Tuesday, May 4, 2010

John Coltrane Quartet - Ballads



When I first heard the samples of this album on the internet, I wan't interested at all. It was strange to hear Coltrane playing in this style - but he felt its opposite when he was also said by others to be the best of the angry tenors as we can read on the original cover, which Impulse kept when it released it in the newer Impulse originals series.

The title perfectly and simply describes what we'll hear: ballads. Beautiful standards...

1. Say it (over and over again)
2. You don't know what love is
3. Too young to go steady
4. All or nothing at all
5. I wish I knew
6. What's new
7. It's easy to remember
8. Nancy (with the laughing face)

...which are good to hear again and again any times - that's why they're standards and get famous and have stayed alive. I think there's a few people who these songs don't take effect on. So to angry tenors he answered: I guess, they say that because I play the horn hard. Now he proves his abilities to this style, too, and maybe it was a need himself as well to do something lighter than his real, deeply serious music. It's a fanatastic album for silent and sensitive moments. Unfortunately it's only a little bit longer than half an hour, but it is worth to hear.


Gene Less writes about Coltrane the following:
Coltrane is, as a matter fact, one of the gentlest and quietest people I've met in jazz. And, two or three years ago, he was just about the shyest.
Now that he has become a study in effusive cameraderie. But he has emerged considerably from that cocoon of quiet in which he lived his off-stage life. He talks more now, he laughs more readily, he seems more assured.

Too young to go steady:


Listen to Naima.

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