John Coltrane and Sonny Fortune Performed in Philadelphia, September 3, 1966 (+Bonus)
(Paying Subscribers, At the bottom you’ll find two pages from the special DownBeat issue of July 2004, where Mike Brecker, Jim Hall, Percy Heath and Von Freeman talked about their childhood idols: Coltrane, Lester Young, and more.)
The first two Coltrane biographies were published in the spring of 1975. Both refer to an event at the historic Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. But the details have remained a mystery, until now:
According to Coltrane: A Biography, by C.O. Simpkins, M.D. (1975, reprinted 1988, p. 210):
In Philadelphia the group played a benefit for community groups at the Church of the Advocate. …It was a relaxing Sunday afternoon…Sonny Fortune asked to sit in. John welcomed him and said that they were going to play “Afro Blue.” Sonny asked for the chords, and John told him: “You’ll hear it.”
J. C. Thomas, in his book Chasin’ the Trane (1975, p. 218), writes that the performance was in November 1966 and that percussionist Algie DeWitt sat in.
Saxophonist Michael Brecker spoke about the event in DownBeat, July 2004, p. 18:
In 1966, I saw Coltrane play at Temple University [in Philadelphia, Friday November 11; a recording was released and is on the streaming services]…A week before, I’d gone with a friend to Unity Church [actually Church of the Advocate] in North Philly to hear him, but after Sonny Fortune played the first set, a committee asked us to leave—they said that Trane was playing for the black community only. I didn’t know that the night before, [Black civil rights activist] Stokely Carmichael had spoken in the same place, and they had physically thrown out the reporters.
Based on all of the above, and at that time with no other evidence to go on, I and my coauthors calculated that the Sunday before November 11 was November 6, and we listed it this way in our big book, The John Coltrane Reference.
But this turns out to be wrong. Brecker was speaking 38 years later, and he had evidently forgotten that the church concert was in fact not a week before the Temple University performance, but a full two months before. He also got the name of the church wrong, as noted above, and the timing of Carmichael’s speech. Chris DeVito, a coauthor on the Reference and editor of the book of Coltrane interviews, sent me the relevant clippings back in 2012, but we both set them aside at the time. I recently came across them again, and I took the time to analyze them.
Let's start with the coverage of this event in the Philadelphia Tribune, a Black newspaper. The issue dated Saturday, September 3, 1966, announced that Coltrane would be performing “Saturday (tomorrow).” This is confusing until one realizes that afternoon editions often came out the day before. In fact it was common in this publication to refer to events happening “Friday (today)” even though the paper would have Saturday’s date. This article and the next one, below, also confirm that the performance was on a Saturday night at 8p.m., not on a Sunday afternoon:
Brecker had also misremembered when Stokely Carmichael was there—he had been there not the night before, but several nights earlier, on August 30, 1966.
Two weeks after the event, there was a detailed report in the Philadelphia Tribune, on September 17, 1966, which we will see below. The article specifies that this concert happened on the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, which confirms September 3, 1966. As also mentioned in the preview above, it was a benefit for the Black People’s Unity Movement (is that what made Brecker think it was Unity Church?), based in neighboring Camden, New Jersey, with headquarters in Philadelphia. The article states that Coltrane was staying in Philadelphia for a while to find “new ideas and new talent.” He had previously lived there for about 15 years, so he had roots there, and he had bought a house at 1511 North 33rd Street, where his mother still lived. He and Alice and the children, John Jr. and Ravi, must have stayed in that house during this Philly retreat. At this time Alice was almost two months pregnant with their third child, and that might have been why they chose to take this break—which, as we will see, may have lasted from the beginning of September all the way through November 11. (Their third son, Oranyan “Oran” Coltrane, was born March 19, 1967.)
Before the Church event, Coltrane spoke with the reporter about his plans to open a “music room.” He mentioned this to others as well during the last nine months or so of his life, and it’s clear that this would have been a rehearsal and performance space, without liquor. We don’t know whether it would have been in New Jersey or Manhattan, or even in Philadelphia. As you’ll read below, he also makes one of his few political statements—he was formerly very cautious about saying anything. He says that there is “a need for our people to find a way out of their predicament.” He agrees with what he hears at rallies, and says that might even serve as the “basis for a new direction.” If he had lived longer, perhaps his music would have become more overtly political?
Coltrane performed “Afro Blue” with Alice and local friends, not with his regular band. Sonny Fortune joined on alto saxophone. Muhammad Ali played drums. This was Rashied Ali’s younger brother, not, as the author clarifies, the famous boxer born as Cassius Clay. The bassist was Sonny Johnson, who had replaced Jimmy Garrison. Garrison had recently left the group—it’s not true, although often stated, that Garrison stayed with Coltrane until the end. The article says that Johnson also played violin! His brother was trumpeter Dewey Johnson, best known from Coltrane’s album Ascension.
