#red garland

RED GARLAND - Stormy Weather

Alb. "All Kinds of Weather" (1959)

Personnel:

The New Miles Davis Quintet: Miles

Original Jazz Classics/Prestige OJC-006/P-7014, 2009

John Coltrane: Lush Life (1961)

Blame it on my ignorance or blame it on towering masterworks like Blue Train, Giant Steps, and A Love Supreme for overshadowing all things Coltrane, but I knew nothing about the Lush Life LP until I saw it sitting on a record store shelf.

Which is odd for a mostly well-reviewed 65-year-old opus that was awarded five stars by Downbeat magazine, which called Coltrane an "outstanding new artist" and praised his ability to "wring emotional meaning" from the Great American Songbook.

What is this, some kind of bebop hipster conspiracy?

Turns out Lush Life was something of an odd duck in Coltrane's discography because it compiled the results of three separate sessions from 1957 and '58 that remained unreleased by Prestige until the saxophone genius had moved on to more adventurous sounds.

The title track is the album's crown jewel: a fourteen-minute masterclass in restraint showcasing Coltrane at his most lyrical (in direct contrast to the forthcoming "sheets of sound") while improvising over the song's notoriously difficult, meandering harmonic progression.

In this he's expertly supported by a young Donald Byrd on trumpet (delivering a "hotter," tonally contrasting solo), Louis Hayes on drums, and fellow Miles Davis Quintet alums Paul Chambers on bass and Red Garland, at his most majestic and tasteful, on piano.

I highly recommend playing "Lush Life" to soundtrack your next drive through frozen fields and snowbound landscapes, should nature conveniently cooperate with some this winter, as it did for me the other week when I briefly escaped Nashville for L.A.

Flipping back to side one, the three tracks cut in August of '57 are rightly referred to as "the piano-less trio," because Garland never showed up for the session and left Coltrane more room to express himself in conjunction with bassist Earl May and drummer Art Taylor.

The first two tracks were also pop standards: Jimmy Van Heusen's "Like Someone in Love" (haunting, mysterious; Coltrane turns it inside-out by starting with the bridge -- a classic bebop trick) and Cole Porter's "I Love You" (hard-swinging; without the piano to get in the way it highlights the syncopation between sax and bass).

The third is Coltrane's own "Trane’s Slow Blues," where his tenor sax "worries" every idea out of every possible angle in the simple blues structure, before both May and Taylor take their solos, relying on raw spontaneity to overcome a rather awkward transition.

Finally, and back to side two, the glorious title cut is followed by the album's most straight-ahead hard bop-based number in "I Hear a Rhapsody," which Coltrane recorded in May of 1957 with Garland, Chambers, and Albert Heath on drums.

It's also arguably my least favorite cut here, but I still don't see enough reason for those critical niggles about the album's lack of continuity and haphazard nature, nor All About Jazz's comment that the rhythm sections didn't always "hone into what Coltrane was up to."

Maybe low (or, well, no) expectations were the key, but I personally found Lush Life incredibly enjoyable and a definite keeper -- so move over Blue Train, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, and make some room on that shelf!

A 1955 rehearsal shot with Miles giving Red some instruction while Chambers and Jones stand by.

Miles Davis - My Funny Valentine [1956]