stations and streamed on popular online services. Anyone likely to acquire this HFPA disc already has familiarity with the music.
What may be less well-known is the breadth of George Coleman's contributions to the continuity of jazz music. The Memphis native was a friend and frequent collaborator with the tragically short-lived trumpet player-composer Booker Little; preferred sideman in Max Roach's post-Clifford Brown bands; transitional tenor player in Miles Davis' group from 1962- 63; collaborator with pianists
Harold Mabern
piano1936 - 2019
Mal Waldron
piano1925 - 2002
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Charles Mingus
bass, acoustic1922 - 1979
Coleman's playing on the Maiden Voyage session displays the confident artistry that distinguished his work alongside Miles Davis in the live recordings of the transitional Quintet ca. 1962 and 1963. Sounding unlike tenor players
Hank Mobley
saxophone, tenor1930 - 1986
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
The album is a storehouse of musical pleasures. Listen to Freddie Hubbard's unexpected, growling multiphonics towards the end of his solo on "The Eye of the Hurricane," and Tony Williams' fleet brushwork on the ride cymbals throughout the session. The well-preserved tape sounds as good as Alan Yoshida's other transfers of Blue Note titles from the same 1964- 65 period. The recorded piano sound on Maiden Voyage has more timbral detail than on Empyrean Isles; discerning collectors should find it far more listenable than previous digital releases of this title.
Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage, like Blue Train and the Take Off sessions, are bona fide jazz classics deserving of high-resolution transfer and deluxe presentation. It is to be hoped that all seventy-five of the Blue Note 75 Series will become available as high-res audio downloads.
Note: These reviews originally appeared in a different form on HRAudio.net, and are reprinted with permission of the site owner.
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