John Coltrane: One Down, One Up

CML call number: CD/JAZZ/Coltrane
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "In the spring of 1965, John Coltrane's quartet played several gigs at the Half Note Club in Manhattan, some of which were recorded for WABC-FM radio. … On 'One Down, One Up' … — the radio recordings from two nights at the Half Note — we're about six months before the last phase of Coltrane's career. … Here his quartet is still intact, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. … [I]t is the band at its peak, each member contributing an equal part to the sound, playing hard and loud and at the top of his imagination. If there was ever a place to marvel at the connection Coltrane had with Jones — a connection that drove the band — this is it. Each of the four pieces is remarkable, but the killer is 'One Down, One Up,' in which the band reduces to just saxophone and drums for a 15-minute stretch, and then reduces even further because Jones's bass-drum pedal breaks midsong. It doesn't matter. Coltrane and Jones are singing through their instruments in their own complex, dense language, with Coltrane's rapid, jagged phrasing and Jones's layered rhythm. …"