Ashley Kahn On Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy August 1961

Maggie speaks with Grammy-winning music historian, journalist, producer, and educator Ashley Kahn about Evenings At The Village Gate: John Coltrane With Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. In 1961, the John Coltrane Quintet played an engagement at the legendary Village Gate in Greenwich Village, New York.  Coltrane’s Classic Quartet was not as fully established as it would soon become and there was a meteoric fifth member of Coltrane’s group those nights— visionary multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Ninety minutes of never-before-heard music from this group were recently discovered at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, offering a glimpse into a powerful musical partnership that ended much too soon. In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (“My Favorite Things”, “Impressions”, “Greensleeves”), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on “When Lights Are Low” and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition “Africa”, from the Africa/Brass album. This recording represents a very special moment in John Coltrane's journey—the summer of 1961—when his signature, ecstatic live sound, commonly associated his Classic Quartet of '62 to '65, was first maturing and when he was drawing inspiration from deep, African sources— and experimenting with the two-bass idea both in the studio (Olé) and on stage. This truly rare recording of "Africa" captures his expansive vision at the time.Ashley Kahn is a Grammy-winning American music historian, journalist, producer, and professor. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, and has written books on two legendary recordings—Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane—as well as one book on a legendary record label: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. He also co-authored the Carlos Santana autobiography The Universal Tone, and edited Rolling Stone: The Seventies, a 70-essay overview of that pivotal decade. His latest book is entitled George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters. Source: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/evenings-at-the-village-gate-john-coltrane-impulse-records__14009Source: https://www.impulserecords.com/#/Source: https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/clive-davis-institute/1417614318Host Maggie LePique, a radio veteran since the 1980's at NPR in Kansas City Mo. She began her radio career in Los Angeles in the early 1990's and has worked for Pacifica station KPFK Radio in Los Angeles since 1994.Send us Fan MailSupport the show@profileswithmaggielepique@maggielepique