Porter - The John Coltrane reference

The
JOHN COLTRANE
Reference

The
JOHN COLTRANE
Reference

Chris DeVito, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler, and David Wild

Edited Lewis Porter

First published in paperback 2013
First edition published 2008
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2008, 2013 Taylor & Francis

The right of Lewis Porter, Chris DeVito, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler, and David Wild to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The John Coltrane reference / by Chris DeVito ... [et al.] ; general editor, Lewis Porter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Coltrane, John, 1926-1967-Discography. 2. Coltrane, John, 1926-1967-Chronology. I. DeVito, Chris.
ML156.7.C58J64 2008
788.7165092dc22
2007015178

ISBN: 978-0-415-97755-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63463-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-94005-1 (ebk)

Senior Editor: Constance Ditzel
Editorial Assistant: Elysse Preposi
Production Editor: Emma Hkonsen
Senior Marketing Manager: Paul Myatovich
Cover Design: Christian Muoz

From Lewis

To my brother Gilbert, a great help in everything

From Chris

To the memory of my brother Tommy, who gave me my first copies of My Favorite Things and Kind of Blue

From Fuji (Yasuhiro Fujioka)

To my spiritual brother Carlos Santana and to Ravi Coltrane

From Wolf

To my wife Uli and my son Robin

From David

To my familyAngelyn, Stacy, and Anthonyand to the many others who have helped me through the years

From All of Us

We dedicate this ongoing work to the music and memory of John Coltrane

A passion for the music of John Coltrane unites people all over the world, bringing together people of diverse backgrounds. There could be no better illustration of that than the publication of this book, written by a team whose members live in New York, Illinois, Texas, Osaka (Japan), and Ottweiler (Germany).

During the many years that I was researching my book of biography and musical analysis, John Coltrane: His Life and Music, I encountered many fellow travelers. David Wild was already well known among Coltrane aficionados for his book The Recordings of John Coltrane: A Discography, as well as a similarly authoritative work on Omette Coleman. I began a correspondence with him in the mid-1980s. Soon, my friend Ed Hazell, a noted jazz author in the Boston area, brought to my attention a classified notice in the jazz magazine Cadence by a Japanese researcher working on an updated discography. I wrote to Yasuhiro Fujioka, known as Fuji, and we began sharing our discoveries of previously unknown Coltrane recordings. Eventually I became one of Fuji's assisting authors and I brought Fuji's manuscript to the attention of the Rutgers Jazz Monograph Series, under whose auspices I also edited the book. John Coltrane: A Discography and Musical Biography was published in 1995.

One of Fuji's main collaborators was Wolf Schmaler, and Fuji told me that he and Wolf would continue quite actively to research Coltrane, in the expectation of putting out a second edition of the discography. The French author and researcher Michel Delorme has also been an important member of this research team. Meanwhile, soon after my book came out in 1998, I received an e-mail from a gentleman named Chris DeVito. Chris was an experienced editor who wanted to know if there was some aspect of Coltrane that still had to be researched, as he would love to get involved. I suggested that he might search through the music pages of newspapers issue by issue, as there was a wealth of information there that I had only started to uncover while compiling the 40-page chronology presented in my book. I then put this out of my mind until a few months later, when I received a package of several hundred pages of newspaper ads and reviews that Chris had found in the microfilms, accompanied in many cases by a quite detailed analysis!

Over the next year or two, Chris came up with so much new information that I suggested that he had enough material to publish his own chronology, greatly expanded from mine, as a book on its own. Meanwhile, I continued to work with Fuji, David, and Wolf on discographical matters. Finally it dawned on me that the chronology and discography were so intertwined that this should be one big book. Among other things, dates for recordings were also given in the chronology, and dates in the discography were used to help verify dates of performances. I also realized that music fans would love to have all of this information in one place. I suggested that we combine forces, and The John Coltrane Reference was born.

Each of these gentlemen is a pleasure to know and to work with, and each has put in thousands of hours in compiling this work. Chris, in particular, took on a leadership role; he wrote most of the text for the chronology, and fact-checked every entry. It is mostly Chris's voiceand his witthat you will enjoy in the chronology entries. Chris helped edit and prepare the discography, and it was Chris who often brought to our attention a discrepancy between one entry and another.

Just as Chris began with my chronology as a template, Wolf began with Fuji's discography (itself building on Dave's earlier work). Wolf added new data as he and Fuji and the rest of us uncovered it, checked all the timings of studio tapes (in itself an overwhelming task), and finished the expanded and updated discography found here. He also did extensive research on Coltrane's European tours, and in the process discovered a previously unknown television film of Coltrane. But all of the members of the team have been thoroughly involved, and each one brought to the group an expertise that was unique and necessary to the project. Seemingly 24 hours a day, Fuji continued to research Coltrane's recordings and photographs (he has the largest Coltrane photo archive in the world). Dave produced from his massive research files information that is unique, unavailable anywhere else. He went through the discography files with a fine-toothed comb, making sure that the format of all the entries was absolutely consistent, rewriting many sessions when needed, and adding dozens of informative research notes. He studied the recordings closely when necessary, to determine song titles and personnel. And, of course, I shared my own research, of which my earlier chronology is only the tip of an iceberg. For one thing, I continually research unissued recordings of all jazz artists (not only Coltrane). I brought the information about Coltrane's Navy recordings and many others to Fuji's book, and I learned about a number of other items in time to list them here. As editor, I also made overall suggestions as to format and contents, and proofread the entire book manuscript for the last time before it went to the publisher.