Coltrane: The Origin of "Impressions," Part 1

Expanded and Updated Version Plus a BONUS for Paying Subscribers

(NOTE: You may have read about “Impressions” in my book, or at WBGO.org, or have even seen me lecture about it. Nevertheless, this is a revised and expanded version, with a great deal of new information, plus audio excerpts. Paying Subscribers, as yet another way to Thank You, at the bottom you will find some of the complete recordings from which the excerpts are taken!)

“Impressions” is one of Coltrane’s best-known works and it was one of his two “theme songs,” the other being “My Favorite Things.” Between the spring of 1960 and the summer of 1965, he performed both pieces at pretty much every performance. That’s a whole lot of “Impressions” and “Things”!

But it is a total misconception to say, as I have seen some write, that Coltrane “recorded” each of these pieces over 20 times. No artist in his right mind would record the same pieces over and over. And no record company would allow it. Remember, we jazz people may be interested in comparing the improvisations on different versions of the same song (as I’ve been doing in my posts about Billie Holiday), but the general public would say “I’ve already got a recording of him playing this song!” For that reason, contracts expressly forbid the artist from recording the same song within a certain time period (in Coltrane’s day one had to wait five years).

Coltrane, and Impulse Records, probably did not even know that fans were recording Coltrane off the radio, and sometimes from the audience. In short, Coltrane did not make 20-plus recordings of these pieces—one should correctly say “Over 20 recordings exist of Coltrane playing ‘Impressions’ and ‘My Favorite Things.’”

The “official” recording of “Impressions,” made at the Village Vanguard in November 1961, is the title track of an album released by Impulse in July of 1963. One can hear why it was selected. Of all the versions, this one has an amazing concentrated intensity that is absolutely riveting.

Coltrane’s source for the main theme of “Impressions” is the second theme of “Pavanne”(a type of dance, usually spelled with one “n”). This was the middle of a three-movement work, American Symphonette No. 2, written in 1938 by the American composer Morton Gould.

Gould was well known to radio listeners in the 1940s, by way of nationwide broadcasts that mixed light classical and popular music. He was considered a “light classical” or “pops” composer. I happen to think that he was also a very good composer. Gould himself recorded his “Pavanne” on multiple occasions, with instrumentations ranging from his own solo piano to large groups. For example, let’s listen to the first theme of Gould’s “Pavanne,” as recorded by the composer with orchestra in 1942:

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will find the entire recording, and more of the recordings excerpted here are to be found complete below as well.)

The Boston Pops first performed it on May 17, 1939, under the baton of long-time director Arthur Fiedler. In the program someone “corrected” the spelling, as you can see here:

But when they recorded it in June 1939, the label of the 78rpm disc had Gould’s spelling.

“Pavanne” was also recorded by prominent big bands of the era. In 1940 it was recorded by Jimmie Lunceford’s, which may have been the first big band Coltrane ever saw in person. And young John had first started playing a musical instrument in the fall of 1939. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if he had heard this version:

It was recorded in 1939 by one of the Swing Era's most popular bandleaders, trombonist Glenn Miller, in an arrangement by Bill Finnegan:

So we know that several versions of Gould’s “Pavanne” were readily available precisely during the time that Coltrane began playing music. This first, main theme of “Pavanne” became so well known that musicians could throw it into their solos, knowing that an audience would recognize it. For example, it was quoted by saxophonist Wardell Gray in his solo on “Little Pony,” recorded with the Count Basie Band in 1949. You can hear it in the first few seconds of this excerpt—get ready, because it goes by quickly!:

Significantly, in an article by Barbara Gardner published in Downbeat’s 1962 yearbook (Downbeat only published yearbooks for a few years), Coltrane said that Gray was one of his favorite saxophonists in the late 1940s, when this was recorded.

