John Coltrane - Olé Coltrane (Atlantic)

Olé Coltrane’s history is well known: It was Trane’s last date for Atlantic, recorded in 1961, in fact, just after his first for the new Impulse! Label. Eric Dolphy (George Lane) and Freddie Hubbard augment the emergant classic quartet, making for a great disc all around.

I picked the album, however, for Art Davis, to complement Derek’s mention of his passing in an earlier thread. To this day, his playing is underrated, if not neglected, and while the reasons are multiple and complex, he brings majesty and mystery to the title track of this seminal album.

Percussive at first, alternating arco and pizzicato, Davis’ is the higher voice in this bass duo with Reggie Workman, prophetic of Grimes/Silva in Cecil Taylor’s two Blue Note dates. When Davis finally takes a solo, he effectively annihilates much arco that preceeded him in several strokes and with a few masterfully placed harmonics. First a G, then a D, the notes drifting and hanging poised above the Moorish fray with such delicacy and grace as to be dream-like, or heartbreaking. His approach to modality is boundless, matching Coltrane’s own in gesture after gesture telling of the nascent freedom ready to burst out all over New York, all over the country, as each phrase ascends in pitch and intensity. Mirroring the recent independences on the African continent, Coltrane’s conception pulses with life and vigor, and Davis is an invaluable contributor.

For anyone that hasn’t heard this album, and I’m doubtful that Bags readership has many of those among it’s ranks, “Aisha” is a beautiful McCoy Tyner composition, and “Dahomey Dance” immortalizes, as Coltrane did so effectively and so often, the struggles for identity and freedom associated with late 1950s Africa. The disc is a marvel of diversity, both in terms of topos and playing, and it is with sadness that we bid farewell to one more of its participants.

~ Marc Medwin