John Coltrane, Olé Coltrane

The first jazz records I ever listened to came from my father’s collection. When I started my own collection I would either find things at thrift stores or get things when they were finally released on compact disc.

Which brings me to John Coltrane’s Olé Coltrane, which is up there with Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch as the old jazz album that I listen to the most that I have never owned on vinyl. This was due to nothing other than cheapness and the thrill of bargain hunting. When I recently saw a very reasonably priced used copy of Olé Coltrane at my local record shop I snatched it up immediately.

Art

This one is a real beauty. I am guessing it is made with cut paper.

The design is attributed to Jagel & Slutzky Graphics, a team that I couldn’t find any info on. I did find artists named John Jagel and Bob Slutzky who worked at the same time so I am assuming they had an office together at some point. Here are four other J&S LP covers that they either designed together or separately:

Of these, Olé Coltrane and Herbie Mann’s At The Village Gate are among the most widely known LP cover designs of all time so that is a pretty insane success ratio (and, I am guessing that not selling enough are the only reasons the two Ornettes aren’t better known).

Looking up Bob Slutzky, I sadly found a NYTs obit — he was a very well respected artist, educator, and “architectural theorist” (I have no idea what that means). Slutsky died of A.L.S., like Charles Mingus —  a particularly cruel disease for an artist, musician, or athlete to have.

A colleague and the owners of this fine SF record store both told me that John Jagel’s son, Jason Jägel, is also a talented artist and designer. His work is really wonderful and though it doesn’t resemble his father’s art visually it has the same sense of radiant positivity as the sleeve design for Olé Coltrane. 

This album cover is definitely an example of commercial design being the equal of fine art. 

The Music

The music on Olé Coltrane, especially on the first side, is a few shades darker and more mysterious than the warm cover sleeve suggests.

The album was produced by Atlantic Records titan Ahmet Ertegun and was engineered by Phil Ramone. Ramone gets minus points from jazz snobs for thriving in the (soft) rock era but he was one of the finest audio engineers in history. His work on Getz/Gilberto and Dusty Springfield’s “The Look Of Love” is still widely studied in audio recording classes.

John Coltrane would only be on Atlantic for less than two years (1959 – 1961) but he finally became a major jazz star there. Olé Coltrane was the last session he recorded for Atlantic Records and he cut the album simultaneously with Africa/Brass, his first set for Impulse, in a different studio.

Atlantic was good to Coltrane. The label, like most jazz companies at the time, really cared about the music. Unlike other jazz labels, though, Atlantic was also thriving with R&B and had no qualms about rolling up their sleeves, dipping into their pockets, and throwing down payola. I always wondered how Coltrane’s startling reading of “My Favorite Things” became a jukebox hit the same year as “The Twist,” “Theme From A Summer Place,” and “Puppy Love.” Because Atlantic greased some mob and industry palms, that’s why.

That’s not a complaint — I wish jazz was part of the modern, legal payola schemes of today. Imagine if we had Kamasi Washington playing on mainstream radio and on bowling alley juke boxes!

Spain, and Spanish music, were part of the cultural landscape during the era Olé Coltrane was released. It was another touchstone that you were in with the In Crowd instead of bonded with the dead soul squares down at the Chamber of Commerce. To Americans, Spain meant Hemingway, the Spanish Civil War, flamenco records, drunken sojourns, women with roses in their hair, and beatniks hanging up bull fighting posters in their artist lofts. Even during the Franco dictatorship, Spain was a very cheap, culturally rich, place for expat artists and writers to live.

Today, everyone knows Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue as the bestselling jazz album of all time but during the 1950s it was his work with Gil Evans that really shifted units. Released in 1960, Sketches Of Spain was Miles’ most popular work for many, many years to come. That brilliant album is now a harder listen for today’s younger ears, full of jarring, off-kilter harmonies. Ironically, one-time oddball Kind Of Blue now sounds very comforting and relaxing, even on first listen by casual fans who didn’t grow up on modernistic classical music and jazz.

I don’t know whether the brass at Atlantic pushed Coltrane to record something in the vein of Sketches of Spain or it was his idea to do so. But, whatever the motivation, Coltrane ran with it — at least for side one. In the liner notes, Coltrane talks about the Apollo telling him his concert solos were too long and needed to be cut down when he played there. He complied and noticed that his shorter solos conveyed the same amount of emotion in half the time. But, instead of shortening the length of his numbers, Coltrane decided to add more solo voicing to his recordings. Here, Coltrane brings in Eric Dolphy (recording under a pseudonym for contractual reasons), dynamic trumpeter Freddy Hubbard, and two bass players to the more familiar rhythm section of McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones.

