Alice Coltrane, 2: Back in Detroit, More Recordings, & Meeting John (+Bonus Audio)
(Paying Subscribers, in this essay I share Alice’s piano solos, excerpted from her 1963 recordings. But to thank you once again, the full recordings are below for you only.)
In the first essay of this series, we learned about some of Alice McLeod Coltrane’s family history, her beginnings in music, and her early performances in high school. We listened to her recordings with a “show band” called the Premiers, and watched her playing impressive jazz piano on TV in 1960, while she was in France with her first husband, singer Kenny Hagood. As I mentioned last time, if you want more details, there is a new biography of Alice Coltrane by Andy Beta. The materials that I am sharing do not duplicate what’s in that book. Now, let’s continue the story:
Alice and Kenny had a daughter, Michelle, born in Paris on October 22, 1960. (As you probably know, Michelle became a jazz singer and is also very active with the Coltrane home on Long Island in New York.) But Hagood was a heroin addict, and Alice wanted a divorce. Nevertheless, they sailed together, with the baby only a few weeks old, on the cruise ship S.S. Liberté from the French port of Le Havre in early November 1960. As this previously unknown document shows, the ship stopped at Southampton in England on November 8, and arrived in New York City on November 14. (I crossed off the passport numbers.)
Franya Berkman, in her book about Alice and her music, said that the divorce went through quickly. That makes sense, because the marriage had been short and Hagood apparently didn’t contest the divorce. Then, with Alice’s family available to watch the baby, she applied to both Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, with the goal of advancing her musical knowledge. But, she told Berkman, the family felt it was more important for her to earn money at this time. So she did move to N.Y.C., but, Alice said, “I went to work as a file clerk. But it wasn’t long after that, maybe two or three months, my brother [Ernie] showed up and I just started working full-time [as a musician]” (p.37). Farrow, in addition to performing, recorded in the New York area in June and September 1961, twice with Yusef Lateef, and once under Barry Harris’s leadership. Then, around the end of 1961, he and Alice both moved back home to Detroit. Alice and baby Michelle lived with her parents. Alice found steady work playing solo or with a bassist in various “show bars” [bars with entertainment], and also worked in a sextet, as Bennie Maupin recalled:
We put together a group with a double bass player [Farrow, or sometimes Melvin Jackson], a drummer [George Goldsmith], [trombonist] George Bohanon and Frank Morelli [bassoon, flute, a classical musician]. We did concerts in the city. I was able to spend time with her, she invited me to her home, to her parents. She was the first person I met who could transcribe a theme after hearing it. I often went to see her at the Hobby Show Bar in Detroit. It was a piano bar. The best pianists played there [including Terry Pollard—see previous essay]. (Maupin interview published in French in Jazz Hot.)
Alice wrote many original pieces for her albums under her own name, after John passed away. But according to her Detroit colleagues, she was composing in the early ‘60s as well. To my knowledge, only one of those pieces was ever recorded: “Soulsphere” was performed on the album Beat by drummer Roy Brooks, with her composer’s credit spelled “McCloud.” It featured Bohanon on trombone, Hugh Lawson on piano, and three musicians who were then with Brooks in Horace Silver’s group—Blue Mitchell (tp), Junior Cook (ts), and Gene Taylor (bs). It was recorded in Detroit on October 1, 1963 for Motown’s short-lived Jazz Workshop label. Let’s listen:
So she was busy in Detroit. But before long, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs (born N.Y.C., October 13, 1924; 101 years old at this writing!) made a call that changed Alice’s life. Gibbs had a track record of working with accomplished female pianists. From 1953 to 1957, his group had featured Detroit pianist and vibraphonist Terry Pollard. Later, from late 1960 through at least July of 1962, he had worked with white pianist Pat Moran. At the end of 1962, Gibbs, who had recently divorced in Los Angeles, moved back to New York, and began assembling a new quartet there. First, he hired his former bassist Herman Wright, an excellent Detroit musician then living in New York. Gibbs had a special fondness for musicians on the Detroit scene, and he asked Wright to recommend a pianist. Wright told him about Alice, but she remembers that it was Pollard who approached her about playing with Gibbs. Evidently, after speaking with Wright, Gibbs called Pollard first, which makes sense for several reasons: It’s certainly likely that Gibbs and Wright did not know where to reach Alice at that moment. Besides, Pollard and Gibbs had become good friends when they toured together, and Gibbs surely wanted to talk with Pollard to learn more about Alice. Finally, Gibbs evidently realized that, instead of him “cold-calling” Alice out of the blue and all the way from New York, it would be helpful for her to talk first with Pollard. She could tell Alice what it was like working with Gibbs, and how much she enjoyed her time with his group. After that, Gibbs and Alice talked by phone and agreed to meet in Manhattan around the beginning of January 1963 for a combined audition and rehearsal. All this had to happen quickly, because Gibbs was a very successful artist, and his management—Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation—had already lined up a string of engagements. Gibbs was, of course, very pleased with her musical performance and he offered her the position.
