Taking Sides: Kind of Blue vs. A Love Supreme

Miles, of course, always namechecked Ahmed Jamal, esp. his 'Live At The Pershing Club' alb, as perhaps the major influence on his post- bop 'quiet' modal style.

I feel both albums are seminal, and while KOB is quite a bit more complex, IMO, I have to say I like A Love Supreme more. It's just more emotive, IMO. The chanting doesn't turn me off, either....

Then again, I'm a Coltrane fanatic, so....there.

http://kindofbloop.com/

obviously both speak to my COLTRANE problem, but there's more that's wrong with both than just him: i will (perhaps) dig out ALS and give it a whirl also

there is by definition nothing to be gained from listening to perfect music, so i wd want to dig for vivid structuring flaws which cut across their seemingly deathly tedious "concepts" (modalism and mantra-ism, respectively) and help me change my mind.

HELP ME CHANGE MY MIND!! Possible start: at least three of KoB's mainstays were ex, current or soon-to-be junkies... I have a bad lifehistory of falling in love with junkies so maybe you can build on this.

― mark s, Tuesday, January 22, 2002 7:00 PM (12 years ago)

for all that ALS is supposed to be/express a spiritual struggle or striving of some kind, it seems typical for the TOWARD to be left understood (ish) and the FROM/OUT OF to be… neglected, i think, or to have it sketched in with a bit of biography (heroin, oppression, etc etc)

but i think the construction of the record - which is just conspicuous enough to mark it as an outlier in his catalog - points in a more useful direction.

the vocals are there in part to call attention to / retroactively cause the fact that a lot of his playing, and a lot of the writing/improvising, is speechlike. i think you can hear that especially in the iterations of the refrain that just lead up to the singing: with so much repetition, the emphasis is taken off the 'musical' somewhat, which lets the more conversational qualities of each phrase played to come out, as if he is just talking to you instead of playing (which is an act more, or differently, fraught with meaning, and in some ways liable to be taken too automatically - the spirituality of it not recognized for what it is, or could be).

and the point, then, of calling attention to the speechlike is to propose or wish that the playing be regarded as a kind of singing (like DUH: start with acknowledgement, end with psalm). i feel like 'resolution' is constructed a little bit so as to maintain a separation between the speechlike and the songlike; coltrane does improvise (in the customary sense) on the theme a short while before it's repeated again, but the nearness of that improvisation to the theme, and the cell/block-like structure of the theme, make the whole first third before tyner takes over seem not so much like a ~musical~ development, as a development of song-from-speech, but in a kind of formal, structured way, sonata-exposition style.

if there's a vivid structuring flaw i think it must lie in the role of 'pursuance' (first half of the long side 2) somehow. elvin's got talkier, and singier, playing on record. and the whole band passage to follow, i don't know, it just seems there in contrast to the intensity/focus of the other parts of the record. it also has the unfortunate job of ushering in the final 'psalm' part. i think there some of the same tension between speaky and singy playing returns, with the intention being to push toward the latter. especially in light of coltrane's playing elsewhere, i suppose that overcharged stuff is typically heard as, i don't know, an attempt to substitute noise and extremity for spiritual intensity. but when he's not outright screeching, he tends to still be very articulate in that playing, very plainspoken, still working those little phrases over and over, looking for every opportunity that the rubato tempo gives him.

if there's a way in there, i think it must have to do with the idea that, after all, he's NOT singing.

mantra-ism

awful nervous record for such a rep

Just saw this morning that Ken Clarke has an autobiography out called 'Kind of Blue' :-0

bah: ornette fan, he shd have called it "for whom who keeps a record"

Why the fuck do people love Kind of Blue so much????? Sounds no better than your basic 40s/50s jazz like Lester Young or various Verve LPs to me.

umm ok

everything bill evans does on "blue in green" breaks my heart

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2015/02/kind-of-bleugh-or-seven-better-stand-alone-ways-into-jazz-in-the-early-age-of-the-long-playing-disc-possibly/

^^^here is the piece i eventually wrote abt kind of blue (only 13 years after the question was posed): it doesn't really answer snrub's question or talk at all abt A Love Supreme but it does ask whether there's maybe something problematic abt starting yr exploration of jazz specifically w/KoB, bcz i slightly suspect starting actually there stops a lot of ppl of ppl going further (see piece for why i think this and some suggested better places to start)

i definitely agree it's a really bizarre choice as the place to start, and when i was growing up it was the album people picked from the entire history of jazz, in indie mags or whatever. which makes no sense whatsoever. i liked kob well enough buying it at 18 but i like it a lot better in recent years having gone through all the electric miles stuff and a lot of other jazz via house music

but to question its quality is madness - it is amazing. every time i hear that first bassline it is a magic and happy moment.

no it is bad just like lester young

Lady Snrub

it took me a while to get into Kind Of Blue. It's always recommended as one of the absolute great jazz albums and therefore a good intro to modern jazz, but its strengths really show in its subtlety and details. I had to listen to it a few times, along with a number of other jazz albums, before I started to understand how extraordinary it is. Charles Mingus's Ah Um, or even Miles' Bitches Brew both work as better intros for the non-jazzer I'd say

oh we all just said that..

