“During my Chicago stint, I had one of the best experiences I ever had in my life!” he begins with a warm chuckle. “I was living in an apartment with an English guy called Clem Floyd. His girlfriend was a little German hooker who was about four and a half feet tall. One day she said to us, ‘Do you wanna hear some real music? John Coltrane is playing on the South Side.’ So this attractive little German girl took Clem and I down to McKee’s – 163rd and Cottage Grove, way South. We were the only white people in the room.
“The way ‘Trane played then was that the band would come out and the set was one song which would start out with ensemble playing. ‘Trane would warm up by blowing a little to get going, and they all took their time because they figured their set would be an hour long so they had time [to stretch out]. He’d play for a bit and walk off still blowing. Then McCoy Tyner would play.
“Now, with McCoy Tyner, I’d never heard anybody play piano like that. At that point ‘Trane had two bass players, Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman. They had a conversation that was stellar, and then it was Elvin Jones’s turn. Now, I will admit to being higher than three kites hooked up in series. I was so high, I was hunting geese with a rake. I was blitzed. Elvin Jones is a pretty intense drummer. I think that’s understating the case, don’t you? [His playing] pushed me up from the table and up against the back wall of the room! I’m standing there trying to hold on and I ducked into the men’s room.
“So I’m in the men’s room, I’m trying to come down just enough for me to stay on this planet, and I’ve got my face pressed against this tile. I can still remember the colour of this filthy, light puke-green tile. I’m leaning against it because it’s cool. And – blam! – someone kicks the door in and it’s ‘Trane. (Makes shrieking jazz noises, as if playing a sax) He’s doing that and by this point he’s burning! Burr-ning! (Makes more squalling jazz-orientated noises) Skee-sa-wee-eek-swark! And I’m up against the wall. He doesn’t even know this little fake kid’s in there. He’s playing in there because it’s a good sound. And at that point my mind ran out of my nose in a puddle on the floor!”
Crosby, who’s gone on to enjoy a career that can in the politest terms be described as colourful, views that night as genuinely life-changing. Later, he would help push The Byrds in a modal direction that owed much to his jazz epiphany.
“It really affected me,” he says. “I realized that there were levels that I could never get to but, suddenly, I could see what direction I wanted to go in. There were things that jazz musicians could do that I could never hope to do. I’d listen to the chords McCoy Tyner played and they weren’t in my world. I had never heard those chords. I had listened to Gerry Mulligan and those kind of people, but I hadn’t seen the intensity level of those guys with ‘Trane. I knew that somehow I wanted to reach for more. I wanted to move from [Broadway standard-turned-folk tune] They Called The Wind Maria to ‘Trane playing My Favorite Things. Now, I feel I had a direction.”
http://www.mojo4music.com/8422/david-crosby-john-coltrane-blew-mind/
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Grad in „Coltrane Reference“ nachgeschaut … McKie’s, Chicago, 7.-18. März 1962 würde passen – aber da war (S. 251) nur Garrison am Bass dabei (ebenfalls beim nächsten bekannten Gig in Chicago, 15.-26. August, wieder im McKie’s).
1961 gab es nur einen Auftritt, 1.-12. März in der Sutherland Lounge im gleichnamigen Hotel (von wo aus schon Basie ausgestrahlt wurde, vierundzwanzig Jahre zuvor). Gemäss „Coltrane Reference“ (p. 217) stiess Donald Garrett da für einige Sets als zweiter bassist hinzu. Das könnte wohl der Gig sein, bei dem Crosby dabei war?
Ein weiterer Auftritt im Sutherland, der ab dem 11. Oktober für zwei Wochen stattfinden sollte, wurde abgesagt, weil das Sutherland geschlossen wurde.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #164: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv, 10.6., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba