Whenever John Coltrane and his bandmates performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, the motto was plain & simple: "We came to play." And did Trane & his bandmates ever live up to that credo of coming to play each time they came into town. From the first time he played at Newport in 1958 (as a member of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue-era sextet), to the last in 1966 (with a totally different lineup), his ties with the Newport Jazz Festival stand as an important part of his legacy which doesn't deserve to be overlooked any longer.

And with good reason. Yesterday I picked up a copy of his My Favorite Things: Live at Newport CD out of curiosity & after much haggling around trying to find an awesome CD to buy. It's a collection of two performances which he made at the above location, one in 1963 & the other just 2 years later. Believe me, these recordings have stood the test of time, now that they're together in one place. Not only that, they're nothing short of amazing, revealing Trane & company in a whole new light.

The first round of Newport recordings (July 7, 1963) reveals some insightful facts never mentioned before:
(1) Before Trane can kick things off, emcee Willis Conover begs the crowd to calm down, unsurprisingly after the previous set (courtesy of organist Jimmy Smith) was pretty boisterous, & Smith, perhaps inspired to show up one of his old sidemen, got the audience all pumped up...too pumped up, for want of better words to say about his whole performance in general. So the first track, "I Want To Talk About You," BTW an awesome ballad, helped quiet down everyone for the time being, & stopped the huge wave of frenzy which dominated the set before.
(2) We have a wonderfully restored, previously unreleased (& extended) version of "Impressions." For the first version (which appeared in 1993 on Newport '63), Tyner's piano solo was absent as well as a short-order intro courtesy of Trane himself. And of course, there was a long-rumored bass solo which Jimmy Garrison did after Tyner's solo; however, because of major amounts of distortion, a good deal of it was rendered unusable....WTF? At least, a portion of Garrison's solo is included here as well, enough to provide us with a pretty awesome performance for the ages.
(3) Roy Haynes sat in on drums for Elvin Jones for this whole concert.
(4) And of course, no Trane concert would be complete without an audience fave, "My Favorite Things." Again, the quartet kicks some tail with this classic Rodgers-Hammerstein tune; so much has been said about this composition already so I'll leave it at that.

The next round of performances (July 2, 1965) were a whole other story, similar script:
(1) Jones was back as drummer;
(2) the music itself was beginning to change considerably (which I focused on in a prior post on John Coltrane);
(3) the Classic Quartet of Trane, Tyner, Jones, & Garrison was nearing the end of its life cycle;
(4) Because of lousy weather, the quartet had only 30 minutes of playing time before calling it a day...bummer!!

Nonetheless, on this night, Trane & his bandmates delivered the goods within their limited performance time, with "My Favorite Things" closing things off & of course, at song's end, complaints from the audience wanting the Classic Quartet to play more. Unfortunately, this classic lineup would never play again @ Newport although Trane came back one last time in 1966 with Garrison in tow; his wife, Alice on piano; Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone & piccolo; and Rashied Ali on drums.)

For a final assessment of this whole CD, these are some of the best performances John Coltrane ever made in a live setting & hopefully we'll see more additional releases of the Last Giant emerging from the Impulse! archives this year. Kudos to Impulse! for issuing these stellar performances; let's hope they continue releasing/reissuing more material now that the 40th anniversary of his passing is just around the corner.