Are you familiar with this record? If so, how accurate is this review, from All Music Guide? "Throughout John Coltrane's discography there are a handful of decisive and controversial albums that split his listening camp into factions. Generally, these occur in his later-period works such as Om and Ascension, which push into some pretty heady blowing. As a contrast, Ballads is often criticized as too easy and as too much of a compromise between Coltrane and Impulse! (the two had just entered into the first year of label representation). Seen as an answer to critics who found his work complicated with too many notes and too thin a concept, Ballads has even been accused of being a record that Coltrane didn't want to make. These conspiracy theories (and there are more) really just get in the way of enjoying a perfectly fine album of Coltrane doing what he always did -- exploring new avenues and modes in an inexhaustible search for personal and artistic enlightenment. With Ballads he looks into the warmer side of things, a path he would take with both Johnny Hartman (on John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman) and with Duke Ellington (on Duke Ellington and John Coltrane). Here he lays out for McCoy Tyner mostly, and the results positively shimmer at times. He's not aggressive, and he's not outwardly. Instead he's introspective and at times even predictable, but that is precisely Ballads' draw."What's your take?
While you think about it, listen to my favorite track (for the stellar McCoy bits)...
Download:
John Coltrane: I Wish I Knew - from Ballads
Sure Ballads is not an inteense exploritory LP but has a beutiful sound and feel. I've listened to my vinyl copy quite a bit and it holds up. With a band like that, how can it not?
ReplyDeleteMagumba
I bought it after I got heavily into Coltrane's album with Johnny Hartman. I prefer the Coltrane/Hartman album, but it's interesting to hear a jazz maverick take on standards (as he did with "My Favorite Things".)
ReplyDeleteI'm in the midst of Ashley Kahn's "The House that Trane Built" right now, and reading about this album (among others, natch) inspired me to give it another listen. I've always enjoyed it, but with this strange guilt, a sense that by enjoying it I'm somehow apologizing for a mainstream audience and critics that couldn't get with the new thing and so had to be pacified with Ballads and the Hartman album in order to keep up sales figures.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Kahn, the whole thing was Bob Thiele's idea, a way to illustrate that Coltrane's talent was three-dimensional. But it also seems that Coltrane was okay with the plan, stating in an interview that, "I find nothing wrong with [showcasing a broader repertoire] myself. The ballads that came out were definitely ones which I felt at he time I chose them."
So, that's satisfying at least. I like to imagine Coltrane riffling through a mental rolodex of quiet numbers he liked, either because of something in the melody or structure, or because they just made him feel something he wanted to try to capture. An unabashedly romantic fantasy, I admit. Regardless, Trane and McCoy sound particularly lovely here, and even Elvin gets his licks in (particularly that stunning build at the end of It's Easy to Remember.) Straight-forward, sure, but wonderfully so.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comments
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