Alice Coltrane | News | INFOTEXT Teil 2: Alice Coltrane - THE CARNEGIE HALL CONCERT

 

by Ed Michel

Carnegie Hall! Sunday evening, February 21, 1971 at 8:30pm, Sid Bernstein —“the guy who brought The Beatles to America!”— presents Laura Nyro… The Rascals… Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders… all in concert, for the benefit of the Integral Yoga Institute!

I was there. I remember thinking it was a birthday concert celebration in honor of Swami Satchidananda who had founded the Institute. But I wasn’t sure. I had come over to Impulse in 1969 not long after Bob Thiele left the label and its headquarters had shifted from New York to Los Angeles, where I was based. By the beginning of 1971 I had worked on many albums with many musicians still living and recording in New York City. I’d gotten used to the routine of get-on-an-airplane-for-wherever-the-artists-and-go-to-the-studio-and-record-and-get-back-on-a-plane-to-L.A.-and-repeat-as-required. New York City was easy enough, once you got used to attitudinal differences.

I don’t know who at Impulse decided to record the concert. It certainly sounded like a good idea to me: Turiya, Pharoah and Archie, Carnegie Hall. (By 1971, Alice Coltrane had taken the spiritual name Turiya Aparna — which later became Turiyasangitananda — and by this time I was used to thinking of, and addressing her as Turiya, so let’s use that here.)

At the time, the Local 47 Musicians Union procedure said everybody participating gets paid scale — one session fee for the performance — and nothing more until the recording is released, at which point everyone on the record gets paid scale according to duration of performance. So, that and production costs — it would be a cheap gamble. I would certainly be very positive about the idea. I seem to recall the idea came up very quickly, but don’t have any other memory of the business side of it.

We decided to use Empirical Sound. Dave (inevitably Davy) Jones, proprietor-operator of Empirical, was a New York-based engineer with a substantial reputation for high-quality live-performance recording. We’d never met before the evening at Carnegie, but I was familiar with his work on a number of folk and jazz albums. He came highly recommended. A clincher: he’d recorded the Riverside Bill Evans Trio on the Sunday at the Village Vanguard sessions. We had extended phone discussions prior to the concert. He was unflappable, and lived up to his reputation. The recording was made on 4-track Ampex on ½-inch, 15ips tape.

And me: I liked recording live, because the presence of an audience adds to the adrenalin that recording provokes, and the presence of an audience keeps the players from thinking too much about the microphones. That’s the tradeoff against the control of sound that a studio provides, but one well worth the price. I was used to sitting in a sound truck, or at least monitoring what was going on to tape on headphones, but this time I was sitting in the wings and listening bare-eared to what was happening onstage.

Alice Coltrane (née McLeod) was born and grew up in Detroit. She told me once, “The Gordy family lived down the block.” The family was interested in music — her mother sang in the church choir, half-brother Ernie Farrow was a jazz bassist, sister Marilyn became a Motown writer. She gigged around town until 1960 when she moved to Paris, pursuing her interest in classical music and extending her jazz chops by studying with Bud Powell. She worked as intermission pianist at Le Blue Note. She was a formidable bebopper. Before studio sessions she would warm up playing hard-core bop piano, which she sternly forbid me from recording.

Alice was briefly married to bebop singer Kenny “Pancho” Hagood, who recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool” band. The union was short-lived, and she returned to Detroit, where she led her own trio and regularly worked in a duo setting with pianist-vibraphonist Terry Pollard. In 1963, she replaced Pollard as the pianist in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs’ quartet. She met John Coltrane when his quartet played opposite Gibbs’ at Birdland. (A few decades later she and her son Ravi, at that point just starting his career, would play in a concert with Gibbs. “I wanted him to have a chance to play with real beboppers,” she told me.)

Alice McLeod became Alice Coltrane when she and John were married in Juarez, Mexico in 1965. She replaced McCoy Tyner as pianist in her husband’s working band in January 1966, and recorded with them in San Francisco in February. She would remain in that chair through the quintet’s last recordings in May 1967. Only two months later, John passed away from liver cancer, leaving Alice a widow with four children and a house that included a recording studio in the basement. She had yet to record under her own name.

