Two From Trane - 'Ole Coltrane' and 'Africa/Brass'

'Olé Coltrane' was the last session John Coltrane recorded for Atlantic Records, and he cut the album simultaneously with Africa/Brass, his first set for Impulse, in a different studio.  The two sets complement each other, suggesting a shift in the grand scheme of Coltrane's music.  When 'Ole' hit the record stores, Coltrane's debut for Impulse, 'Africa/Brass', had in fact just been released the year before. Not though that this was any backwards-looking, vault-digging, barrel-scraping or crumbs from the master's table release…far from it.

Released in November 1961, 'Olé' found Coltrane recording with his regular live group, a cutting-edge ensemble that featured the brilliant alto saxophonist and flautist Eric Dolphy, who was credited as “George Lane” on the first pressing of the album because he was contracted to Prestige Records at the time.  The band’s rhythm section was: pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones would play an important role during the saxophonist’s ‘Impulse!’ tenure. Reflecting Coltrane’s interest at that stage of his career in using larger ensembles, the group was augmented by the rising young trumpet star Freddie Hubbard – who could play hard bop and avant-garde music equally well – and a second bassist, Art Davis.  The expanded group gave Coltrane a bigger and broader sonic canvas to work with, and the presence of Eric Dolphy in the band, who was a leading light of avant-garde jazz scene, and exerted a strong effect on the saxophonist, who told an interviewer: “When he is up there searching and experimenting, I learn a lot from him.”  By the time 'Olé Coltrane' was released, the jazz world seemed more interested in where Coltrane was going rather than where he’d been; there was certainly more focus on the groundbreaking work he was doing at his new label, Impulse!, and, consequently, the album that marked his final Atlantic chapter has tended to be overlooked, even by some of the saxophonist’s staunchest fans.

But 'Olé' was an important release in Coltrane’s career because it demonstrated how his embrace of modal jazz set him free as an improviser, allowing him to explore a multitude of ideas in a single improvised performance that could be extended for as long as he had the creativity, the inclination and the energy to keep going. In fact, the 18-minute title track – the longest that Coltrane had committed to tape at the time it was recorded – was a perfect illustration of the saxophonist’s confession to Olé Coltrane’s liner notes author, Ralph J Gleason: “I like to play long.”  In terms of its length, the piece was also reflective of how the saxophonist stretched out his performances on the bandstand, sometimes for as long as 30 or 45 minutes, as he explored a succession of musical ideas which came out as a continuous stream of melody. 

In late May 1961, Creed Taylor, the man who had founded the 'Impulse!' label a few months earlier, took John Coltrane into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio for his first session with the new up-and-coming label to record 'Africa/Brass'.  Taylor persuaded John Coltrane to record at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, but not with just his regular quintet.  He got Coltrane to work with a big band, 17 pieces on one track, including French horns and a euphonium.  Instead of Oliver Nelson, who had originally been slated to arrange the music for the two sessions, it was Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner, Coltrane’s pianist, that pulled off some brilliant twists and turns for what became 'Africa/Brass'.

The main work here is the 16-minute Africa where Coltrane’s quartet stretches out with background harmonies from Freddie Hubbard, Booker Little and Julius Watkins among those contributing brass interjections. Coltrane’s long modal improvisation sets the mood of the piece, and his lines become more and more fractured and intense as it proceeds.  The two bass players dart and weave around him all through the track, adding another dimension of mysterious sound.  Towards the end, Elvin Jones plays one of his most intricate solos full of thrashing cross rhythms and then Coltrane returns to take it out, although he leaves the last word to the two bass players.  This recording was made just before Coltrane employed Jimmy Garrison as his regular and, as it turned out, long-term bass player, but here the duties are shared by Reggie Workman, his current bassist, Art Davis, his NYC-only bass player and Paul Chambers, on leave from the Miles Davis quintet.  With so much talent in the brass ranks, it seems strange that neither Little, Hubbard nor indeed Eric Dolphy had any solo opportunities.  But then the emphasis was on the quartet, and we do get solos from Tyner and Jones.

The other tracks are just as interesting, with Coltrane playing a rich soprano solo over the 6/8 quartet and brasses background of 'Greensleeves'.  This bouncing jazz version might have surprised Henry VIII (alleged to have written it), although Coltrane did paradoxically stay close to the original composition, not least in keeping the original 6/8. Still on a folk music kick, Coltrane dug out the traditional 'Song Of The Underground Railway', an attractive melody which Coltrane plays more or less straight with churning rhythm and brass interjections.  Blues Minor is a hard-swinging head arrangement put together at the date with fervent, leaping tenor all through.

For this freeload, which incidentally is Japanese remastered, 24-bit, 192 kHz releases, tell us about an album you didn't like the first time you heard it, but after a listening to it a few times, became a favorite.