Cosmic Music

Cosmic Music is a jazz album by John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane released after John Coltrane's death. John Coltrane only plays on two tracks, "Manifestation" and "Reverend King".

For other uses, see Cosmic Music (disambiguation).
Cosmic Music
Studio album by
John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane
Released1968
RecordedFebruary 2, 1966, San Francisco
January 29, 1968, New York
GenreJazz
LabelImpulse!
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic [1]
Rolling Stone(positive) [2]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide[3]

Background

In late January 1966, Coltrane and his group, which included saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, pianist Alice Coltrane (McCoy Tyner had left the group at the end of the previous year[4]), bassist Jimmy Garrison, bassist / clarinetist Donald Rafael Garrett, and drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali, arrived in San Francisco for a two-week gig at the Jazz Workshop, sharing the bill with Thelonious Monk's quartet.[5] During the first week of their visit, Jones resigned from the band, joining Duke Ellington's group, and was replaced by Ray Appleton. Garrett also left for part of the gig.[5]

On February 2, the group (without Garrett, and with Appleton substituting for Jones), visited Coast Recorders in San Francisco, where they recorded a number of tracks, including "Manifestation" and "Reverend King."[6] [nb 1] "Manifestation" features solos by John Coltrane on tenor sax, Sanders on piccolo (returning later on tenor sax), and Alice Coltrane on piano. (It was Alice Coltrane's first recording with her husband.[8]) "Reverend King" begins and ends with chants of "Aum-Mani-Pad-Mi-Hum" and features a solo by Sanders on tenor, as well as one of John Coltrane's few recorded appearances on bass clarinet.[9]

Tapes of these two tracks remained in the Coltranes' house until January 1968, roughly six months after John Coltrane's death, when Alice Coltrane decided to pair them with two tracks she recorded with her own group, "Lord, Help Me to Be" and "The Sun".[10][11] These were her first recordings as a leader,[12] and feature bassist Garrison and drummer Ben Riley, with Sanders appearing on tenor sax on "Lord, Help Me to Be" and briefly on flute on "The Sun". "The Sun" begins with a recording of John Coltrane and Sanders chanting "May there be peace and love and perfection throughout all creation," and ends with John Coltrane's voice saying "Alice?"[11] Both pieces were later released as bonus tracks on the CD reissue of Alice Coltrane's first solo album, A Monastic Trio.

These four tracks were initially released as Cosmic Music on Coltrane Records in late 1968.[10] However, representatives from Impulse! Records soon contacted Alice Coltrane, offering to include her as an Impulse! artist and suggesting that Cosmic Music be re-released on their label.[13] She recalled: "Once [Cosmic Music] was available... the Impulse people said, 'Your ideas are fine, the music is good, but let us produce it. Let us have control of the artwork, and we'll put out a beautiful cover and music that's in your hands, and it'll be a very nice album and we also can get it out throughout the world.' There was no sense of someone coercing or whatever, or even trying to persuade me. It was just, 'If you would like, we can produce it very nicely for you.' And it was!"[10] The album was reissued by Impulse! in 1969 with new cover art and with the co-credit "produced by Coltrane Records."[10]

Two of the remaining tracks from the February 2, 1966 session appeared on Infinity with extensive editing and overdubbing, and one of the tracks also appeared on Jupiter Variation.[7]

Reception

AllMusic reviewer Michael G. Nastos called Cosmic Music "emphatic, surging, and sometimes unfathomable."[1] Thom Jurek, also writing for AllMusic, wrote "While this record holds up quite well... it is still a minor Impulse album compared to some of the saxophonist's master works."[12] John Corbett included the album in his book Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium, referring to "Manifestation" as "beautiful energy music, as Coltrane knew how to craft it" and expressing admiration for "Reverend King"'s "gloriously ecstatic bass clarinet — another underdocumented facet of Trane’s recorded history — and... joyous group interaction by the full ensemble."[14]

Track listing
No.TitleRecording date and locationLength
1."Manifestation"February 2, 1966, Coast Recorders11:37
2."Lord, Help Me To Be"January 29, 1968, New York City7:29
3."Reverend King"February 2, 1966, Coast Recorders11:00
4."The Sun"January 29, 1968, New York City4:02

Personnel

Notes
  1. There is evidence that "Manifestation" is actually an excerpt from an extended version of "Leo" recorded that day.[7]

References
  1. Nastos, Michael G. "John Coltrane Quintet: Cosmic Music". allmusic.com. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  2. Zwerin, Michael (1 February 1969). "Records". Rolling Stone. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc.
  3. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 47. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
  4. Ratliff, Ben (2007). Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 103.
  5. Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. p. 338.
  6. Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. p. 749.
  7. Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. p. 750.
  8. Berkman, Franya J. (2010). Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane. Wesleyan University Press. p. 47.
  9. Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. pp. 749–750.
  10. Kahn, Ashley (2006). The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. W. W. Norton. p. 187.
  11. Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. p. 770.
  12. Jurek, Thom. "John Coltrane: Cosmic Music". allmusic.com. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  13. Kahn, Ashley (2006). The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. W. W. Norton. p. 185.
  14. Corbett, John (2017). Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium. Duke University Press. p. 34.


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