Drake goes on a 68 cent binge - eyes swollen like a bee sting

Elvin Jones drummed with John Coltrane. Not a bad pairing for 68 cents.

Second-Hand Entertainment

In this second episode: Jim Drake goes shopping. Not for essentials like Food and Toilet Paper, but for items that only a collector of All Things Media can appreciate. For the next few weeks, he is reviewing his books, movies, CDs, even some games that have been rescued from the Shelves of Obscurity. Come along, if you dare, and let’s find out exactly how far $10.30 goes in today’s high-tech world. All items were purchased in second-hand shops in The Dalles. Senior Discounts and Color Tag Sales were applied.

 This Week

John Coltrane: Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival, Antibes, July 26-27, 1965

Format: CD, Total Playing Time: 75’52”

Price: 68¢

Last week:

LaserDisc: Star Trek Original Television Series Episodes 2 and 7

Price: $2.69

Total Thus Far $3.37

By Jim Drake

My media collection habits have an aspect that seems to have become important to me, especially as the years move forward. It’s the aspect of finding things that were made in the year I was born.

For example, I’ve got a stack of magazines - including Life, Popular Science, pulp detective magazines, comics, there’s even a model railroading magazine - that I’ve tracked down from the month and year of my birth. The closer the publication date is to my birthday, the better I think it is.  

And you know what? Someday, just someday, I’m gonna sit down and read all of those magazines from cover to cover. 

Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival, Antibes, July 26-27, 1965

I still think it’s the coolest thing to find coins floating around from 1965, finally ending up in my pocket, with me just imagining where that coin has been for the last 55 years. The edges are so worn down. I can imagine it may have been dropped into a jukebox to play the new Beatles song.

So when I saw the John Coltrane CD in the discount bin, my birth-year collecting homing skills kicked in and saved another item from the local Shelves of Obscurity. This recording of a concert from 1965 now resides with my modest jazz collection, which consists mainly of Miles Davis, Dianna Krall, Oscar Peterson and cross-over artist Bela Fleck. Of course, there are numerous recordings of guitar-based personnel wedged in there, too, but if I start talking about all of that, we’ll never get off the internet.

Live in Antibes

I’m not afraid to say that I’m not a Coltrane Expert, but sources say that he mainly represents “Hard Bop” and “Free Jazz” styles. This particular recording seems to exist in a few formats and titles - because there is a “Live in Antibes” album release that does not contain the other two tracks that exist on my CD. I can only surmise that what I have is a compilation consisting of the “Love Supreme” portion of the show, which makes sense, since the first track is 47 minutes long, and two other tracks - “Impressions” a title cut to the 1963 album of the same name, and “Naima,” a track from Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” in 1960.

McCoy Tyner

The sound quality is fair. I can’t tell if it was recorded in a club or outside, but you only hear the audience applaud in between songs or right after solos. I’ve got plenty of jazz CDs that sound like the band is competing over the audience - people are loudly talking over the music in many cases. Here, everyone was either really quiet or too far away from the microphones. But then again, we’re talking about an audience on the southeast coast of France, so perhaps they weren’t as boisterous as their American counterparts.

The Liner Notes accompanying the disc spell out the dates (July 26 and 27) and personnel involved: The John Coltrane Quartet with John Coltrane (tenor sax), McCoy Tiner (piano), Elvin Jones (drums) and Jimmy Garrison (bass). The folks at “Giants of Jazz” record label also issue this unique warning: “Given the Length of this CD, we advise you to listen to it on a High Quality Sistem.” [I just noticed their spelling of System].

Well, of course, I’d recommend that anyone who listens to Anything should Listen to it on a High-Quality System. And, it’s funny that this CD brings this to my attention, because due to the age and condition my much loved Shure SRH1440 headphones - this is actually becoming more of a problem for me. These headphones are actually starting to hurt my ears. Not because the music is too loud, but the cushions around the earpieces are collapsing down far enough that I’m feeling the plastic of the speakers on my head. 

Not to get off-topic, but a few years ago I actually found a pair of Pioneer headphones (SE-205) that seemed to be the exact style I had when I was a kid. Huge, over the ear cups, big comfortable pads, can’t hear anything outside of the music. And then, I found a similar “Quadraphonic” headphone set by the same company, but the speakers are a bit torn-up. I’ve been so tempted to perform a custom stereo resurrection/transplant and put my Shure speakers into my Pioneer headphones.

As I noted before, the first track is 47 minutes long, and I’m not going to mislead you - it’s tough to get through. Mimicking the original album with the four sections of Love Supreme (Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm), the live version combines all of these into one track that is about 14 minutes longer than the original album.

Jimmy Garrison

Since I own the original recording, it was fairly easy to ping pong back and forth to hear how each track was laid out. To me, the original studio record seems tighter and more focused. The brief Love Supreme “vocal theme” on the original recording is missing from the live show, and it didn’t seem like the other instruments were carrying the basic phrase as they are in the original music. 

In what seems to be the Resolution section, we get a good piano solo at the beginning, but Coltrane lives up to his Free Jazz label for about 6 or 7 minutes, kinda going off the deep end. I never thought I’d be saying this, but finally getting to a relatively huge drum solo at the beginning of Pursuance was pleasing and welcome. Unlike the Grateful Dead Drums and Space portion of the show when most people flock to the bathrooms, this part proved interesting and cohesive. It was a welcome change.

The bass takes a five minute run and includes the use of a bow. The last seven minutes is back to the full band sound, but the last few minutes don’t seem to emphasize the theme like in the original recording, and the ending kind of just peters out.

The Impressions track is 21 minutes long. For the first 10 minutes, we’re back to bass and bow only. Then there’s a brief horn theme, then onto a piano theme, but unfortunately, the recording gets a bit fuzzy. Fourteen minutes in is when Coltrane returns in upbeat form. 

 From what I’ve read, “Naima” is a tribute song written about Coltrane’s first wife. To me, this one is more in the style of Miles Davis, with slower, longer notes that seem to instill a bit more emotion and reflective thought. The recording level seems a lot better, and it’s interesting that this is the take from the second night that was recorded. Coltrane’s horn is featured all the way through the seven-minute song.

It’s unfortunate that Coltrane lived a life plagued with drug use and personal problems. He died at the age of 40, about 2 years after this recording was made. But through the miracle of thrift store finds, legacies live on and I’m glad that I’ve got another hour and change of listening to the year I was born. If you’re inclined to check out more from John Coltrane, check out: “Ole,” “Blue Train,” and of course around the holiday times, “My Favorite Things.”