Home » Jazz Articles » Building a Jazz Library » John Coltrane: Top Ten Live Albums
John Coltrane: Top Ten Live Albums
Someone in the audience would stand up, their arms upreaching, and they would be like that for an hour or more. Their clothing would be soaked with perspiration, and when they finally sat down they practically fell down. The music took people out of the material world.
—Alice Coltrane
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Coltrane's live performances had a trajectory which was largely independent of his studio albums; he did not build set lists around his latest release. For instance, Coltrane never "toured" Ballads (Impulse, 1963) or Crescent (Impulse, 1964) and only once performed the four-part suite which comprises A Love Supreme (Impulse, 1965) in concert, and never in a club, despite it being his biggest selling album during his lifetime. Well into 1966, the year before he passed, Coltrane drew most of his repertoire from a small body of material which had been in his band book for years and often pre-dated the formation in 1961 of his classic quartet with pianist
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Jimmy Garrison
bass, acoustic1934 - 1976
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
So the same tunes crop up again and again on the albums in this top ten. But the manner in which Coltrane approaches them is constantly evolving. Each performance is fresh minted and totally in the moment, and that applies to the ensemble passages as much as it does to the solos. McCoy Tyner, who was with Coltrane from May 1960 to December 1965, said that Coltrane chose set lists from tunes he felt had the potential "to grow."
Track durations on live albums are usually longer than on studio recordings, but Coltrane took that further than most contemporary bandleaders. Partly this was to accommodate solos by his bandmates, but mainly it was to allow extra time for his own solos, for as he matured as a player, he found he had more, not less, to say. Coltrane's first live LP under his own name, Live At The Village Vanguard (Impulse, 1961) contains just three tunes, and Bye Bye Blackbird: His Greatest Concert Performance (Pablo, 1981), recorded in 1962, contains just two. Track times of twenty minutes or longer are the norm (and some tunes had live durations which could not be fitted on to even both sides of an LP).
By 1962, Coltrane's live performances had become so intense that they frequently sparked out of body experiences among audience members. In an interview with Black Creation magazine in 1972, the bassist
Art Davis
bass, acoustic1934 - 2007
Tenor saxophonist
Archie Shepp
saxophone, tenorb.1937
There were occasions when the intensity of Coltrane's performance was met by hostility. One such incident was reported by reed player
Anthony Braxton
woodwindsb.1945
Rashied Ali
drums1935 - 2009
Coltrane's genius was colossal, but his humility was river deep. Referring to attacks in the press, Art Davis said: "He was very much a man of conviction, even though a lot of people said a lot of very bad, hurting things about him. He'd say 'that's their opinion,' rather than cursing someone out or saying, 'if I see that motherfucker I'm going to beat the shit out of him.'"
Fortunately for us, there are many Coltrane live albums out there to explore and enjoy. Some are marred by poor audio quality but they all, without exception, contain first-class music. All the albums in this top ten have excellent sound other than one from 1962 which is included because of the majesty of the performance, which renders other considerations of small concern.
GET ON THE LIVETRANE: TOP TEN ALBUMS
These albums are presented in order of recording, not of release.
Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane At Carnegie Hall
Blue Note, 2005
At Carnegie Hall was recorded in late 1957, an eventful year in Coltrane's development. In April, he went cold turkey and put heroin and alcohol behind him once and for all. The same month he began an intense study regime with
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Billie Holiday
vocals1915 - 1959
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Ray Charles
piano and vocals1930 - 2004
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
John Coltrane Live At The Village Vanguard: The Master Takes
Impulse, 1998
Recorded in November 1961, the LP Live At The Village Vanguard (Impulse, 1962) was the first live album to be released under Coltrane's name and the first of his albums to be produced by Bob Thiele. It was also the first to bring the full force of the jazz establishment down on Coltrane's head. The classic quartet was not yet completely in place and, for most of the four-night engagement, Coltrane led a quintet comprising bass clarinetist and alto saxophonist
Eric Dolphy
woodwinds1928 - 1964
Reggie Workman
bassb.1937
John Coltrane Quartet Impressions Graz 1962
ezz-thetics, 2019
Jimmy Garrison formally replaced Reggie Workman in December 1961, and Impressions Graz 1962 was recorded in Austria during the classic quartet's first European tour in November 1962. A companion disc, My Favorite Things Graz 1962 (ezz-thetics, 2020), comes from the same concert. The content on both albums was recorded by radio station ORF Steiermark and the top-drawer sound is enhanced by the immaculate mastering which is a signature of Werner Uehlinger's Swiss-based Hat Hut and ezz-thetics labels. The concert was the twelfth in a series of one-night stands, performed without a single rest day, which had taken the band through France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany before its arrival in Graz. By 2021 standards, life on the road was rugged in 1962, even for an artist of Coltrane's standing, but the band is as ineffably on its game as ever. We can safely imagine that Elvin Jones was speaking for all four musicians when in a 2001 interview he said, "Playing with those three, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison, it was almost the most important thing in my life during that period of time, the only thing I could think about. I couldn't wait to get to the bandstand and play with these guys every night." The two Graz albums have a combined running time of over two hours. The eight tracks include performances of "Impressions," "My Favorite Things," "Mr P.C.," "I Want To Talk About You" and—Collector's Corner Alert—the only known Coltrane recording of the standard "Autumn Leaves." By turns tender and tempestuous, the albums are essential listening.
