NEW RELEASES : Exploring Beauty in a Calmer Coltrane
JOHN COLTRANE****
“The Gentle Side of John Coltrane”
Impulse!
The title says it all. These are performances of enduring beauty and lyricism that were recorded in various sessions between 1961 and 1965. What makes these 13 tracks all the more extraordinary is that this was a period when Coltrane’s work was often volatile and freely exploratory.
Coltrane’s quartet--which includes pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones--makes up the core unit, but there are cameos from Duke Ellington, who backs the tenor saxophonist deftly on “My Little Brown Book,” and singer Johnny Hartman, whose buoyant baritone adorns the melancholic Billy Strayhorn classic “Lush Life.”
Still, the leader is not completely constrained here. There’s the deep, probing investigation of Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You,” as well as the searching, spiritual quality of “Wise One,” in which Coltrane, like a Cubist painter, examines triadic combinations from seemingly every possible angle.
New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent). A rating of five stars is reserved for classic reissues or retrospectives.
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