17 August 1961 John Coltrane at the Village Gate. In the summer of 1961, recently out of high school, I was living on the second floor in an industrial loft at 326 Bowery with two artist friends, Mike M. and Joel. The three of us worked at the Stouffer Restaurant, The Top of The Sixes, located at 666 Fifth Avenue, near MOMA. At the time another friend, Jerry M. from Michigan was visiting. I had known Mike and Jerry in high school in Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit; Joel was the New Yorker. Our loft was located near the famous Five Spot.
On the night of 17 August 1961, Jerry and I went to the Village Gate located at 158 Bleecker Street at Thompson in the Village to hear the John Coltrane sextet which featured Eric Dolphy (reeds), McCoy Tyner (piano), Art Davis and Reggie Workman (basses), Elvin Jones (drums), and special guest Roland Kirk (reeds).
Lewis Porter in his John Coltrane: His Life and Music, The University of Michigan Press (1999) reports on page 365 that ”According to Bob Rusch, Roland Kirk sat in with Coltrane on August 17 [1961].” Since I had never seen mention of the Coltrane-Kirk event, I called Lewis Porter and informed him of my presence in the Coltrane-Kirk event. Porter said that he would give me a footnote (someday) in the Coltrane encyclopedia he was putting together. Instead of waiting for the footnote, I’ll try and convey what the Coltrane-Dolphy-Kirk event was like nearly 50 years ago.
I had met Roland Kirk at the Half Note in 1959. High School friends and I had spent that Christmas in NYC. Roland Kirk (later Rahsaan Roland Kirk) is one of three Columbus, Ohio music luminaries —Nancy Wilson (“Sweet Nancy” in Sid McCoy’s lexicon) and Harry “Sweets” Edison. I had the thrill of meeting ”Sweets” Edison in Detroit at Bakers’ Keyboard Lounge where he was performing with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. “Sweets” Edison performed with Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Frank Sinatra. I never met “Sweet” Nancy; but I feel like I know her, since Sid McCoy, the famous Chicago jazz disc jockey always played something by Nancy Wilson. He opened his show with Jimmy Smith’s recording of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” — unfortunately a tune with a poignant message for us today.
Sweet Memory, Fifty Years On. The Village Gate was located in the basement (or ground floor?) of a large building. The room itself was large with long tables at which one sat. I don’t recall having been served drinks, New York waiters had a keen awareness of the spenders verses ‘music lovers’, so our waiter or waitress most likely avoided us. The former Village Gate is now (Le) Poisson Rouge.
Jerry M. and I were expectantly sitting at our table waiting for the music to begin. My expectation was the result of having heard John Coltrane in person once before at Ford Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan in the winter of 1959. He was a member of the famous Miles Davis sextet that featured “Cannonball” Adderly, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb. Ford Auditorium has/had a platform in front of the main stage that could be lowered and raised. Miles’s sextet rose up from a lower level blasting Thelonius Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser”—a thrilling moment for my date and me.
I think the long tables were set out at angles to the bandstand. There were microphones all over the bandstand, each of the contra-basses was miked; Art Davis was on the left and Reggie Workman was on the right. Elvin Jones and his drum set were behind Workman. McCoy Tyner at the piano was behind Art Davis. John Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones was in the middle of these musicians. Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and flute walked past out table. He was charged with leading Roland Kirk to the bandstand. Mr Kirk was blind.
To say that Roland Kirk was a multi-instrumentalist could be misleading. He performed on the tenor saxophone, flute, and these antique single-reed instruments manzello, stritch, and nose-flute. But Kirk was unique in that he had perfected a technique of playing the tenor, manzello, and stritch simultaneously.
Now Eric Dolphy was leading Roland Kirk and all of his instruments to the bandstand! Around his neck were hung three saxophones and nose-flute. In his hand he held a regular flute. So after their trek to the bandstand, through an even more expectant and buzzing audience, there stood at the center of the elevated bandstand three giants of creative music: John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Roland Kirk. What I felt at that moment has stayed with me for nearly fifty years — I have had a vision outside myself of myself. That’s one of the ways that art — even the prospect of ART — can affect one; it takes one outside of one’s self, if one let’s the music take one. You have to give yourself to it. You have to be on “creative alert” in Geoff Dyer’s phrase. That evening at the Village Gate I was on creative alert.
There are certain tunes that become an improving artist’s signature tune. “My Favorite Things” was John Coltrane’s signature tune in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with a “Hit Parade” competition or an “American Idol” shot. It’s more in the sense of an Anthem that I have in mind. It’s in the sense of an Anthem of Excellence or Striving for Artistic Perfection. I think of Charlie Parker’s “Koko” or Monk’s “Criss Cross”, nearly every tenor-man’s “Body and Soul” (after Coleman Hawkins, that is). John Coltrane didn’t take requests, but he most often played “My Favorite Things”. He first recorded it on 21 October 1960. It was released in March 1961. (I don’t know whether I heard this recording prior to the Village Gate performance.)
To be continued.
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