Another Sunday Interlude: A Trane Trio

Photo by Don Hunstein

   

Heading into the new year, "Spritual" is as fine a composition, at once detailed and melodic, complex and basic, as one can imagine, rendered live by one of the best improvisatory ensembles as there ever was.  This was the first album with the classic John Coltrane Quartet: Elvin Jones, Paul Chambers, and McCoy Tyner.  For this selection the incomparable Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet makes this piece levitate.

And below is "an outake" from the original album, with Coltrane and Dolphy ascending to amazing heights of musical transcendence:

   

The mind is, of course, the most complex instrument of all, certainly proven by these stellar tunes. For those who prefer their transcendence a tad more melodic, here are two of my favorite recordings from Coltrane's Atlantic years, "Equinox" and "Central Park West":

Finally, to get the new year started with a little look back, a recent poem of mine featured on tinywords:

Slime trail—
glancing back at
the glinting

little snail
facing this way
where to now?

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

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A Sunday Interlude

Lesser Ury: London in the Fog (London im Nebel 1926)

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                            
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;                              
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

T. S. Eliot
 from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

white versus yellow--
the butterflies
wrestle too

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Chester B. Long

best,

Don

PS  Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 127 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Two Lyric Geniuses

It's Friday. Time to watch somebody else work for a change, pun intended. First, the incomparable John Coltrane, with Eric Dolphy:





Plus, Derek Walcott's sublime Forty Acres.


best,
Don