Saturday Sounds - Evenings at the Village Gate - John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

A live recording of John Coltrane that lay in the vaults of the New York Public Library for almost 60 years has finally been released. Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy contains five songs from a run of performances at the Village Gate in New York in the summer of 1961. They were recorded by the club's sound engineer using a single microphone hung above the stage to test the club's sound system. The recording quality is not up to studio standards but the performances sizzle. 

From All About Jazz: 

There are five tracks on the album. On the first four—"My Favorite Things," "When Lights Are Low," "Impressions" and "Greensleeves"—Coltrane plays soprano. He is heard on tenor only on the closer, "Africa" (the only non-studio recording of the tune known to exist). Dolphy plays flute on the opening "My Favorite Things," alto saxophone on "Africa," and bass clarinet elsewhere. "When Lights Are Low" is a showcase for Dolphy, who takes an extended solo, followed by a much shorter one from Coltrane.

It was during this engagement at the Gate, and later at the Vanguard, that Coltrane and Dolphy received the censure of the jazz establishment—they were actually called "anti-jazz" in Downbeat magazine. It is hard to reconcile the opprobrium with what one is hearing on either the Gate or Vanguard recordings, even allowing for the passage of time; one may reasonably construe that non-musical factors, primarily concerning race and politics, were in play among the naysayers.

To be fair, it is easy to imagine that someone who had last heard Coltrane play "When Lights Are Low" as a member of Miles Davis' quintet (as on Davis' 1956 Prestige album Cookin') might have needed smelling salts on hearing his performance with Dolphy at the Gate. It is worth remembering, too, that Coltrane's Africa/Brass (1961), which featured Dolphy, had yet to be released when the Gate recordings were made. This meant that "Greensleeves" and, more to the point, the turbulent "Africa," were likely to be new to many people in the audience, as would be Dolphy himself to some of them. And some audience members may well have been at the club on the strength of Coltrane's current radio hit "My Favorite Things." But the vibe in the room is palpably onside. If the gatekeepers did not get it, it sounds like the paying customers did.