But it seems that only Coltrane paid attention to the second theme in “Pavanne,” heard here from the same three recordings excerpted above. Here’s Gould:

Here’s Lunceford:

And here’s Miller:

There is no doubt that this second theme of Morton Gould’s “Pavanne” is the source for Coltrane’s “Impressions,” for several reasons:

First, Gould’s theme is identical to what Coltrane plays — not similar, but exactly the same. If it were just the first seven notes, which run up the beginning of the D minor scale, the connection would not be as strong. Running up or down a scale is considered “generic” in music copyright cases—that is, it’s too common to be credited to any one musician. But starting at the eighth note, there is a unique series of leaps, reproduced identically in Coltrane’s theme.

Second, when Gould’s theme repeats, it moves up a minor third. In “Impressions,” Coltrane’s melody goes up a half step. So the movement between keys is not the same, but the idea of repeating the theme at a higher pitch is retained from Gould’s original.

Third, notice the chugging “train riff” that sets up and then accompanies the second theme. I have listened to every recording of Coltrane playing “Impressions,” including bootlegs that have never been released to the general public, and there are several versions of “Impressions” where he plays not only the theme, but also that repeating background riff. Here’s one, from the earliest recorded version, July 1960 at the Showboat in Philadelphia:

And another, from a short studio version recorded in 1962 and issued on the Deluxe Edition of the album simply entitled Coltrane:

Clearly, Coltrane has that background figure on his mind. This destroys any remaining doubt as to whether Coltrane was familiar with Gould’s piece!

But Coltrane deserves credit for the way he used Gould’s theme. It’s one of many examples of his striking originality as an arranger. What Coltrane did to create “Impressions” was to take the second theme of “Pavanne” and apply it to the AABA form of a composition he knew well. Coltrane was a regular member of Davis’s groups in the late 1950s, and he recorded and performed “So What” with Davis in 1959 and 1960, most famously on the iconic Columbia album Kind of Blue. Who else would have thought of using Gould’s theme over the form of “So What”?

But if Coltrane may have first heard “Pavanne” as early as 1939, why was he thinking about it again in 1960? Well, Davis frequently said, in interviews and again in his autobiography, that he loved Ahmad Jamal’s trios and got ideas from them. In fact, while Coltrane was in Davis’s group, they regularly played staples from Jamal’s recorded repertoire — originals like "Ahmad's Blues" as well as standards like "Billy Boy" and “Just Squeeze Me.” So I wouldn’t doubt that Coltrane, too, was well aware of Jamal. In October of 1955 and again in January of 1960, the Ahmad Jamal Trio recorded Gould’s “Pavanne,” playing both themes. This is significant, for without a doubt, Coltrane was familiar with the Ahmad Jamal Trio’s versions of this piece.

Jamal’s first trio used the influential Nat Cole instrumentation: piano, guitar, and bass. (Cole was a terrific and widely influential pianist before he ever sang a note. We’ll check him out another time.) Oscar Peterson and others started this way as well. On the 1955 version, it’s guitarist Ray Crawford who plays “Pavanne’s” second theme, while Jamal plays that background figure:

Later, Jamal (and Peterson) changed to a trio of piano, bass and drums. On the 1960 version, Jamal plays the theme, and bassist Israel Crosby plays the counterline:

Indeed, when Coltrane started to play Impressions in concert in 1960, “Pavanne” was part of the Ahmad Jamal Trio’s active repertoire. And that trio had become one of the most popular groups in jazz. In fact, the Davis group with Coltrane had performed on the same bill with Jamal in June and August, 1959, and sometimes found themselves playing at one club while Jamal was at another club nearby. Coltrane had plenty of opportunities to hear the trio play in concert, as well as on recordings. So even if John had not thought about Gould’s theme in a while, he had good reason to recall it in 1960.

But what about about the bridge of “Impressions”? How did Coltrane come up with that? And when Coltrane first started to perform “Impressions,” he didn’t know what to call it. I will present new research about both of these questions next time, in Part 2! And more new research is coming in Part 3!

See you soon!

All the best,

Lewis

Paying Subscribers: BELOW are complete audio tracks, not just the excerpts given above.