I think of Connie Kay as the quintessential background player, so I’m always interested to hear him actually do something— like play a solo, or some more assertive comping. Here he trades some 8s and […]
Category: John Coltrane
Daily best music in the world: India
I’ve listened to this so many times it’s like classical music; just realized I haven’t listened to it in several years:
Assembling a basic Elvin Jones-style waltz
Here’s a page of elements for putting together a basic Elvin Jones-style jazz waltz— I hate to treat his playing so reductively, but what are we supposed to do? It’s a thing, it’s sometimes asked […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones — Lonnie’s Lament
I’ve transcribed Elvin Jones’s playing during McCoy Tyner’s solo, on Lonnie’s Lament, which you will have just listened to on the John Coltrane album Crescent. It’s medium tempo, with a subdued vibe for much of […]
Listening: Coltrane — Crescent
This conversation between Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, saxophonist Joshua Redman, and composer/bandleader Darcy James Argue, about the John Coltrane albums Crescent, and A Love Supreme, happened on Twitter: Crescent was the first Coltrane album […]
Page o’ coordination: Out Of This World
For all of these POCs I’ve posted, I’ve actually been writing and practicing quite a few more. Here’s one elaborating on one of the very first entries in this series, but with a more advanced […]
Transcription: Philly Joe Jones — Locomotion
I’ve been working through Philly Joe Jones’s intro on Lomotion, from the Coltrane album Blue Train; a student was given the fairly nutso assignment of learning this verbatim off of YouTube. We worked through it […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones — Summertime
Let’s start out the new year with a more substantial transcription than we’ve done in a while, in this case a very famous drum solo by Elvin Jones, on Summertime from John Coltrane’s My Favorite […]
Tune of the Moment: Out of This World
The tune Out of this World by Harold Arlen has been on my mind a lot recently– I’ve been listening to John Coltrane’s recording of it on the album Coltrane, then it came up in […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Your Lady
Lately I keep doing the bulk of the hard work on these things, only to run out of steam in the last 12 bars, but David in the comments was able to shame me into […]
Favorite albums: Impressions by John Coltrane
Cover from my version, the 80’s reissue. Impressions by John Coltrane 1963 – Impulse! John Coltrane – tenor and soprano saxophone Eric Dolphy – alto saxophone, bass clarinet McCoy Tyner – piano Jimmy Garrison – […]
DBMITW: all Elvin, all the time
This current Elvin binge really snuck up on me. It’s easy to lazily categorize his playing as a style– but then you listen to something like this, which we’ve all heard a thousand times, and […]