For the completists among fans of Miles Davis and John Coltrane – either or both – this weighty four-CD set of found recordings is mighty interesting. Not any Holy Grail, exactly, but a set that fills in some blanks in what we know of the development of Coltrane’s sound and style, and of the interaction between the mercurial bandleader and the tenorist.
It’s titled All of You: The Last Tour 1960 and it documents a European tour the Davis Quintet made as part of a package deal led by impresario Norman Granz. The tour was headlined by Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson, two known and solid draws on the European jazz scene. Davis was known by reputation and recording to the European fans but hadn’t toured there, and Trane was pretty much a question mark. Davis and Coltrane were perhaps best known at that point for their collaboration on Davis’s Milestones and Kind of Blue which came out in 1959, but Coltrane had since then split from the group and begun to put together his own combo. He joined this tour at the last minute, and there’s some indication that he was less than fully invested in it, according to the extensive and excellent liner notes by saxophonist and writer Simon Spillett.
The quintet, which was rounded out by Wynton on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums, appears to have played just three or four pieces at each date, which ran from Stockholm on March 21 to Copenhagen on March 24, into Frankfurt on March 30, Munich April 3, Zurich April 8 and finished in Scheveningen, Holland on April 9, 1960. Most of the dates included takes of “So What” and “All Blues” and several included the by-then standard “On Green Dolphin Street.” We also get more than one take each of “Walkin’,” and ” ‘Round Midnight” and a handful of one-offs.
This repetition of tunes night to night is instructive to the close listener, particularly one following Coltrane. Even one like myself, just starting to pay close attention to Coltrane’s development into the towering figure he shortly became, notices differences and similarities from night to night. Spillett’s notes are very helpful in pointing out what to listen for in this regard.
There’s a wealth of music here. The sonics are not top-notch, because most of these recordings were made off the radio or by private parties at the concerts, and sometimes the miking was less than ideal. Some of the pieces that stand out for me so far include the title track, which appears just once, as one of only two recordings that survived from the Frankfurt date; the driving “Walkin’ ” from Munich which showcases a long section of lyrical and soaring work by Davis and even more wide-ranging explorations by Coltrane; and Davis’s lovely “Fran Dance” from Holland, on which Coltrane delivers some rapid runs mixed with more melodic phrases and Kelly trots our some slowly swinging blues on his solo. I have yet to choose a favorite from among the various takes of “All Blues,” one of my all-time favorite Miles pieces. This set has a lot of riches to dig through, so I’m content to take my time.
(Acrobat, 2014)
