I can't understand the genius -_-...
I'm 19 years old, and have enjoyed listening, but most of all, playing classical and jazz music whether it be on the flute, electric guitar, or drum practice pad, yet i've realized after purchasing this recording that with 7 years of experience I still can't understand Coltrane's genius...I keep listening to this recording and it all sounds like high school concert band level (not even jazz band) -_-...I find it hard to believe that that's the case, so i've come to the conclusion that i'm still young and lack experience...i feel embarrassed to post this as an up-and-coming musician, but i'm hoping someone can clear this up for me.

ONE OF TRANE'S MORE INCENDIARY PHASES
I was lucky enough to acquire a cheap 2nd hand copy of this set, on the first day of a vacation. (Talk about recharging one's batteries.) And I have to agree with John Grabowski's review - which fearlessly delineates several stringent realites, in a way which is I think entirely fair to the spirit, intentions and results of John Coltrane's work.

Being a set of mostly posthumoulsy released live "takes," OF COURSE there are passages of raw, unformed-ness, and ideas which were ignored in favor of the development and pursuance of other ideas...That's mostly what live modern jazz, even GREAT live modern jazz, is. (Thomas Merton's COLD WAR LETTERS - the first of which dates from 7 days before the first of these VANGUARD sessions - are of the same kind of ground-breaking nature, have the same kind of mixture of developed and undeveloped ideas.) Now, I don't accuse Mr. Grabowski of this, but if you require exquisitely chiselled statements of Mozartean perfection, spread across a whole series of performances, well, then, modern jazz just ain't your idiom. These 22 tracks have been judged as if they constituted some kind of artist-approved, "finished" work. But they do not, because Trane only approved 5 of these 22 tracks for release during his lifetime. Still, all of them are essential for understanding John Coltrane.

These VILLAGE VANGUARD tapes, recorded November 1-5, 1961, document one of Trane's more incendiary, more overtly experimental phases. I see this as part of a recurring dual pattern in Trane's work: an alternation between the digging of raw gems and the subsequent refining of those gems in the crucible of his art - each of these complimentary phases revealing different qualities of that particular "set" of gems. You have to go back to Trane's initial emergence on the scene to really see this.

First, there is Trane's 1955-56 work with Miles Davis: intriguing, probing, yet rather raw and unformed. (Check out the 1955 Miles/Trane "Little Melonae", or their 1956 "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Sweet Sue"). This is followed by his more assured 1957 work with Thelonius Monk, and his concurrent Prestige and Blue Note debut sessions as a leader ("Goodbait," "Blue Train," "Moment's Notice," et al). My theory is that being with a genius as idiosyncratic as Monk not only forced Trane to sharpen his intuition as to what he himself was "about," but even made him sound more "lucid" by comparison - and thus gave him a new confidence. (Not to mention that during this pivotal year, Trane quit his heroin habit, cold turkey.)

Then come the "paradoxical" years of 1958 through 1960. They include Trane's second stint with Miles (MILESTONES, "Green Dolphin Street," KIND OF BLUE), and the beginning of Trane as a "live" working leader of his own band (not merely the designated "leader" of studio-recorded albums, important though they have been up to this point). What makes this phase so "paradoxical" is Trane's alternation between two seeming (but related) "scalar" opposites...On the one hand, his arpeggiated "sheets of sound," imposed over lightning-fast harmonic "changes" which push the "coherence envelope" of Bop and Hard Bop to the breaking point (GIANT STEPS, et al)...On the other hand, the opening out into the less cluttered "spaces" of modal - as in "scalar" - harmony (KIND OF BLUE, MY FAVORITE THINGS). It is during these years, in the midst of this "crucible of alternation," that John Coltrane finds his true Voice. And I use the word "alternation" literally, because GIANT STEPS follows KIND OF BLUE by a matter of weeks. But overall - as long as you understand "modal" as including, but not restricted to, the designated Western "modes" (i.e., Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, etc.) - it is the vast territory of modal harmony and "line" which will constitute John Coltrane's musical "Living Space" to the very end.

But by early November 1961, Trane is poised for a more overtly experimental "stretch" - and a deeper exploration of the implications of that modal harmony and "line" which he had made so sweetly palatable in KIND OF BLUE and MY FAVORITE THINGS. Among other things, this means substantial passages in which pianist McCoy Tyner's crystalline accompaniment is dispensed with for more exploratory (some would say "abstract-sounding") harmonic "digs." That is to say, you wouldn't play this stuff at a dinner party.

Within a few weeks of Trane's VANGUARD stint (as you can hear in the LIVE TRANE set), he is performing some of these same works in Paris and Stockholm - already refining some of the lines and harmonies he has "dug up" at the VANGUARD. (And so is Eric Dolphy, who has been part of Trane's working band since a month or so before the VANGUARD sessions). This continuing "phase" will last through at least the end of 1964 and produce his most accessible mature work : BALLADS; COLTRANE; COLTRANE & ELLINGTON; COLTRANE & JOHNNY HARTMANN; LIVE AT BIRDLAND; the fall 1962 & fall 1963 live European performances found in LIVE TRANE; CRESCENT and of course A LOVE SUPREME.

