THE ESSENTIALS #3: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
There are other choices here and we are mindful of them:
1. Kind of Blue (Miles Davis Sextet, 1959) is the most popular jazz album of all time. It is the only multi-platinum straight-ahead jazz recording.
It has, arguably, the greatest superstar line-up in a small band arrangement (Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly on saxophones, Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Paul Chambers on bass).
It has taken its place as the recording to have for even those who, not being jazz fans, simply want a jazz CD in their collection.
This swinging, beautiful album is one of the very greatest triumphs in American music and a template for understanding the protean power of jazz.
We respond:
We agree to everything that has been said. Kind of Blue is a masterwork. But it is hard core jazz. It is an album that while swinging deeply also presents, in bright colors, the complexity of the music.
Its tunefulness does not immediately transport you and if you are new to jazz and looking for a way in, you might want something with a much more welcoming embrace of melody.
The great, slow set piece of the CD, “Blue In Green,” justly famous for its brilliant, effusive John Coltrane solo, does not bend the ear to its melody. It is a wonderful, meditative piece that soars when Trane, following Miles’ dreamy opening, practically tears the roof off the recording with his passion-drenched playing.
Yet, to a novice, this may not stick in the ear as one would hope. Blue In Green is a great song but not immediately hummable.
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, on the other hand, is filled with recognizable standards that, even though many of the songs are practically ancient, lend themselves to melody and hooks that even a novice can appreciate and embrace upon a first hearing.
The playing is passionate, the singing exquisite and the blues-in-the-night feel is perfectly captured by the album’s justly praised rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” an adventure in downer meditation and 4:30 a.m. last calls if ever there was one.
2. In the famous Downbeat Poll of a few years back, jazz singers and jazz musicians actually picked Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley as the best jazz vocal album ever.
Nancy swings out of her head on the album and ‘Ball plays with heart and fire, equaling, if not bettering, his playing with Miles’ legendary sextet.
We respond:
True, this is a marvelous album. There is no singer quite like Nancy Wilson whose voice can sound feathery one moment and commanding and soaring the next. Plus she was, and still is, a world class beauty.
But Nancy and ‘Ball have a set list that, while wonderful, does not contain an instant classic like John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s My One and Only Love. Hartman’s justly famous attack on these fabulous lyrics
“The very thought of you / makes my heart sing / like an April breeze / on the wings of Spring…”
takes his voice from a deep welled bass to a sun-drenched baritone in a leap. Like zero to 60 in Jag. Boom! Pow! This kind of vocal greatness makes you wonder why in the world this sublime singer never commanded more attention than he did?
Then, of course, in the same song, Trane comes in with his usual excellence and simply rips the very last vestige of emotion and meaning from what is, let’s face it, on its surface, a Tin Pan Alley ditty–a wonderful one, mind you, but a ditty nevertheless. Trane and Johnny make it an epic of desire.
Speaking of the Downbeat Poll we also note that the runner-up album in that poll was, you guessed it, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.
Professionals often look for things that the public perhaps does not. Thus there were comments on how Nancy graced a song or did this and then did that. That said, it must be noted that these same professionals made Trane and Johnny’s album number two.
This leads us perhaps to our most dangerous point: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman will be on every jazz list of must have recordings. It may not be number one in every poll, but it is always top ten–or top five. It is accessible to all, from professionals and scholars and to the general public, with its beautiful rendering of both hummable standards and profound mysteries such as “Lush Life.”
It has two of the greatest American performers ever, at the top of their games, playing music that is at once fresh, and familiar, and that delights the ear with simple melody and recharges the mind with breathtaking solos.
Now both Kind of Blue and Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley will appear in these pages again–as they should. We can agree that Kind of the Blue is the greatest jazz album and that professionals adored Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley.
What we are saying with John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, however, is not that it is the best jazz album ever made or the best jazz vocal album ever made, but that it is a towering achievement, that is instantly accessible, hummable, beautiful, deeply thoughtful, profoundly swinging, and rich in mind-blowing solos.
There is no jazz album quite like it ever. It may not be the best, mind you, but John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman is certainly the ultimate.
