Music From Miles Davis & John Coltrane, Grouper
Miles Davis & John Coltrane
The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6
(Columbia/Legacy)
Responding to a Swedish interviewer after a March 1960 performance, who pointed out that some critics said that saxophonist John Coltrane’s sound turned “unbeautiful,” Coltrane said, “I’m trying so many things at one time, you see. Like, I haven’t sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I’m trying to work through...”
While some assume that a musician’s sound mirrors their personality—and that Coltrane was channeling anger—he clarified that it came from freedom, not anger: “I’ve been so free here; almost anything I want to try, I’m welcome to do it.”
The aforementioned interview is the final track on the new four-CD collection The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6, and the set documents concerts organized by Norman Granz from Miles Davis’ European tour in the spring of 1960 with a five-piece subset of players from the immortal album Kind of Blue.
Coltrane himself had just released a masterpiece, Giant Steps, and was fearlessly uncovering modern jazz territory at a pivotal point in his career; after the tour, Coltrane ceased playing as a sideman and concentrated on being a leader. Drummer Jimmy Cobb commented later that Coltrane had “outgrown everybody’s band except his own.”
Anyone who pushes ahead typically meets some resistance, and Coltrane’s long solos on The Final Tour, which typically began agreeably before becoming unpredictable and challenging, ruffled more than a few feathers; audience members can be heard whistling, which in this context can be interpreted as dismissive rather than supportive.
On the collection’s opening number, Cole Porter’s “All of Me,” after Coltrane’s mind-expanding solo, pianist Wynton Kelly’s solo—while perfectly fine by normal standards—sounds timid and utterly conventional in comparison.
The four renditions of “So What” are significantly fasterthan the familiar studio take, and all musicians are engaged and spry, making each version seem fresh in its own way.
While the previous entry in The Bootleg Series (Vol. 5: Freedom Jazz Dance) perhaps went too far into jazz-nerd super-fan territory, this writer feels like the series is back on track with this superb entry.
It’s a generous offering with excellent sound quality, showing Davis’ perpetual creative growth—with his explorations in modal jazz—and a bold turn for Coltrane, undeterred by rattled audiences.
Grouper
Grid of Points
(Kranky)
Everyone has experienced culinary hankerings, when just one specific dish and nothing else will bring satisfaction at that moment; for this writer, solitude has very specific strains, matched by very specific music that can scratch very specific itches. For example, there’s the devastating despair and powerlessness of Red House Painters, or the profoundly and uncomfortably bleak outsider ramblings of early Jandek.
However, for such examples, the satisfaction isn’t about being lifted into a joyous state, but rather, it’s about bringing some sense of comfort in commiseration and acknowledgment that one isn’t alone in one’s loneliness.
Liz Harris from Astoria, Ore., better known in the music world as Grouper, reveals her own particular world of aural solitude; it’s a sparse and seemingly private glimpse with a simultaneous feeling of serenity and unease, and in a way it can be cleansing. Her new mini-album Grid of Points clocks in at 22 minutes and apparently was finished when she started to run a fever, interrupting her recording process. It very much follows in the vein of her stunning piano-based 2014 album Ruins, being both intimate and obscured, perhaps like a close-up of a grainy photograph or a conversation through a layer of black lace.
Harris continues to use her 4-track recorder, primitive by modern standards, and adding to the hazy proceedings, there’s apparently no attempt to remove the tape hiss; however, she has moved away from her more noisy work and relies less upon effects processing, apart from generous doses of reverb and some sparing use of echo effects, like the delay-treated vocals on “Thanksgiving Song.”
The short, opening track “The Races” is performed a cappella, and it’s an anomaly, with gospel-esque harmonizing that doesn’t quite set the album’s direction. On the piano, Harris’ right-hand work often mirrors her vocal melodies while her left hand casually sets down chords in a basic structure.
Her vocals are unwavering and unadorned, with Harris preferring to avoid vibrato, and although they are upfront, they are hard to make out.
The peak of her vocal powers are heard on “Blouse,” which uses a beautiful tension and melodic upward climb, finally reaching an emotional peak at the top note.
For the uninitiated, the simplicity of Grid of Points may at first be confounding or even unimpressive, but for those who succumb to its spell, it’s a rare delicacy as Grouper’s secret world is only open to one person at a time.