Ole Coltrane - John Coltrane > Reviews > BRAVO!

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Improvisation at it's best
Disadvantages:	It's sad that there are only 3 songs in that record( +  1 bonus track)

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

How can someone make a brief description of what John Coltrane was? Well, he can't in my opinion without inevitably using terms as"the tenor king", "John "I almost own jazz" coltrane" and other similar phrases of exaggeration. I guess that for some people such as the one just mentioned a some sort of "brief introduction" is impossible but I will give it a try.

John Coltrane began playing clarinet and alto saxophone at the age of seventeen in the city of Philadelphia Officially , his careeer starts pretty late, considering other cats like Charlie Parker for example, at the age 29. Whose sideman was he? Miles Davis. Not too bad for a 29-old guy. He actually played on the legendary Miles Davis "kind of blue" recording. He left the Miles Davis quintet and devoted himself at a new band, with him as a bandleader. From that day until his death 11 years later, he did and played almost every conceivable style in jazz. Classic bop with normal II-V changes all the over the place like the "Blue Train" or "Giant steps("I don't know if someone can consider the title song as a normal II-V chord change tune. The song is named that way because of the "giant" distances that bassist Jim Garrisson had to overcome in the instrument in order to play it"), more modal jazz records like "impressions" or the ultimate " love supreme" and records that explored musical cultures previously unexplored into the jazz field like the "Africa" album.

So where "ole" stands to all of the above? Ole is a somekind of a rare mixture of all of the above. The title track ,"ole", with which the record begins, has this spanish flavoured hypnotizing bass ostinato going throughout the tune(the tune is 18:14 long!), creating a some kind of religious-trancedental feel, which furthermore is ex[anded by intense improvisastion by all instruments. It is worth noting that John Coltrane plays soprano sax on this tune, and I can assure you, he is very good at soprano as well. Freddie Hubbard is on the trumpet and Eric Dolphy on the flute. What more can somebody ask. All right for the greedy ones, Elvin Jones is on the drums and Art Davis on tha bass. Satisfied now? The song just keeps progressing and the ostinato is always there, in the oscure and mystical phrygian mode. "Dahomey dance" , a medium swing tune, reminds of the "blue train" record, wih more strightforward melodic and rhytmical structures. Coltrane is back on the tenor here, and needless to say the man he can play. The album ends with a great ballad "Aisha", proving that Coltrane can also write ballads.

I know that some people are waiting to get into comparisons with other artists, but I'm not going to do that, 'cause simply you can't do it. You only can compare Coltrane with Coltrane and with no other. The only thing that is certain, is that John Coltrane is the most influential tenor saxophonist in jazz being considered by many pepole as the greatest improvisationalist, even greater for some people than the other jazz great Charlie Parker. So if you want comparisons, please read Mariah Carey critics instead(Sorry Mariah)

If you find the last comment irritating, buy the album and you will see what I mean.