John Coltrane‘s ’60s records were my entry into any appreciation I have to this day for jazz. I love most of the dozen or so albums I own from this period, but Coltrane is responsible for one of the great toxic waste bins in the jazz section of any store or online retailer. I’ve got nothing against dashikis or psychedelic fonts, in fact, I love them. But put them together on an Impulse! release and I’m not buying. I’ve been burnt one too many time – twice, in fact – by Coltrane albums packaged in this manner, and I won’t be burnt again.
After buying a few “pyschedelic” Coltrane albums I steered clear of possibly Pharoah Sanders’ best works, but I probably saved myself the money and effort of trying to get into countless other “psychedelic jazz” wankfests. If for no other reason, I’m confident my bias against attempts by Impulse! to tap into the psychedelic rock era were justified by the line I swore I would never cross:
To this day I’ve never heard Coltrane’s Sunship. There’s so much that appeals to me on that cover shot, but I’d been burnt one too many times. I buy that thing, I said to myself, and next thing you know I’ll be shelling out for all those anthropological museum-worthy Art Ensemble of Chicago albums. Townsman dbuskirk, you are a bigger man than I!
I’ve made at least one exception to my restraint in purchasing albums by dashiki-wearing jazz cats on Impulse! releases employing psychedelic fonts, an Albert Ayler album that I like. Before buying that album I first heard Ayler on an E.S.P. release, a label that tapped directly into the hippie/freak scene without stooping to dashikis and psychedelic fonts. Even with those trimmings on the Impulse! release, Ayler did his thing as if he’d been packed in stark, tasteful, black and white graphics.
Honestly, the notion that “head music” needed to be packaged in mind-blowing, psychedelic record sleeves got old fast. How many psychedelic rock albums past Are You Experienced really were worthy of that font? Mile Davis‘ “psych” albums on Columbia had the good taste to employ a “trippy” look that picked up on the growing Afro-pride angle of the dashikis and nappy beauty but avoided the trappings of some lame Disreali Gears knock-off. Ornette Coleman generally kept his distance from the dashiki and psycedelic font set, allowing the mod font and smokin’ twins to do the Love Generation talking on his very cool Love Call album.
Among some of his best-known associates, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry did not show their bandleader’s resolve. Was Haden the whitest jazz cat to don the dashiki?
(His Music Liberation Orchestra album is a winner, though, and another exception to my jazzmat guidelines.)
I’ve never heard the following album by Mandingo Griot Society, featuring guest Don Cherry, but I imagine my man db owns the German import version with bonus tracks.
What’s really sad about this bias that Impulse! instilled in me with their late-60s graphics is that it took me years to give Sun Ra a second listen. The marketing of and cult around Sun Ra seemed to have embodied this movement, even though he wasn’t an Impulse! artist.
Who knew that the white jumpsuit-wearing, feathered hair-sporting Bill Wyman of 1988 would travel back in time to pose with Mandingo Griot for that cover shoot? Bill, we hardly knew ye!
How about a bunch of images of albums that have those puffy graffiti letters?
Ra licensed a ton of his back catalogue to Impulse for a moment around 1972. It’s a great story told in detail in by Ed Michel, the producer who brokered the deal in his liner notes to “Cymbals/Crystal Spears” on evidence. Personally, I think you’re off base here. Karma should’ve clued you in to what you were missing. Sun Ship is a pretty nice late Coltrane outing featuring the original quartet. It is about as far out there as Om, but in an entirely different direction. While Om is incredibly dense, with added players and thick drones, Sun Ship is pretty sparse, with Tyner playing a somewhat lower key role than usual. It results in something like that transparent weirdness you get in the early Coleman stuff.
I also think you’re way too harsh about Om. Coltrane made a shitload of albums in 1965, including Ascension, 2 versions of Meditations and Om. And A Love Supreme was December 1964! The guy was trying to do things, and they didn’t all come out wonderfully. Om was certainly one of his less successful explorations that year but I still appreciate the effort and do occasionally revisit it.
Oh man, Geo, after all these years are you really going to tempt me to break down and buy Sun Ship?
Om sucks! I don’t care if he turned water into wine in ’65. That thing was best left in a box of unreleased tapes than he and his bandmates could wax nostalgicially over when they grew old together.
Was that Ornette Coleman cover the inspiration for the Price Is Right logo?
Is The Art Ensemble of Chicago cover indirectly responsible for The Insane Clown Posse’s look?