Then, following the increasing spiritual awakening signalled by A LOVE SUPREME, the sessions of February and May 1965 take the listener into choppier but exciting waters (THE COLTRANE QUARTET PLAYS, "One Down, One Up," "After the Crescent," etc.) Overt experimentation is once again the order of the day - and as if to confirm this, in the midst of these sessions Coltrane even re-records "Neptune" / aka "Brasilia" from the '61 VANGUARD sessions.

The struggle and foment of these sessions is followed by a more lucid "patch" which seems to emit a hard-won kind of peace: the session of June 10, 1965 which includes "Suite" (a wilder, abbreviated kind of LOVE SUPREME), the astounding "Transition" (perhaps Trane's single greatest recording, if I had to pick just one ) and "Welcome."

However, within a mere six days (June 16, 1965), Trane will record "Living Space" and "Vigil" - a daring duet between Trane and drummer Elvin Jones which anticipates the INTERTELLAR SPACE tracks of February 1967 (these are also sax-and-drum duets). This overtly experimental "mode" will last for the remainder of the Classic Coltrane Quartet's existence (i.e., through September '65)- and for the rest of his life. You cannot help wondering what Trane might have made of his final-phase "raw gems," had he lived for another 5 years. (The February 1967 "Venus" offers a tantalizing clue.)

Now, having pushed the saxophone to its "natural" technical boundries and a bit beyond- constantly trying for notes higher than the instrument was designed to produce- and yet still possessed of a relentlessly exploratory spirit, I have always suspected that Trane would have benfitted from, or even mastered, the emerging world of electronics and synthesizers. (It is known that, in the final months of his life, he was practicing with the experimental prototype of an electronic "doubling" apparatus - which enables a wind player to play multiple notes, simultaneously.)

It is THIS kind of perspective which makes his death a gaping wound in the fabric of African-American improvisational music which has still not healed : not only did his People, and Humanity, lose one of their greatest explorers, but perhaps the emerging electronic jazz idiom was denied the Great Creative Voice it never really had...At least, not in a way equivalent to what Trane did for purely 'acoustical' jazz.

So regardless of some uneven passages- which in themselves are quite instructive - you could not go wrong by investing in this set. I share Mr. Grabowski's distaste for Coltrane-Cultish "slush, mush & gush," but I will risk it, here: This is a generous, beautifully restored slice of bristling, no-holds-barred, relentlessy self-confrontational, creative LIFE. Is there ANYONE doing such things, to this extent, in music, today? Or, if there were, could we TOLERATE it? I'll leave it at that.

Out There
I can't speak to the genius of any artist. Music -- like literature, a painting or a sculpture -- either speaks to the listener or it doesn't. I've been listening to jazz most of my adult life and understand that its very improvisatory nature, especially in live performances, often results in hits or misses when it comes to exploration of a theme. I've heard eight or ten different live versions of some of Monk's classic tunes -- Blue Monk, `Round Midnight, Misterioso, Straight, No Chaser -- each rendition different. Some were hit out of the ballpark, while others left men on base. I've seen Brubeck perform three times and he almost never failed to hit for extra bases.

When it comes to musicians like Monk and Coltrane, a listener either gets them or they don't. I received this boxed set as a Christmas gift, and while the uninitiated might care more for the Master Takes single disc version, I very much enjoyed this complete recordings.

Recommended, but perhaps an acquired taste.

Thank you . . .
To the reviewer "Rose: Jazz Fan", thank you so much for reminding me that this set contains an incredible version of "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise". McCoy Tyner is unbelievable on it , and the drummer (Elvin Jones? Roy Haynes? I don't remember)uses brushes during Tyner's part beofre switching to sticks when Coltrane comes in. It's the most hard-driving swing I've ever heard. I used to listen to this set several times a week during the late '70's, when in college. My vinyl copies are worn and scratchy sounding, which is why I haven't listened to it much in the past 25 or so years. But just thinking about this music now makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It's amazing stuff.

Upon revisiting the Village Vanguard
Over the past couple days I listened to this for the first time in years. I listened to the Crescent album a few months ago and that was the first and only Coltrane (in terms of one of his own albums) I'd listened to in years. No real reason why I hadn't listened to him hardly at all for so long, I just hadn't.

It turns out I had forgotten how great a set this is. I always loved it, and I remembered loving it, but it's really been knocking me out these past 2 days. A ton has been written about Coltrane himself, and much more will be written in the future. Too little is said about the rest of the band. I think you could not care for Coltrane himself all that much and still love this music. Recorded on 11/1/61, 11/2/61, 11/3/61 and 11/5/61, the bands here (mainly McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Reggie Workman, Elvin Jones and Eric Dolphy) are fantastic. When a Coltrane solo ends, there is no letdown. This is some of McCoy's finest playing ever... much better than on other peoples' Blue Note albums. Garrison, Workman and Jones get it going on in a major way here. Really that is what this set is about for me more than anything... rhythm. It's impossible for me to sit still during this stuff. A churning, pumping cyclone of sound, that's what this band is.

The Indias and Miles' Modes alone would be enough to counterbalance this album even if the rest of the stuff were only worthy of one star, which is not the case. And of course this makes me miss Eric Dolphy, as usual. I'm not sure I'll ever stop wondering what could have been. =(