John Coltrane at the Village Gate - Personal Reflections (a reissue of a previous blog-post).
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.
The Music. Reggie Workman (bass) played pizzicato phrases while Art Davis (bass) employed an arco technique. The Village Gate introduction was in a way like that of Coltrane’s recording of “Dahomey’s Dance”. But it also was, or it had the feeling of, Jimmy Garrison’s solo introduction to the 57 minute Live in Japan 1966 recording of “My Favorite Things”, in which Jimmy Garrison uses both pizzicato and arco techniques. But the Village Gate arrangement followed the initial Atlantic recording except for the basses’ introduction and the additional instruments: a second bass, Eric Dolphy’s flute, and Roland Kirk’s three saxophones, nose whistle, and other stuff.
Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk are on the bandstand. Reggie Workman (bass) and Art Davis (bass) have provided a lengthy introduction. McCoy Tyner (piano) plays an ostinato figure on the piano. John Coltrane plays the melody then solos. McCoy Tyner keeps the ostinato two-handed block chords coming. Roland Kirk is entranced, his movements were those of a prize fighter—a fighter with three saxophones hanging from his neck. Dolphy is looking up at the ceiling. Coltrane is back for another solo. Tyner keeps the block chords coming, pushing Coltrane’s soprano saxophone further out. Coltrane restates the theme after his intense solo. Next it’s Eric Dolphy’s solo on flute.
The photographic image that I’ve had all of these years has been one that’s dark around its edges with a halo-like lighting in the center—the saxophone trinity of Coltrane, Dolphy, and Kirk in the center framed by the 6/8 rhythm machine con- sisting of the drummer Elvin Jones, the bassists Reggie Workman and Art Davis, and the pianist McCoy Tyner. Ostinato all around; ostinato all the way down.
Throughout the introductions of Workman, Davis, and Tyner, and throughout the solos of Tyner, Coltrane, and Dolphy; Roland Kirk is bobbing and weaving with his army of saxophones, whistle, and other stuff, ready to engage “My Favorite Things”. I’m sure that the Village Gate “My Favorite Things” was more than an hour in duration (the Live in Japan recorded performance is 57 minutes).
After being "on creative alert" for forty minutes or so, the one man saxophone ensemble that was Roland Kirk was beyond ready to play. I certainly can't describe to the reader how he played; except to say that he played his three saxophones all at once and punctuated an incredible solo with a whistle from his nose flute — Kirk’s incredible solo followed the incredible solos of Messrs. Davis, Workman, Coltrane, Tyner, Coltrane and Dolphy. Incredible solos? Solos characterized by forceful tones, harmonics, doubling the 6/8 rhythmic pulse, creating a rhythmic pulse on top of Elvin Jones’ polyrhythmic pulses---indescribable; I tried!
There has been fixed in my memory and imaginings of that evening of stupendous music making and invention an image of the audience’s reaction to the sight of Eric Dolphy leading Roland Kirk, a blind man with his tangle of instruments, to the band stand. This image of mine, which has been constant, is one of me as a member of the audience witnessing the sight of Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk, witnessing this very reflexive seeing of a sight of . . . . This, hopefully non-vicious, visual regress appears to be in stereo—one mind’s eye on me qua audience member and one mind’s eye on the audience, including me. I also suppose that there could be a regress of mind’s eyes, too.
My current explanatory hypothesis resides in the fact that I had met Roland Kirk a year before at the Half Note and I knew as a consequence of that meeting what to expect from him musically. The rest of Village Gate audience didn’t know what to expect from this blind man with his tangle of saxophones and other weird instruments, his assortment of found objects. Anyway that’s my thinking.
After the music started I was totally transfixed. And my ‘memories’ of that fabulous night have been a fixed point for me over the past 50 years—me as a spectator amongst the other spectators, 17 August 1961. Memory and imagination hang together for me.
As I noted above, for many years I couldn’t figure out exactly who the second bass player was; I knew that Art Davis was one of the bassists. I conjected that Reggie Workman might have been the other bassist, but I couldn’t be sure. A few years ago I asked Oliver Lake, who performs with Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille in the group Trio Three, if he would ask Workman if he was the other bassist that night in August, 1961. Reggie Workman thought that I might have been trying to peddle a bootleg recording of the music of that evening (I wish someone had a recording of that night!), and he refused to say whether he was on that gig or not. But some time later, Trio Three appeared at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I asked Reggie Workman directly. He replied, ”Yes. It was magical wasn’t it.”
It was indeed, magical.
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