John ColtraneBye Bye Blackbird: His Greatest Concert Performance
Pablo, 1981
The sound quality on Bye Bye Blackbird: His Greatest Concert Performance , which was also recorded during the quartet's November 1962 European tour, is not a patch on that of the ezz-thetics discs. But the performances are incandescent. The album contains just two tracks, "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Traneing In." On "Traneing In," Coltrane delivers a 12-minute tenor solo which is among the most thrilling he ever recorded, live or in the studio, and which excuses tour promoter and Pablo director
Norman Granz
b.1918
John Coltrane QuartetNewport, New York, Alabama 1963 Revisited
ezz-thetics, 2021
Another superbly remastered ezz-thetics release, this time of the Impulse albums Newport '63 and Coltrane Live At Birdland, both recorded in 1963. (Under Swiss law, recordings made up until 1969 are in the public domain, and as a member of SUISA, the Swiss Cooperative Society for Music Authors and Publishers, Uehlinger pays due royalties for the compositions on them). When the Newport Jazz Festival tracks were recorded,
Roy Haynes
drums1926 - 2024
John ColtraneAfro Blue Impressions
Pablo, 1977
This 2xCD set was recorded on the quartet's October-November 1963 European tour, which was once more booked and recorded by Norman Granz. Sound quality is markedly better than on 1962's Bye Bye Blackbird: His Greatest Concert Performance, although Tyner and Garrison are occasionally a bit lost, particularly when Coltrane and Jones get stuck into the barnstorming tenor and drums duets on "Chasin' The Trane," "Cousin Mary" and "Impressions." Contemporary reviews confirm that Coltrane essayed some full-on sonic paintstripping on the tour, but Granz chose not to include these on Afro Blue Impressions. No matter; what is preserved is superb. The other tunes are "Afro Blue," "Naima," "I Want To Talk About You," "Spiritual," "My Favorite Things" and, in a reversal of Coltrane's usual practice of only touring material which he had previously recorded in the studio, "Lonnie's Lament," which would be revisited at Van Gelder's for Crescent (Impulse) in 1964.
John ColtraneOne Down, One Up: Live At The Half Note
Impulse, 2005
New York's Half Note, a small no-frills establishment in Lower Manhattan just a few yards from the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, was to Coltrane in 1965 what the Bowery's Five Spot had been to
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Ravi Coltrane
saxophone, tenorb.1965
John ColtraneA Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition
Impulse, 2002
Another magnificent, unmissable 2xCD set. Disc one is the historic studio album recorded on December 9 1964, restored and remastered by original engineer Rudy Van Gelder from a newly discovered analogue tape to deliver a sound which puts all previous vinyl and digital reissues in the shade. Disc two includes two previously unreleased, long-rumoured-going-on-presumed-mythical recordings of the suite's opening movement, "Acknowledgement," made at Van Gelder's on December 10 by the classic quartet augmented by Archie Shepp on tenor saxophone and Art Davis on bass. So far, so heavenly. The reason the package qualifies for this Top Ten, however, is that disc two also includes the only known live performance Coltrane ever gave of the complete "A Love Supreme" suite, recorded for broadcast by French radio at the Antibes Jazz Festival on July 26 1965. The Antibes performance runs for eleven minutes longer than the studio LP and most of the extra time is given over to part three, "Pursuance," which includes an extended tenor solo during which Coltrane takes the already incandescent material even higher. In summer 1965, A Love Supreme was still to be released in France and some audience members, unprepared for the music, found it hard to take; there were, we are told, more than a few walk-outs.
John ColtraneLive In Paris
Affinity / Charly, 1987
Recorded on the same 1965 tour as the July 26 Antibes "A Love Supreme," Live In Paris is a CD reissue of two LPs that were released on French label BYG in 1972 as Live In Paris Part 1 and Part 2. Most of the material was indeed recorded in Paris, at a concert at the Salle Pleyel on July 28, but two tracks, "Naima" and "Impressions," were recorded on the second night in Antibes, on July 27. Perhaps in order to to carry the audience with him, Coltrane had changed his set list. The Salle Pleyel performance comprises "Afro-Blue," "Impressions" and "Blue Valse," which is a mistitled 22:42 quartet recalibration of "Ascension," which Coltrane had recorded with a larger ensemble just a month earlier in New York. The Paris audience seems to have been hipper to late-period Coltrane than the jet-set C?te d'Azur festival crowd and it sounds as though the quartet, "Blue Valse" and all, was enthusiastically received.
John ColtraneLive At The Village Vanguard Again!
Impulse, 1966
We end where we more or less began, at New York's Village Vanguard, but four-and-a-half years later. Live At The Village Vanguard Again! was recorded in May 1966, by which time McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones had quit the quartet and Jimmy Garrison was on the verge of following them. The partings were regretted but amicable: the musicians respected Coltrane's right to pursue his new trajectory but complained that they were often literally unable to hear themselves above the uproar created by second drummer
Rashied Ali
drums1935 - 2009
Pharoah Sanders
saxophone, tenor1940 - 2022
Alice Coltrane
piano1937 - 2007
Tags
Building a Jazz Library
John Coltrane
Chris May
McCoy Tyner
Jimmy Garrison
Elvin Jones
Art Davis
archie shepp
anthony braxton
Rashied Ali
Thelonious Monk
Billie Holiday
Sonny Rollins
Ray Charles
Dizzy Gillespie
Eric Dolphy
Reggie Workman
Norman Granz
Roy Haynes
Ravi Coltrane
Pharoah Sanders
Alice Coltrane
Emanuel Rahim
Comments
PREVIOUS / NEXT
Support All About Jazz
All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.
Buy Now