The title track takes up all of side A. Its an epic, river rafting adventure with dark undercurrents contrasting with streaks of sun shining down. “Olé” draws inspiration from “El Quinto Regimiento” an Iberian folk song celebrating the all-volunteer, anti fascist 5th Regiment during the Spanish Civil War.

I remember a reactionary TV personality making fun of Teresa Heinz Kerry to her face, telling her she failed to stop Apartheid by protesting against it when she was a student in South Africa. She replied that being on the losing side of the right fights was better than the alternative.  Earlier in the 20th Century the Spanish Civil War was one of those fights. The American establishment was for Franco while society’s outcasts, artists, and freethinkers fought with, or celebrated, the losing side. You could draw a straight line from the different sides Americans were on during the rise of Franco to the civil rights struggle. You can keep drawing those lines today. The quiet Coltrane knew which side he was on.

The 20th Century was full of eventual victories of good over evil. So far, the 21st Century has seen evil making a strong, winning comeback. As lifelong Coltrane fan David Bowie put it, “What a disappointing 21st century this has been so far.” And, he didn’t even live to see more shit get further blown out on the world by the fan of modern history.

One of the reasons I listen to Olé Coltrane more than some other works by the saxophonist is how brilliantly the band here gels as a collective unit. This isn’t a free-jazz titan stepping in front of his ensemble and dazzling with an endless sea of choruses. Its a collective unit creating amazing music together. “Olé’ starts off intense with just the double basses (one plucked, one bowed) before McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones come in together. Coltrane enters with a mournful cry, slowly building up from defeat, passing off to Eric Dolphy, on flute, in victory.

Freddy Hubbard plays the Miles role here but, as ever, he is brassier and more muscular than Davis. Hubbard is a brilliant soloist but, elsewhere, there can be moments on his solos where his peerless technical facility can rub me the wrong way (including on some of my favorite albums). Its what Paul Weller accurately dubbed “the ‘Flight Of The Bumble Bee’ bollocks” (flashy bop chords that impress but don’t tell a story). Nothing to worry about here — Hubbard is completely in line with Coltrane, Dolphy, and Tyner on this session — there is emotional, narrative soloing from everybody (McCoy Tyner is a particular joy here). “Olé’ builds in tension for 10 minutes before ratcheting down for the twin basses to solo. Their work, like Coltrane’s return at the end, is a reminder that Spain is saturated by Arabic culture. The fireball turns to embers, with Tyner figuring out a perfect, elegant end to the tune.

You can draw a straight line from “Olé ” to A Love Supreme but the mood and the spirit, whether conscious or not, is different. One one hand “Olé ” is joyous, expansive and captivating but on the other it is foreboding, insular, and tense. “Olé ” combines the sacred with the profane while, to me, A Love Supreme is pure joy — a celestial state of wonder that people can only tap into sporadically. A Love Supreme is better than the human race — an exalted place we are trying to get to while “Olé ” plays like dramatic selections from life right here on earth.

Over on the flip side the Spanish travelogue is over and you are returned to New York City with Coltrane upgrading to the tenor sax and Dolphy ditching the flute in favor of the alto sax. This side sounds much more like what you would expect from a top-shelf 1961 post-bop set but that doesn’t make it any less fantastic.

“Dahomey Dance” is definitely connected to Kind of Blue but leaps ever so slightly into a more free-jazz Coltrane space without ever getting too far out (it also resembles what Oliver Nelson was recording concurrently on Impulse with Blues & The Abstract Truth). This is Coltrane exploring group dynamics, beautifully – a really tight number and once again a stately McCoy Tyner plays beautifully, in a way that may have helped keep things grounded in mainstream jazz. Listening to Tyner here I can understand why he would feel the need to leave Coltrane in the not-so-distant future.

McCoy Tyner also contributed the final number, the lovely ballad “Aisha,” which among other things, shows how Coltrane, Dolphy, and Hubbard can keep the emotions set to “beautiful” while playing dexterous, angular, jazz solos with Tyner’s work standing even taller than the rest. The album starts in mysterious global upheaval and ends with the introspective and the romantic. A real journey.

1961 was basically the year that John Coltrane jumped into the jazz stratosphere career wise. This was one of at least four major original Coltrane albums released that year. Besides Olé Coltrane he also released the studio albums My Favorite Things, Coltrane Jazz, and Africa/Brass.

Everyone who is not a Chamber of Commerce member will want to own all of those records. Of them all, Olé Coltrane is my favorite. I’m happy I finally have it on vinyl. I hope one day I can listen to it while being part of a 21st Century that is something more than an utter disappointment.

— Nick Dedina