My FAVORITE Impulse! (need the exclamation point) titles are the psychedelic ones. OM is the rare misfire from Coltrane (supposedly it was an experiment in making music while on L.S.D.) but when the Impulse roster started mixing 60’s rock influences it was just like they were adding some zesty lime to my favorite drink. Check out this all-time classic cover:
http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn266/photoapo/Covers/AS-Ju_front.jpg
That’s what my head feels like all the time!
Don’t let your fear of this bug crawling into your desert sleeping bag scare you away from this title either:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IyDZgXq8QH0/SJQT03VQskI/AAAAAAAABpE/g8_R5MdxWHw/s400/Alice%2BColtrane%2B(1970)%2BPtah,%2BThe%2BEl%2BDaoud.jpg
I hate that this era has been written out of so many jazz histories, 1965-1975 is really the sweet spot for my interest in jazz.
Mr. Moddy, Just so you know, I wasn’t trying to “stuff the ballot box” above. After I cast my vote it was still reading ‘no votes’. I hit the button again. Must have just been taking awhile to register.
BTW, I thought this was ‘The Rock Town Hall’, not ‘The Downbeat Online Reader’s Forum’! It’s bad enough not titling it ‘The Rock & Roll Town Hall’. ‘Rock’ brings to mind B.C. Rich guitars & Spandex ensembles. I hate ‘Rock’, but I love Rock & Roll. Though, I guess when you have lengthy exchanges regarding the ‘bananadom’ of members of Yes, anything goes, eh?… Never mind.
dbuskirk; That Archie Shepp LP cover is fookin’ amazing! The Alice Coltrane cover,though; that just brings to mind The Grateful Dead. Which bums me out, man.
I love Sun Ship. It was one of the few Coltrane LPs I had back in the day. I think just that and an Atlantic best-of. I just recently bought it as an Amazon download (as I think Oats said, the new crack). It’s great.
So Sun Ship is worth it? It’s not one of those “jazz guys on acid” albums, with a lot of shaken gourds, chanting, and squealing horns? I’ve always loved the cover and the font. Is it more like Mediations (which I love) or Om?
I just want to use this thread to brag that one spring night in 1981 I saw U2 play in a small club in the swamps outside of New Orleans and then drove back into the city for a midnight concert associated with the Jazzfest featuring Cecil Taylor and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. It was quite a night.
It sounds as though it got considerably better as it went on!
U2 was quite good, though they only had one album out at that time, and when they got called back for a second encore they had to play I Will Follow again, because they didn’t know any other songs.
But Cecil Taylor (solo) was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.
Mod, I’ll hook you up with Sun Ship. I think you’ll like it. No gourds, no chanting, just the quartet — two contemplative numbers and two high energy squallers. Elvin Jones in particular is on fire. You’ll even like the last track which is mostly a funky bass solo. I know it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it was.
I’m looking forward to breaking my own jazzmat guidelines and finally checking out Sun Ship. Thanks! I love the extended bass solos on Coltrane albums.
That U2/Cecil Taylor night sounds like it was something else.
Except for the U2 part!
Come on, Bittman, you’re telling me you were already too cool for school to not imagine an early U2 – pre-holstering, pre-cowboy hats, etc – not being pretty cool to see in a tiny club? That first album had some energy. I encourage anyone in our age group to look into the traces of our young and innocent hearts and tell me you didn’t have any hope for U2.
I didn’t have any hope for U2. Frankly, they surprised me with Pride and some of their later stuff. At the beginning there was simply not enough musical muscle behind their bluster. I saw them at a bigger place, The Ritz in New York on that first tour, but they just weren’t doing anything that I was looking for.
They never floated my boat either. When my ears hear (justified or not) a band that is purposely being overly dramatic and operatic like Springsteen or U2, then it gets lumped in with Meatloaf. I like Springsteen more than U2, but both guys/bands use their arrangements and production to make many of their songs bigger than they need to be.
Mr. Mod, It’s got nothing to do with being “too cool for school”, I just didn’t like their sound (like you don’t like The White Stripes sound) , & didn’t go for the religious blather in some of that early stuff. I got my fill of that at home, thanks.
My self-esteem is feeling battered because of indifference to my bragging. Soon I’ll have to claim I was at Woodstock or something.
OK, fair enough re: the ever-so-brief promise of U2. You guys were right!
BigSteve, The story should be you saw The Velvet Underground at a little club, then left directly for 3 days of peace, love, & music (& rain, mud, & filth).
Steve, I DID express envy at the Cecil Taylor part of the story. Also, putting aside my personal dislike for the band, yes, it’s very cool & imppressive that you got to see what would become the biggest rock band in the world (I think), before seeing a phenomenally talented Jazz great.