From R. Lim Sent Wed, Aug 25th 1999, 23:11
From R. Lim Sent Wed, Aug 25th 1999, 23:11
Can't argue with Andrei's list; you could probably even pare it down to Sun Ship (by far my favorite) and Giant Steps (pinnacle of his "in" material). _Blue Train_ is also really great, but more of an anomaly due its hard boppish feel. I personally think that Sun Ship is great precisely because of its transitional nature- he can fall back quite naturally on Jones/Garrison/Tyner, in a way that he couldn't depend on his future quintet (+/-). Contemporaneous recordings of The Quartet's swan song in the summer of '65 are also amazing, including the great 2LPs of Coltrane Live in Paris (their Mingus at Antibes, featuring Jimmy Garrison's most brilliant recorded solo). The first _Village Vanguard_ set (collected in a nice, compact 4CD box, unlike the heinous Urban Outfitters nightmare classic quartet box that followed) is also transitional and at times brilliant. Certainly, the presence of Eric Dolphy makes it a must for any fan of the early 60s jazz vanguard- remember, Cecil and Ornette would be hard-pressed to come up with anything remotely as powerful at the time. _Interstellar Space_ was also marking a change in Trane's tide; it was basically his last album (subsequent material has been reissued in the past decade) and were duets with Rashied Ali. Gone was the overtly transcendent ecstatic vibe (c.f. Om and Ascension possibly the most notorious recordings- this era is not included in Andrei's list probably because they just simply were not as good as his previous peaks; if I had to pick one of 'em for inclusion, it'd probably be _Live in Seattle_)- this is one serious, inwardly-bound improv record, whose significance (and relevance) is most likely still under-estimated. I never did get whipped into a frenzy by a Love Supreme (the only one of his Impulse records to find a spot in the hearts of AOR fans worldwide). -rob