In less than a year, Alice taught herself to play harp on an instrument John had ordered and paid for before he passed. She recorded on piano and harp on the first album under her name, A Monastic Trio, on Impulse, the label for which John was recording. The suits at ABC, the parent label of Impulse, were less enthusiastic about her as an artist, but she controlled the Coltrane masters and had rights to determine the release of unissued John Coltrane recordings, so it was in everyone’s best interests to sign her as a solo artist, and allow her to pursue her own path.

ABC record executives maintained that attitude as she steered her music in more experimental directions and recordings with bigger budgets, to the point of not renewing her contract in 1975, after which she signed with Warner Bros. Fortunately, she had people who believed in her vision as an artist during her time at Impulse. First Bob Thiele, then me when I took over from Bob.

On this recording, she’s heard playing piano, harp, and percussion — but not the note-bending Wurlitzer organ, which she was just starting to work with and would record on her next album, Universal Consciousness.

The two woodwind players on this recording are from among the very first Coltrane-influenced (one could say “empowered”) saxophonists of the multitudes to follow. Archie Shepp, with musical roots in Philadelphia (and with an interest — and college degree in — playwriting) first recorded with John Coltrane on the second (augmented-quartet) version of A Love Supreme, December 1964. He was also part of the large ensemble on Ascension, June ‘65, and a participant in a live recording from Soldiers Field, Chicago in August. At Carnegie Hall in ’71 with Turiya, he played tenor and soprano saxophone, and percussion. He is heard on the right channel.

Ferrell Sanders arrived in New York from Little Rock, Arkansas late in 1961, and was soon associated with Sun Ra (who gave him the name Pharoah) and the Arkestra, a connection which would keep him from becoming homeless, recording with them on New Years’ Eve of that year (Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold). Like Shepp, Sanders’s association with John Coltrane was first documented on the large ensemble Ascension session in June ’65. He joined Coltrane’s working band later that year in time to record in Seattle, September 30, 1965, and remained a part of his ensemble through Coltrane’s last recordings in May ‘67. (In early discussions of what is being called “free jazz,” there is reference to “The Father [John Coltrane], The Son [Pharoah], and the Holy Ghost [Albert Ayler].”) He played on Alice’s A Monastic Trio in ‘68; and on her third, Ptah the El Daoud in ‘70. At Carnegie Hall, Pharoah played tenor and soprano saxophone, flute, fifes, and percussion. He is heard on the left channel.

Jimmy Garrison’s long association with John Coltrane as part of the “Classic Quartet,” which also included McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, began in November ‘61 and continued through the expansion to a quintet, with Alice replacing Tyner, until the end in 1967. He played on A Monastic Trio, and on this recording is heard on the right channel.

Bassist Cecil McBee’s contact with Alice began when he moved to Detroit in 1962. He became part of the New York City scene in 1964, recording with many musicians who are close to the Coltranes — including Pharoah, with whom he recorded on the saxophonist’s Jewels of Thought album in October 1969, and Thembi, in November 1970 and January 1971, only a month prior to this concert. He first recorded with Alice — and Pharoah — at the Coltrane home studio in Dix Hills in November 1970, creating music that became part of her album Journey in Satchidananda. On this recording, McBee is heard on the left channel.

Drummer Clifford Jarvis encountered Pharoah Sanders when they both recorded with Sun Ra on New Year’s Eve, 1961. His association with Sun Ra ran from 1962 to 1976. Jarvis and Cecil McBee recorded with saxophonist Sonny Simmons for his Burning Spirits album on the Contemporary label in November 1970. The Carnegie concert was his first performance and recording with Turiya; he is heard on the right channel.