I think it's cool that a deep album like Kind of Blue is considered one of the ones You Have To Hear. New listeners seem to respond to it with genuine pleasure. The only issue is that there should be more jazz albums with the same status.

kind of blue is extremely singular imo which makes it both an ideal and odd prism through which to enter the remainder of jazz bc 1) it's representative of jazz's tendency to rewrite its approach to composition and improvisation while also being the most accessible incarnation of one of its shifts toward more flexibility and freedom 2) perfect soloing. it's just sort of this beautiful unrepeatable moment in so many ways that it doesn't really prepare you for any other jazz records or subgenres imo but i also think that's part of what's cool and special about it

love supreme is part of a coltrane's greater drift in the mid- to late-'60s so in a way it functions as a pretty decent introduction to jazz bc you're just sort of sat in media res in this larger improvisational journey but i don't particularly think it's even coltrane's best record from this period let alone his career

incidentally i'd immediately direct anyone enamored with kind of blue to olé coltrane

love supreme is part of a coltrane's greater drift in the mid- to late-'60s so in a way it functions as a pretty decent introduction to jazz bc you're just sort of sat in media res in this larger improvisational journey but i don't particularly think it's even coltrane's best record from this period let alone his career

Agree w/ this. I always thought his next record (The John Coltrane Quartet Plays...) was a fuller realization of what the quartet was capable of. ALS strikes me as a transitional record, where he's working through certain ideas and approaches, but it never quite takes off for me. The live recording of ALS, though, is fully deserving of every absurdly over-the-top accolade the studio record received.

Snrub are you seriously negging Kind of Blue because it's a beginner's record, or "no better than your basic 40s/50s jazz"? (You mean it's no better than a lot of really great records? Alrighty then!)

It may be entry-level compared to the arguably more "challenging" A Love Supreme but it is still awesome.

Defending the parapets of a niche art form from the casual n00bz is a great way to keep it nichey.

So are there a lot of modern jazz album aficionados who don't rate pre-war stuff? I think KoB's accessibility comes in part from how it's less busy than other peaks, easier to pick out the intersecting lines.

Money Jungle was the crack-the-code album for me.

i think these were actually my first two jazz albums! KoB is incredible obviously, i think maybe i bought it because yes it was the recommended starting point for jazz newbies, but it also didn't disappoint and unlike a lot of other recommended starting point albums from other genres it hasn't diminished for me over time.

Coltrane's Live at Birdland was important for me. Something opened up with the crashing drums and piano on "Afro Blue".

can't really understand any jazz fan not liking this album tbh

it is a fine entry point to jazz, there are a million others that are good too but nothing wrong w/ this one

i might listen to ascenseur pour l'echafaud more but really nothing about kob has diminished for me in the hundreds of times ive played it

i listened to it this morning and thought "yeah jeez this is the best thing in the world"

I don't listen to KoB a ton but whenever I do I'm never surprised at the reasons why people love it, it's a great record, it's a great example of that style at done at the highest level.

Love Supreme is great but (as I believe Meltzer once opined) if it were called "Coltrane Plays Some Shit" or wasn't arranged as a suite it would be just another well regarded mid-60s quartet record.

And agreed that Live at Birdland esp that vers of Afro Blue was a huge moment for me as a 16 yo, like that was when I "got it"

I came to jazz through KoB, the first one, in my teens, that I felt I "got." You have these two titans of the form in distilled contrast — Miles Davis sounding minty (cool, a little sweet), Coltrane like sour milk — and Cannonball Adderley, whose solos bring to mind a loping gentleman in top hat and tails. The record is full of catchy bits, and I could clearly follow what the soloists were building on. Being easy to get hasn't made it less enjoyable for me.

I don't think I've ever listened to Live at Birdland...? I know "Alabama" but my main memory of that is from some tv performance that made a big impression on me. Rectifying now...

live at birdland is the fucking best

And agreed that Live at Birdland esp that vers of Afro Blue was a huge moment for me as a 16 yo, like that was when I "got it"

Same.

I also agree that KoB is similar to pre-bop stuff in that there's a focus on melody in the solos, but in a new context (minimal chord changes + reacting to everything that came before it).

Live at Birdland was the first Coltrane record I bought (although I'd taped "Live" At The Village Vanguard from the college library a couple months earlier, and it never failed to blow my mind). I didn't know anything about his history or discography; all I knew was, if Elvin Jones is on it, it'll be good. I was hooked from the first seconds of "Afro Blue."

Snrub are you seriously negging Kind of Blue because it's a beginner's record, or "no better than your basic 40s/50s jazz"? (You mean it's no better than a lot of really great records? Alrighty then!)

The latter.

I guess I agree that it's not the ONLY entry point and there should be more n00b entry points, okay.

Because there really are a tremendous number of extremely good jazz records, any one of which could be a good way for a n00b to get hep to what kind of magic those jive-ass cats were blowing, back in the day. Kind of Blue is, in my view, ONE of those records.

HOWEVER, there's a wide gulf between that statement and "Why the fuck do people love Kind of Blue so much?" which is what you said.

I would say Mingus Ah Um is another entrance.

yeah it was Mingus Ah Um and Black Saint & Sinner Lady that made all this music click, after which I was able to get into Miles.

my entry point was time out which is extremely accessible but prob not the best introduction to jazz as a whole

Daughter of jazz drummer Jimmy Cobb—last surviving member of the historic ‘Kind of Blue’ band—has launched a crowdfunding project to cover her father’s medical and living expenses. https://t.co/G4fqK0p5ZV

— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) February 3, 2020

Frankly dystopian, as ever with these kinds of fundraisers.

:(

so many of these old jazz ledges seem to be dying skint. I remember reading Sunny Murray spent his later years scraping by on benefits and occasionally making pennies by bootlegging his own work.

it was Kenny Burrell doing the same last year.