Simpkins reports in his book that at one point, perhaps just after “Afro Blue,” John walked to the microphone and, unusual for him, spoke for a bit:
First he commented on the many fine musicians who came from Philadelphia, and that Philadelphia’s music was represented all over the world. In his world travels, he said, this music was favorably received. Then he went on to say what was, in gist, that it was time for Black people to get themselves together and UNITE. (p. 210; upper case in original)
As you’ll see below, there were six other groups on the program in addition to Coltrane’s. There was a short set by the singer Billy Paul (whose work I personally always enjoyed). Sonny Fortune had his own set. Two local jazz groups performed. There were also the dancers and hand drummers from Arthur Hall’s celebrated Afro-American Dance Ensemble, which performed repertory inspired by African traditions. And The Visitors performed. This was a long-time Philadelphia-based ensemble led by saxophonist brothers Earl and Carl Grubbs. Because they were cousins of Naima, Coltrane’s first wife, many authors have assumed that her birth name was Grubbs. I ask you, dear reader, do your cousins all have the same family name as you do? Of course not. As I showed in my Coltrane biography, her birth name was Juanita Austin.
Here is that report of the concert:
All of the hand drummers are listed in the next-to-last paragraph. They included Omar Patterson, the middle brother between Rashied and Muhammad. He still used the original family name, Patterson. Some people spelled and pronounced his given name “Umar.”
During the weeks after the Church of the Advocate concert, Coltrane jammed there on a number of occasions with a group of hand drummers. One of them, Robert Kenyatta, provided details at this link and in interviews with Ashley Kahn, and with my Coltrane Reference coauthor Yasuhiro Fujioka, and others. Kenyatta said that a group of hand drummers met at the Church every Tuesday and Thursday night from 7pm to 8:45pm. They included himself, Bobby Franklin, Walt Mitchell, and three drummers who had participated in the September 3rd event: Bobby Artis, Omar Patterson, and Robert “Baba” Crowder (1930-2012). Crowder was later well known for founding Kule Mele, an African dance and drum ensemble that is still active in Philadelphia. A drummer named Charles Brown was sometimes involved in the rehearsals as well.
Kenyatta recalled that Coltrane showed up and played with them, usually midway through their rehearsal, every Tuesday and Thursday in October 1966. This is possible, because during this period the only Coltrane gigs I know of for certain during this period are the Church gig on September 3, and a concert on October 7 at the university M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s also possible that he joined them during September. In any case, Kenyatta recalls that he rejoined them on a Thursday in November, and as they packed up, he asked which of them could participate in his upcoming performance at Temple University—just half a mile from the Church—on Friday November 11. Kenyatta, Omar, and Charles Brown joined Coltrane that night on hand drums, and they can be heard on the recording, which is readily available. Rashied Ali plays the drum set.
Coltrane made another significant musical connection during this Philadelphia retreat. He met another hand drummer whose work he particularly liked—Algie DeWitt. Thomas’s book says that DeWitt played at the Church concert, but his is not among the many names listed, nor was he mentioned by Kenyatta as a participant in the drum rehearsals. But John and Algie connected somehow, and at John’s invitation, DeWitt also played at Temple. And John brought DeWitt to a few later concerts, one of which, at Babatunde Olatunji’s center in Harlem, has been released as Coltrane’s “last ‘live’ recording (on streaming services). Since there is almost no published information about DeWitt, I will provide just a little bit here: He was actually Algie DeWitt the III. The first name is possibly short for Algernon, and he was born June 26, 1938 in Philadelphia, the city where he spent his life. He and Barbara Ruth Dunaway had a son, Algie Dewitt IV (1963-2016), who was also involved in music. Algie DeWitt III died in the early morning of July 8, 1985— a woman named Sheila Hough was charged with murder for beating him and causing him to fall through a second-floor window! Here is a photo of DeWitt with Coltrane at the Olatunji concert, standing in the center with one of his African drums:
DeWitt told author J. C. Thomas that he performed on the hourglass-shaped bata drum, originated by the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria and, DeWitt said, adopted in Haiti. But the one in the above photo is not a bata—it’s a little like the Haitian drum seen here.
Some updates to the John Coltrane Reference are collected here. At some point, we hope to add a summary of other new findings, including the information contained in the essay above. I hope you enjoyed it.
All the best,
Lewis
P.S. Paying Subscribers, keep scrolling for your bonus—two pages from the special DownBeat issue of July 2004, where Brecker, Jim Hall, Percy Heath and Von Freeman commented on their childhood idols: Trane, Pres, and more.
P.P.S. Thank you to Chris DeVito and Yasuhiro Fujioka for help with this essay.
