Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

Product Information

Before he lost his fight with liver cancer at age 40, Coltrane released definitive albums in both modes, but they were hardly end points for an artist who often seemed to embody flux itself.

Coltrane’s current release at the time was My Favorite Things, on Atlantic, also released as a single, which was doing well, pulling sales for album in. The sound from the stage is an elemental force blasting through the soporific climes, shaking the empty seats. In reality, had Coltrane lived to ripe old age, he would have continued to try out different styles, bands, influences and ideas, no doubt jamming with past collaborators along the way.Of course Coltrane makes My Favourite Things something beautiful but what makes this recording so very special is Eric Dolphy. In August of 1961, the John Coltrane Quintet played an engagement at the legendary Village Gate in Greenwich Village, New York. Critics tout Coltrane’s soprano saxophone as the key that unlocked the door to spiritual jazz, yet Dolphy’s similarly unconventional instrumentation greased the hinges.

It was recorded by an engineer without Coltrane's permission and the tape was eventually found in the New York Library of Performing Arts by a Bob Dylan archivist. Coltrane and club owner Art D’Lugoff never meant to cut a record, but Alderson captured a couple of evenings and then forgot about them. His solos and ‘Impressions’ and ‘Favorite Things’ underlinine what an important component of Coltrane’s quartet/quintet he was becoming. It’s Tyner’s arrangement, and the Coltrane/Dolphy mutual admiration society push each other to compelling effect. This basement remained a venue, Le Poussin Rouge, after the Gate closed 30 years ago; the ground floor, naturally, has become a CVS.

His constant transformations illustrated a quintessential ’60s metaphor: Coltrane’s music rolled along too hard and fast to gather any moss. He adapts it for another soloist, and rebuilds it into other tracks, one of which he dedicated to Africa. Just imagine, this was recorded on an evening at the Village Gate which also included the groups of Horace Silver and Art Blakey.

Eighty minutes of never-before-heard music from this group were recently discovered at the New York Public Library. Coltrane’s Classic Quartet was not as fully established as it would soon become and there was a meteoric fifth member of Coltrane’s group those nights - visionary multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy was commercially successful, debuting at No. The booklet is beautiful, with my only caveat being that it’s a bit difficult to work out who wrote what.He played “My Favorite Things'' during his last recorded concert, in 1967, at the Olatunji Center for African Culture in Harlem. Dolphy departed soon after, eventually joining Charles Mingus’ band for the second time, where his deft reedwork could take center stage.