A half century after the fact, titanic saxophonist John Coltrane's early '60s innovations are regarded as classic, but it wasn't always so, A few months before his band's second performance at the Paris Olympia on the evening of November 18, 1961, when these recordings were made, a critic writing in the influential
U.S, journal Down Beat had attacked the music Coltrane was making with the multi-reed virtuoso Eric Dolphy as "anti-jazz." Following the modal trail blazed by Miles Davis in the 1959 Kind of Blue sessions in which he participated, Coltrane sought to explore all the melodic possibilities inherent in a musical piece, combining
his extensive knowledge of extended harmony with ideas gleaned from sources ranging from classical Indian music to contemporaries like Albert Ayler and John Gilmore, His musical and spiritual twin Dolphy was equally adventurous as a soloist, grounded in bebop but also prone to take inspiration from speech rhythms or the
songs of birds, Ably supported by pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer Elvin Jones, the two horn men soar to heights of invention on Coltrane's signature blues "Blue Train" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favourite Things." Coltrane and Tyner demonstrate their expressive way with a ballad on Billy Eckstine's "I Want To Talk About You." By the mid-'60s, these sounds that were so controversial at the time of this recording had entered the lexicon of the mainstream, By then, Coltrane and Dolphy had moved on to other creative realms, Neither man would survive the decade; Dolphy died in 1964 and Coltrane in 1967.
Here, though, they're captured magnificently alive and afire with inspiration at a moment when they were leading their art form into unexplored territory, The French audience roars its endorsement, and the verdict of history echoes their approbation.
