John Coltrane - 'Living Space'

 

'Living Space' was released in 1998, and consists of five posthumously released tracks recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on June 10th and 16th, 1965.  These recordings feature Trane's so-called Classic Quartet, so along with Trane on tenor and soprano saxophones (natch) we have, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.  The sessions were produced by Bob Thiele and Trane.

Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane & Jimmy Garrison

Posthumous studio releases can be a strange business.  Most of the time they're little more than record companies milking as much as possible out of an artist's back catalog.  This includes unreleased material, outtakes, alternate versions of songs, and other "gems" that amount to little more than "scrapings from the barrel" or "crumbs from the master's table" type of affairs.  Now don't get me wrong, sometimes with artists of a certain musical stature these can be fascinating insights into the artist's work.  Other times, it becomes all too clear why the material sat on a shelf for years and years.  Occasionally, a collection of outtakes emerges that is just as good as the material released during its time.  This collection is one such example.

1965 was a fertile year for Trane, as he pushed and pushed at the boundaries of jazz convention.  His releases from that year range from the classic among classics, 'A Love Supreme' to arguably the defining album of free jazz, 'Ascension'.  The change in style evident between these two classic albums didn't happen overnight, and 'Living Space' goes some way towards documenting the shift in 'Trane's sound.

"Living Space" is unusual in a few respects; it's the last time Trane played soprano on a studio recording (at least as far as we know), but doesn't have much in common with his other soprano features, which tended to be catchy waltzes, such as"My Favorite Things", "Afro Blue", "Chim Chim Cheree", "The Inch Worm", etc.  On the title track, Trane overdubbed his playing at the beginning and end of the tune; the two soprano saxophones are slightly out of sync, creating a very eerie and trippy sound.  It's interesting to hear Trane apply his increasingly free playing to the soprano, especially since he focused on the tenor almost exclusively (in the studio) from 1964 onward.

This album is a dreamy, melodic, and exploratory blend of all Coltrane’s periods.

The freeload is a 2015 limited edition remastered reissue of the original 1998 release from the Japanese "Impulse! Classics 50" series, and has excellent sonics.  It also has a very nice booklet with liner notes from Trane (and Ornette Coleman) scholar, David Wild, and is included in the freeload.

For the freeload, what are some of your favorite unreleased, outtakes, or alternate versions of songs, that were posthumously released.