New Orleans-born Ed Blackwell’s connection to the free music scene dated from his earliest days with Ornette Coleman in New Orleans and Los Angeles in the 1950s, and at the Five Spot in New York City in 1960. He recorded with John Coltrane and trumpeter Don Cherry on their collaboration The Avant-Garde for Atlantic Records in ’60; with Shepp on his Impulse albums On This Night in ’65 and The Magic of Ju-Ju in ‘67 (the latter on rhythm logs!); and, along with Pharoah, on Cherry’s Symphony for Improvisers for Blue Note in ‘66. Blackwell is heard on the left channel.

The trained singer and fellow spiritual traveler Tulsi (née Tobey Reynolds) played tamboura, the stringed, fretted instrument most commonly associated with Indian music, and Kumar Kramer played harmonium, the portable keyboard-with-a-bellows which functions as a reed organ, also associated with Indian music. Both instruments provided a continuous drone that established the scalar/harmonic locus of each composition. Both were involved with Swami’s Integral Yoga Institute. They played on only the first two numbers, and as the instruments were not miked, their ambient sound is captured through other microphones. The same is true of the audience. The failure to mike the tamboura and harmonium separately was due to the limited number of available mikes and the need to prioritize the primary voices; we had also considered the possibility of subsequently replacing the drone parts in the studio under Turiya’s supervision.

Sometime during the first number Davy whispered to me that one of the mikes had gotten misplaced, and somebody was going to have to move it back into position, and he was busy. So I wandered across the stage (embarrassing as it is to admit it, I couldn’t not think, “Gee, Mom — I’m onstage at Carnegie Hall…”), repositioned the mike, and beat feet back to the wings — only to be met by an extremely large and extremely displeased union stagehand who made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that jobs like moving mikes were stagehand jobs, and failure to remember that was truly consequential.

My recollection is foggy. It was 52 years ago. But there’s a recurrent image of an open concrete stairwell with a thirty-or forty-foot drop, with me suspended over an opening. This image may or may not be real. But I certainly never ever again even thought about moving anything onstage at Carnegie Hall.

I remember before the curtain went up, impresario Sid Bernstein explaining to Turiya that the audience was essentially there to hear The Rascals and Laura, so she ought to keep her set short — maybe twenty minutes — because post-John Coltrane (“free”) jazz might be a little heavy for a pop audience. The idea and use of the category name, “Spiritual Jazz,” was forty-odd years in the future.

Journey in Satchidananda – this was originally recorded on the album of the same name, with Pharoah and Cecil, in November 1970. Turiya plays harp; Pharoah plays flute and tambourine; Archie plays soprano saxophone and tambourine.

The basses and drums begin a long vamp, and are joined by harp, then Pharoah’s flute and Archie’s soprano (which begins off-mic). Harp arpeggios, while the soprano continues, and Pharoah appears briefly on flute — the harp leads into a vamp for the basses — then a harp exclamation point, a Shepp soprano comment, and finally settling into a quiet conclusion. From the way the audience responds, this doesn’t sound like a pop audience. Taking note of this, Sid came onstage to tell Turiya to play as extendedly as she felt was appropriate.

Shiva-Loka – another track originally recorded for Journey in Satchidananda. Turiya again plays harp; Pharoah plays soprano saxophone and flute, and Archie plays soprano saxophone and tambourine.

The tune opened with swirling harp and arco bass, followed by drums and Blackwell’s cowbell — Shepp’s soprano entered, off-mike at first — then Pharoah’s soprano, harp, and Archie’s soprano — finally both sopranos together — with harp swirls, basses and drums, to the vamp out with soprano flourishes. The music finished only seconds before the reel of tape on the recording machine ran out. Then my work note for reel 3 begins “missed intro.” If it was a stage announcement or a musical introduction to “Africa” I can’t recall, but it is missing due to the reel-change.

Africa – originally recorded by John Coltrane in June 1961 for his Impulse debut album, Africa/Brass. On this version, Turiya plays piano, shaker, and tambourine; Pharoah is on tenor saxophone and fifes; Archie plays tenor, tambourine, and bells.

