Acknowledgement
John Coltrane turns 100, and the day runs from a sold out birthday set at Dizzy's Club to a 26 hour radio marathon in Philadelphia. Later, the night in Englewood Cliffs that nobody photographed.
LioraJohn Coltrane is 100 today. The seven o'clock in New York is gone. Philadelphia has been playing him since midnight. Today's record is Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves. And later, the session nobody photographed. It's Wednesday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Wednesday, September 23rd. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Coltrane is 100 today: the birthday program at Dizzy's Club is sold out at seven
LioraJohn Coltrane is 100 today.
New York marks it at Dizzy's Club, the second of six nights the pianist Geoffrey Keezer curates. Tonight is the program the run was built around, the 1963 album with Johnny Hartman. The singer Jose James fronts it, with Ron Blake on tenor and soprano, Keezer on piano, Noriko Ueda on bass, Rudy Royston on drums. The seven o'clock set reads sold out. Nine is still open. The cover runs between fifty and sixty dollars this week, plus a twenty five dollar food and drink minimum.
LioraPhiladelphia has been at it since midnight. WRTI, the Temple University station, is running a twenty six hour Coltrane broadcast. As scheduled: "Ballads" at four this morning, "A Love Supreme" in full tonight at eight. WRTI also has the Jaleel Shaw Trio free in LOVE Park, six to seven thirty. At the Mandell Theater, Ars Nova Workshop opens five days of Coltrane with the Sun Ra Arkestra at eight.
Two governments put him in the record this year. The New York State Senate adopted a resolution in April for the hundredth anniversary of his birth. In Philadelphia, a Councilmember introduced legislation to make September 23rd John Coltrane Day.
Two. Listen to This: "Dedicated to You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves
Liora"Dedicated to You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet with Dianne Reeves, out September 18th on Blue Note. Marsalis on saxophone, Reeves singing, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, Justin Faulkner on drums. The label's own store lists the download at ten ninety nine.
They rework the six standards from that 1963 Hartman album, then add instrumentals from Coltrane's own book.
Here is the tip. Reeves explains the whole record in one sentence about Coltrane and Hartman: "They stood in the band, not in front of the band. They saw themselves as co-creators of the sound." Play it listening for that.
Now the release desk. Blue Note says the pianist Kiefer puts out his label debut, "Memory Bomb," on September 25th.
LioraEnglewood Cliffs, New Jersey. December 9th, 1964. Four men cut a suite in four parts, and nobody in that room took a picture. The photographs everyone knows are from the next night. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Nobody photographed the night John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouEnglewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Wednesday evening, December 9th, 1964. Rudy Van Gelder's studio. Four men at work. John Coltrane, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Elvin Jones on drums. They are recording a suite in four parts. A Love Supreme.
Coltrane wrote it at his house in Dix Hills, on Long Island. Alice Coltrane is the only witness to that week, so take it as she told it. She told the writer Ashley Kahn that he shut himself in the upstairs room for four or five days with "pen, paper, and saxophone." What he told her was this. "It's the first time I have everything, everything ready."
LioraHow long from that room to the studio?
SekouThree months.
The room is set up to feel like a club, not a studio. Dim lighting. The engineer ready. Bob Thiele, the producer, booked Coltrane at night on purpose. He said why. "I used to record Coltrane at night, rather than having to announce during the day what I was doing."
The first take on tape is a few halting notes of bass from Jimmy Garrison, and it stops.
By the end of the night the whole suite is done. Van Gelder said that was not how he worked. "They did the whole suite in one session."
Thiele booked no photographer and brought no camera. Thiele hired no photographer, and brought no camera.
LioraHold on. I have seen photographs of that session.
SekouYou have seen photographs. They are from the next night.
December 10th, same studio. Coltrane comes back and tries the opening movement again with six players, adding Archie Shepp on tenor and a second bassist, Art Davis. The sextet runs six takes and stops. None of the December 10th music went on the album.
Chuck Stewart was in that room with a camera. Six rolls of black and white film. Kahn calls them "the sole visual record of that evening."
LioraSo the pictures everyone knows are from the session he set aside.
SekouThey are. Coltrane put that session on the sleeve himself. He thanked Archie Shepp and Art Davis, who "both recorded on a track that regrettably will not be released at this time."
One sentence, and writers spent decades calling it the lost version. It was not lost. In 2015 the label put those December 10th takes out on A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters. Shepp's own verdict on that night was regret. "I wish now that I had enough nerve to look at the music."
There is one more thing that record is not. It sounds like four men playing live, nothing touched afterward. The chant on the first movement went onto the tape as an overdub.
LioraWait. An overdub?
SekouAn overdub. The end of the last movement carries a second saxophone, with the bass and the drums doubled. Van Gelder said the idea came from Coltrane, who wanted to fix the end.
When Lewis Porter first said this out loud, Bob Thiele's answer was, "Are you crazy? Millions of people have heard that album." Van Gelder listened again. He told Porter, "you're right, we did do some overdubbing."
Stewart's six rolls sat undeveloped for fifty years, until his son David found them. Asked whether that night had felt momentous, Stewart said, "I didn't make those kinds of judgments. I'm not a musician, so I had no way of knowing one way or another."
LioraThe record we know is a night with no pictures. The pictures we know are of a night he set aside. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Isaiah Collier plays Coltrane in Baltimore and the Keith Oxman Quartet marks the
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's Baltimore. Keystone Korner bills Isaiah Collier, "Collier Plays Coltrane," celebrating the hundredth birthday. One set, at seven. The club's calendar says doors at five for a seven o'clock show Tuesday through Thursday. It names no sidemen and prints no face price.
Now the sweep. In Denver, Dazzle has the other centennial of the night, the Keith Oxman Quartet, also billed for the hundredth birthday. Doors at six, music at seven. Seats run seventeen to twenty seven dollars.
In Philadelphia, Chris' Jazz Cafe has the saxophonist Jeremy Alie Leon and his quartet at seven thirty and nine. Twenty dollars.
LioraIn New York, Mezzrow runs four sets. The Billy Drummond Trio at six and seven thirty, with Peter Washington on bass and Peter Zak on piano. Then the William Schwartzman Trio at nine and ten thirty. Thirty five dollars a set, twenty five at the door.
In Chicago, the Green Mill has Alfonso Ponticelli from eight to midnight. Ten dollars, cash only.
One room I cannot call. Blues Alley in Washington posts no dated listing on its own site.
Five. One More Note: Ray Charles was born on this date in 1930 in Albany, Georgia
LioraSeptember 23rd, 1930. Albany, Georgia. Ray Charles is born.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame keeps his file, and it counts a forty seven year career. "I Gotta Woman" was the first major hit. "Georgia on My Mind" became the official state song of Georgia in 1979.
He was an original inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in January 1986.
His own line, off that same page: "I'll keep making my music as long as there's anyone who wants to hear me."
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Wednesday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.