Maupin remembers:
Michelle was still small. But Alice wanted more… She didn’t know how her parents would react, but they took care of Michelle. So Alice accepted Terry Gibbs’ offer, and she moved to New York. (Maupin interview published in French in Jazz Hot.)
Gibbs put Alice to work immediately. In addition to being in and out of town on gigs, Alice recorded four LPs with Gibbs in N.Y.C. in 1963, three early in the year and a fourth on an unknown date. The first album was Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish Melodies In Jazztime, drawing upon his heritage. It was also Alice’s first featured recording as a jazz soloist. But there is confusion on the back of the album—see below—about her surname. On the personnel listing near the top she is called Hagood, her previous married name, but in the last column of the liner note essay she is called “McCord.” Evidently she told the author, the popular N.Y.C. jazz radio host Les Davis, that she was going back to using “McLeod,” but he didn’t quite hear what she said. In the top of the second column, he also wrongly lists Terry and Alice as the pianists in the klezmer parts of the album—for those parts only Alan Logan, who is listed in personnel, played.
Alice takes a jazz solo on almost every track of this album and the others. And it is immediately clear that she has moved further away from the influence of Bud Powell and developed a distinctive and modern approach. Maupin remembers that, although she hadn’t yet met John Coltrane, she had studied his recordings, especially Africa/Brass, which had been published on September 1, 1961. She had also seen him perform in Paris on March 21, 1960 as part of the Miles Davis Quintet, and in Detroit at the Minor Key nightclub, where he performed regularly. (Detroit pianist Kenny Cox told Berkman that she might have even briefly met John at one of the frequent jam sessions at the home of Joe Brazil.) And of course she must have drawn inspiration from many other musicians as well. Here are three of her piano solos from the Jewish Melodies album— “S & S,” then “Vuloch,” then “Papirossen—followed by two from Hootenanny My Way, which features arrangements of folk songs—”Michael [Row The Boat Ashore],” and “Boll Weevil.” Notice her unusual flowing lines, and at 5:55, the way she combines the straight-ahead style of, say, Detroit legend Tommy Flanagan, with her own approach. Let’s listen:
(Paying Subscribers, the full recordings are below for you only.)
When the Jewish Melodies album was released that fall, Alice got what I believe was her first review, and it was enthusiastic. Don Nelsen in Downbeat (October 10, 1963) was not crazy about the album overall—he gave it 3.5 stars out of 5—but he singled out Alice’s work for praise:
(“Leod, Schmeod” is a type of Yiddish humor, meaning, “Whatever it is, it’s not the important thing.” “Comp” refers to accompanying the others when she is not soloing.)
