Alice Coltrane - S/D

"Journey" is easier on the ear definitely. I love both albums.

The Sepia Tone reissues of the Warner albums are cheap and easy to find, though I'd only recommend ETERNITY (the latin psych trip of "Los Caballos" erases all notions of wooly new ageisms) and the live trio date, TRANSFIGURATION. I still consider Alice to be the only other who could match Larry Young's godliness on the organ.

Vahid, i ended up picking up that Joe Henderson record and it sounded great, but i think i've just not been in a jazz mood lately and only listened to it twice :(

The first half is okay...the syndrums aren't very noticeable, it's just sounds like tabla and those lower pitch-bendy Indian drums whose name I don't know. She does play some questionable synthesizer on a few songs, but the cool Wurlitzer playing on other songs makes up for it.

The second half picks up a lot. 'Leo' is like Interstellar Space except with Alice, Ravi, and deJohnette, sleigh bells and all. Crescent is really nice too, as are the two duets (Alice with Charlie Haden, whom I always love hearing, and Alice on organ with an Indian choir).

And, concurrent with its release, Huntington Ashram Monastery and Lord of Lords are both out on CD (in Japan, that is)

The only thing I don't get is the need to end with a track of Sai bhajan chanting. I'd visit my parents' friends on weekends if I wanted to hear that. But, whatever, I guess it has meaning for her.

impulse should try to get the rights to her entire back catalogue (or cut in the other labels a little)and put out a complete alice box. that would be a great release.

I personally *prefer* her more mystical, string-laden music. I think it's absolutely beautiful and unique. In fact, the only song I really like on Transcendence is "Prema"---and it's mostly due to the beautiful string arrangement.

"Lord of Lords" also has some great pieces, like her rendition of Stravinsky's "Firebird," and the beautiful, joyous "Going Home."

I also would dearly love to find the cassette-only recordings. It seems that Ed Michel produced at least one of them.

The live album (Transfiguration?) is really, really good. Haynes & Workman are ideal sidemen for her. Anybody ever hear her album with Santana?

she also arranged some songs on one of his albums "Welcome". it's pure white with the word Welcome embossed on the cover

I hope she cuts another album in considerably shorter time than the gap between her last 2. Harp would be nice for the next one.

I'd also like to see the quadrophonic stuff reissued on multichannel SACD.

Thanks for the Alice recommendations; I'd been avoiding her for some reason. She's critically underrated.

You don't have permission to access /download/(etc. etc.)

Why me, lord?

Sad but not surprising

Who cares if it’s surprising? The mundane nature of these criticisms are what characterize them for me. It’s as if everyone already believes that AC is untalented and this person is just saying it out loud.

I can't speak to what the reaction was at the time and I am sure it has been mentioned upthread but the AC re-evaluation is pretty recent, even in the early 90s when I was getting into jazz she was considered a joke, lots of Yoko Ono jokes, that sort of thing

This is really interesting to read and I'm not contradicting it at all. I do remember for me just getting into jazz as a teen in the late '90s, I was drawn to the look of all those Impulse digipak reissues and I was seeing those three AC reissues (Journey.., Ptah.., A Monastic Trio) on essentially equal footing as not just the Sanders albums but also, like...the Count Basie and Coleman Hawkins albums reissued at the same time. Obviously an ahistorical experience for me as a new listener, but it made me think her music was quality work and clearly someone at the label thought there was enough interest in her solo stuff to get those albums out there while not reissuing, say...Gabor Szabo or Shirley Scott in droves despite them both having a ton of Impulse albums.

I was drawn to the look of all those Impulse digipak reissues and I was seeing those three AC reissues (Journey.., Ptah.., A Monastic Trio) on essentially equal footing as not just the Sanders albums

Tbf that was my experience too but when I would talk to older friends, like the people who had hipped me to Ornette and Coltrane in the first place, they went out of their way to express how much they hated AC

Fair enough xp

Not mention her new age/spiritual tape-era was also seen as confirmation by those same people that her music didn't have any merit

My first encounter with her wasn't even about her music, it was clips from her public access show and she was just presented as some kind of weirdo cult leader. It was several more years until I heard her music, first Journey... and Ptah, because as has been mentioned they were the ones to get reissued. Then a few years later limited edition mini-LP CDs of Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy came out, and I got those, and eventually the double live album, Transfiguration. I remember the pump being pretty well primed (the Wire cover story helped) by the time Seraphic Light was announced and released.

The album it took the longest to find — Lord of Lords — is probably my favorite of her Impulse! run now. I don't think it was ever even reissued on its own, just paired up when Impulse! did a bunch of 2-albums-on-one-CD reissues a while back.

I've probably posted this here before but I really wish someone would press this on vinyl, even just her amazing version of Giant Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xAAX198Pk

I feel like in this interview she articulates the disinterest the jazz industry has in her music.

'Journey in Satchidananda' was a game changing record for me. It was HUGE in Glasgow in the late 90s / early 2000s.

The owner of Glasgow's FOPP Records chain, Gordon (who was Terry Hall's brother in law) was a massive and lifelong Jazz fan. He realised in the mid to late 90s that many seminal Jazz labels had stopped doing vinyl releases and couldn't imagine ever doing any again (how wrong that turned out to be!). As a result they were happy to give him the vinyl license to many classic releases for a very low fee. Thus he licensed hundreds of titles and pressed up copies that were only available in the FOPP chain. He put these albums on sale at £5 which was very, very cheap even then.

This is pretty much how I got into Jazz as at £5 one couldn't really go wrong and I discovered a ton of incredible albums. Lots and lots of Glaswegians took advantage of this wild deal and as a result a LOT of people started listening to a lot of amazing Jazz records for the first time in their lives. The breakout hit by far was Alice Coltrane's 'Journey in Satchidananda' album. I believe FOPP shifted well over a thousand copies of it in the city. It was ubiquitous and I'd seem to see it at everyone's house I ever visited. I remember going into my local newsagent one Sunday morning and he was playing (a tape of) it. My newsagent was no hipster, Jazz aficionado or even a big music fan but this record had become such a cult Glasgow album that somehow this didn't seem strange at that time.

that's so awesome.

i found my copy for $20 in a williamsburg junk store around 2013. it seemed to me like an *insane* amount of money to pay for a used record at the time

I love that story - that even in the late-90s you could still have a regional cult record seems quaint in the streaming era.

xp

I had the 180g reissue of Journey for forever, prob since early 2000s. Recently ponied up $100 for a sweet friends deal on a 1972 pressing, no regrets.

My gateway was this cool comp, scored for like $15-20 in the late 90s:

https://www.discogs.com/release/23813663-Alice-Coltrane-Reflection-On-Creation-And-Space-A-Five-Year-View

love that comp -- great cover art

I listen to jazz records but have had no contact with jazz fandom etc. so a bit surprised at the gatekeeping bullshit detailed above. I would have thought Alice was jazz royalty.
I got into buying random jazz records from a stall in Leicester market in the 90s, which would usually be £5-10. One that I picked up early on was Karma by Pharaoh Sanders, and I immediately knew this was the stuff for me. The orange Impulse spines then became a mark of quality and I'd buy any that the stall got in - the Alice ones in particular became huge favourites.

Picked my vinyl copy up from FOPP in London a decade or so ago for £10! But got the Impulse digipak back in the day for £££s, no regrets.

Oh man that 5 Year View comp is (one of) my white whales

When Impulse was doing those digi-pak cd reissues in the 90s a few of them they pressed on extremely nice heavyweight lps, with gatefold covers and bumper stickers inside, (I proudly drove a white Toyota Camry with a "The New Wave of Jazz is on Impulse!" sticker for long time), I don't recall amy AC but I have a few very nice Sanders and JC lps

Early in the pandemic, I had older friends give me about 200-250 records that had been in their garage for 30 years. Among a ton of other stuff, it included OG copies of Journey and Ptah as well as Pharoah Sanders, Thembi, none of which I had heard. Needless to say, my mind was blown.

Sanders' Thembi

Woah!

Thembi absolutely rules and that is a hell of a steal! As I get older, Alice's devotional music moves me the most. It's crazy that it remained obscure for so long.

Need to get on and listen to this new one.

^ same

or, more accurately, buy this disc(s) (liner notes by EM being, i think, what's pushed me over)

love stirmonsters story, thats so amazing