John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard (1976 Japanese Impulse! Gatefold LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese ABC Impulse! Stereo Gatefold Reissue (YP-8521-AI, Nippon Columbia Co. Ltd.)

This is where the argument started. Recorded at the Village Vanguard in November 1961 and released in 1962, the album drew ire from critics at the time, with one calling it "musical nonsense." In hindsight it looks like criticism scrambling to catch up with music that had already moved on.

Three pieces, two nights. "Spiritual" opens on November 3, Dolphy's bass clarinet winding around Coltrane's tenor in counterpoint before Coltrane switches to soprano halfway through. Tyner solos. The piece ends with both horns on the theme together. "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" follows, the Romberg and Hammerstein standard, Coltrane on soprano, the rhythm section opening the piece in a familiar way before he takes it somewhere else entirely.

Side B is "Chasin' the Trane" alone. Tyner sat out. What remains is Coltrane, Reggie Workman and Elvin Jones, sixteen minutes, a blues structure used as a launching point and then largely abandoned. This is what the critics couldn't handle: a soloist with no harmonic net, pushing the saxophone past its expected range and tone. Jones plays like a man possessed. Workman holds the centre. Coltrane just keeps going.

This is the 1976 Japanese ABC Impulse! stereo gatefold reissue (YP-8521-AI), manufactured by Nippon Columbia Co. Ltd.