The track opens with drums, then piano, Shepp on tenor (on Pharoah’s mic) and Pharoah on tenor — Shepp solos and then Pharoah enters (off-mic) and solos (on his mic), followed by Turiya’s piano solo as Pharoah plays two fifes off-mic. Then drums, cowbell and drums — applause — Cecil’s bass solo, a two-bass interlude, and Jimmy’s bass solo with Turiya and Shepp on tambourines and bells off-mic. The audience starts to applaud but piano and both tenors lead the ensemble out, with the audience and Turiya’s acknowledgement closing the track.

Leo – first recorded by John Coltrane in San Francisco, February 1966 with Alice, Pharoah, and Jimmy; it was unreleased in its original form but was first heard on John’s posthumous 1972 album Infinity with an overdubbed string orchestra, arranged and directed by Turiya. In this performance, Turiya played piano and shaker; Pharoah was on tenor saxophone; Archie on tenor saxophone and tambourine; Garrison on bass and tambourine, and Blackwell on drums and cowbell.

Drums open, and both tenors soon enter and stretch out. Turiya solos over a busy ensemble, the piano often in an open space and able to build on ideas as the ensemble alternates between quiet/ intense phases. Turiya hits some piano pyrotechnics and then silence. Blackwell solos with someone else on cowbell, and applause. Jarvis follows with his solo, then the whole ensemble returns and takes the tune out, followed by the audience acknowledging the end of Turiya’s performance that evening.

The four-track master tapes came back with me to California, and I made a safety copy for the Coltrane family recording archive. As I indicated earlier, the corporate suits weren’t particularly enamored of Turiya’s music, and despite the fact that she, Pharoah, and Archie were all Impulse artists, weren’t interested in releasing the live concert recording. Same story after an executive-level change in administration. After she signed with Warner Bros. in 1975, I reexamined what was in the vault, and in January 1976, I made a reference mix of the concert masters.

Let me define some things: a “reference mix” would give me a two-track tape copy — one I could play in my office, with the quality being about 80 to 95% of that of the “master mix”— so rather than needing to spend the extra dollars to book a studio to study the material I’d still have a very clear picture of the music I had on tape. And because at that time I was mixing Impulse releases in a QS (Sansui) encoded quadraphonic format. About quadraphonic sound, which was then at its height: the stereo mix, played through a quad decoder, would unfold into four channels, which was exciting as hell for the 1 to 2% of total listeners who actually had quadraphonic setups at home. The encoded master was mixed to sound wonderful in stereo, so that there’d be no audio compromise; too bad quad never really caught on commercially.

One other thing: quadraphonic was a mix function after the fact. In 1970 and ’71, I was doing all sessions, studio and live, in encoded stereo and quad. As it turned out, it was this habit that fortunately preserved a full recording of this performance and made this release possible.

In the ensuing years, the Impulse 4-track masters and the Coltrane family 4-track masters were lost. Don’t ask me how. The only recording of the whole concert that survived was my reference mix. Which is what you’ve got here. It’s been audio-buffed to today’s digital standards in the process still known as mastering. I couldn’t contribute to that process as my aging ears, I am very sorry to report, are no longer reliable.

I met Swami Satchidananda in Los Angeles at the end of 1971. Turiya had invited him to record a benediction for the album World Galaxy. We had recorded the tracks for the album in New York in November, and were at my home studio, The Village Recorder, to mix. He asked if he could warm up his voice before we recorded, which was great, as that would give us an opportunity to hear his voice and set up the mike for maximum effect. He chanted in Sanskrit (I assume) for about fifteen minutes, which not only let us adjust the mike levels, but allowed us to fool around with quadraphonic echo. We recorded a few minutes of it so Swami could hear and let us know what adjustments he’d like us to make.

“That’s very close to what it sounds like when you chant way up in the Himalayas,” he said after we’d recorded the benediction. To no one’s surprise he was a nail-it-in-one-take guy. Then he came into the control room and was very curious about the equipment. He explained, “Before I became Swami, I was a cinematographer, so naturally I’m curious about recording technology…” He showed me a picture of himself from that time, looking very much the lounge lizard in a sharp suit and slicked-back hair.

As they say, “That’s my story. And I’m stickin’ to it.”

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