Thursday, July 11, 2024

Track Of The Day: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Pt. III Pursuance (Impulse!)


I remember buying this record, one Saturday morning in Liverpool, around 1981, 1982 . . . one of those visits to see my dad. We’d go and have a coffee somewhere and after that, I’d wander off to a record shop and spend any money he’d just given me on music. This cost around £3.00 new. It’s a bit of a flimsy pressing, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve still got it and give it a spin from time to time. I was just finding my feet with jazz, a genre I’m still very much learning about and discovering. I must have been around 18 at the time and had made the sideways jump from the funked up sounds I was listening to at the time to their influences and foundation. This track is like some sort of hard bop abstraction, with solos peppered within it. McCoy Tyner’s piano in the first four minutes is stunning, the drumming of Elvin Jones is industrial; Coltrane’s saxophone is savage, and then it all comes to a crashing halt before the last few minutes are taken up by Jimmy Garrison and his double bass, which almost has a Spanish feel to it. It’s all here.

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