{"id":627,"date":"2010-09-07T22:48:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T05:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/?p=627"},"modified":"2010-09-07T22:48:39","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T05:48:39","slug":"day-146-nina-simone-and-john-coltrane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/archives\/627","title":{"rendered":"Day 146. Nina Simone and John Coltrane."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today\u2019s rips stem mostly from an assignment in Tamiko\u2019s class on literature and music tomorrow. She is teaching Nina Simone\u2019s \u2018Mississippi Goddamn!\u2019 and I found a compilation on eMusic called the \u2018Protest Anthology\u2019. The Birmingham church bombing is an important part of the song and her lecture tomorrow, which reminded me about \u2018Alabama\u2019 by John Coltrane, and I realized that with Mira\u2019s love of boxsets, that there is a lot of John Coltrane I still had to rip. I grabbed a handful this morning (mostly Impulse! recordings) and worked through most of them tonight.<\/p>\n

Right now, the version of \u2018Afro Blue\u2019 on \u2018One Up, One Down: Live at the Half Note\u2019 is playing … and it just cut off. This recording is from a live broadcast, and ends after almost thirteen minutes in the middle of one of Coltrane\u2019s amazing solos. Who knows how much longer it went on for, but I do know that\u00a0 it is a crime that this is lost. Not that I can\u2019t just put on the thirty-five minute version of \u2018Afro Blue\u2019 on the \u2018Live in Seattle\u2019 disc, but as with the eight minute version on the album \u2018Afro Blue\u2019 or the three or four other versions I have, I know that these aren\u2019t other performances of the same song. They start out with the melody they need to, and usually move into a McCoy Tyner solo, but after that it really is anybody\u2019s guess, and it is always different and just as amazing. I understand that for some people jazz can be a cacophony, and that Coltrane can be seen as the epitome of that \u2018problem\u2019. But once you know get a sliver of an appreciation for what he is doing, there is so magic in these recordings. So much virtuosity, and so much invention. Coltrane might be one of the only artists that could have gotten by in his career playing only one song for the rest of his life, taking the song into forty minutes plus, and saying something new with it every time. So it is really hard to hear one of these performances cut off in the middle. It is like listening to the first two movements of Beethoven\u2019s 5th, and knowing the 3rd and 4th should come next, but you aren\u2019t going to get them.<\/p>\n

Anyways – back to Nina Simone and actually how Coltrane fits into this. Some of this can easily be called the soundtrack of the Civil Rights movement. \u2018Mississippi Goddamn\u2019 was sung to audiences of whites and at marches where police surrounded everyone. I once heard a quote about people hearing Coltrane play for forty minutes or more during this time, and that hearing someone do that was the sound of freedom. Coltrane, when he was playing music like this, was doing \u201cwhat a free man could do\u201d. When I listen to this music, I can\u2019t possibly understand what it took for these artists to create this work. My life doesn\u2019t have a parallel to that fight. So while I listen to this music because I love it and enjoy it, I also appreciate the history lesson it provides. And I mourn the bits that are lost because it didn\u2019t fit into a radio broadcast schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s rips stem mostly from an assignment in Tamiko\u2019s class on literature and music tomorrow. She is teaching Nina Simone\u2019s \u2018Mississippi Goddamn!\u2019 and I found a compilation on eMusic called the \u2018Protest Anthology\u2019. The Birmingham church bombing is an important part of the song and her lecture tomorrow, which reminded me about \u2018Alabama\u2019 by John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58,49],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jazz","tag-john-coltrane","tag-nina-simone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realizedsound.net\/dac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}