Terry Pollard was an accomplished vibraphonist, so when she was in Gibbs’ quartet, he developed a routine where they took turns playing vibes, and then competed to take control of the instrument. In fact, in October 1956 they performed this act on national television, hosted by comedian and pianist Steve Allen. On the first number Pollard plays piano. On the second, “Now’s the Time,” starting at 2:30, Allen plays piano while the two vibraphonists perform. This routine was so popular with Gibbs’ audiences that he later taught vibraphone to Pat Moran, enough that she could perform one number with him. Now he instructed Alice as well. As Berkman notes, it’s possible that her experience playing mallet percussion in high school (see previous essay) was helpful. Gibbs talked about Alice’s vibraphone playing in his memoir Good Vibes (2003):
I taught Alice to play the vibes and she was a natural. Because the piano keyboard and the vibes were the same [the keys are laid out the same way], all I had to do was teach her how to hold the mallets and how to do the hand movements [aka “sticking”]. Every week she was better than the week before. After only a few months, she was becoming a good vibes player. We played in Detroit, which was home for Alice as well as Terry Pollard. Terry came to the club to see us and I got her to play vibes with Alice and me. The people went nuts. (p. 230)
Gibbs also sometimes sat at the piano next to Alice and played the upper register, using a technique pioneered by Lionel Hampton where one uses two fingers as mallets on the piano keys. Both Hampton and Gibbs could play amazingly fast in this manner. A review from a Toronto engagement in September 1963, shared with us by Coltrane author and researcher Chris DeVito, gives a good picture of the showmanship involved in a typical performance, and once again praises Alice’s contribution:
The drummer’s name was actually spelled Dentz, and the bassist, better known today as Vishnu Wood, is yet another fine musician raised in Detroit (though born in North Carolina).
From Thursday July 18, 1963 through Wednesday July 31, with Mondays off, the Terry Gibbs quartet with Alice McLeod on piano was in residence at Birdland in Manhattan (the original nightclub, at Broadway and 52nd Street). In those days most jazz clubs featured two bands every week—one would perform while the other took a break. For this engagement, the Gibbs group alternated sets with the John Coltrane quartet. That turned out to be serendipitous, because John was separated from his wife Naima, and he and Alice felt a connection immediately.
Their relationship quickly became very serious. When possible, John would travel to where the Gibbs group was performing in order to spend time with her. For example, in another article from Toronto, researcher Chris DeVito found this mention of John traveling to see the first night—September 9, 1963— of a gig: “John Coltrane, jazz tenor great, dropped into the Friars briefly the other night to catch Terry Gibbs’ opening. Coltrane has never worked here but he could in the near future if negotiations are successful” (Gerry Barker, The Toronto Star, Sept. 11, 1963, p. 37). The author states that Coltrane wasn’t performing there, and doesn’t specifically say that he was there to see Alice, but I think it’s a safe assumption, and the author wouldn’t have known that.
Finally, and on short notice, Alice quit the Gibbs group, after about ten months. In fact, she temporarily dropped out of her music career altogether, in order to travel with John, starting with his forthcoming European tour. This was to begin with a concert in Stockholm on October 22, 1963. Gibbs recalled in his book that she left five days before his first-ever engagement at the prestigious London House in Chicago. But it had to be longer than that, because, as far as I can ascertain, he was performing there starting November 5—two weeks after the Stockholm concert—through the 24th. Still, even if she gave Gibbs two or three weeks notice, his initial anger is understandable. Here is the relevant passage from his book:
About five days before we were to open at the London House, Alice came to me and said that John wanted her to go to Sweden with him and that they were eventually going to get married. I really got bugged because I had always wanted to play the London House. I was ready to call the union or my attorney. How could she do this to me? We had a winner and now she was going to leave me with an unrehearsed group…[But] I lucked out by hiring Walter Bishop Jr., a very well known bebop piano player, and we did very well at the London House. To this day, Alice and I are good friends.
We can learn a few more details of Alice’s life in 1963, thanks to her application to the N.Y. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which was found and posted by John Pietaro, Local 802 Organizing Director. She was already a member of Detroit’s Local 5. But since she now living in Manhattan and working there regularly, it was necessary for her to join 802, and her application was received during the Birdland engagement, on July 26, 1963. Unlike musicians’ unions in some other cities, Locals 5 and 802 had always been integrated. The document shows that Alice McLeod was living at Hotel Schuyler at 57 West 45th Street in Manhattan. The building no longer exists. In those days many hotels had rooms that were available on a monthly basis. Two years later, her Local 802 application form was revised to indicate that her surname had changed to Coltrane, after John was able to get a divorce from Naima so that he and Alice could marry on October 20, 1965.
Her all-too-few years with John are well documented. For example, see my Coltrane biography and the John Coltrane Reference that I edited. In the next essay, we will pick up Alice’s story after John’s death, including links to long audio interviews.
All the best,
Lewis
P.S. Paying Subscribers, five full recordings of Terry Gibbs and Alice McLeod Coltrane are below for you only.
