Coltrane: The Origin of "Impressions," Part 2

How he created the bridge, and struggled to name it. More NEW RESEARCH!!

(NOTE: In researching this second installment about “Impressions,” I came up with quite a bit of new information. It looks as though this will be a four-part series—it’s hard to say in advance, because I don’t always know what I’ll discover. I am excited to share this with you, dear readers!)

As I said, when Coltrane first started to perform “Impressions,” he didn’t know what to call it. That’s very common in jazz—I suppose it might be an issue with all kinds of instrumental music, that is, music without words. Other Coltrane tunes were titled after his death, including 26-2 and everything on Stellar Regions. (In the latter case, the title track was mistakenly give a new title by Alice Coltrane, but it had already been released on Interstellar Space under the name “Venus.”) And it wasn’t only Trane. Ira Gitler said that when he worked at Prestige Records it was common for musicians to leave behind untitled tunes at the end of a recording session, and he ended up naming some of them. And it is legendary that Monk’s “Let’s Call This,” Think of One,” and “Who Knows?” were possibly all answers to the producer or engineer, asking “What’s the name of this tune that we’re recording?”

Apparently, at first Coltrane called his piece “So What,” which makes sense if you’ve read Part 1 of this series. On July 1, 1961 he told the announcer at the Newport festival that he will begin with “So What,” and that’s what the host tells the audience, as you can hear:

Most audience members would have known Miles’s tune. So they must have been confused by what Coltrane played!

(I don’t believe that this m.c.—master of ceremonies—has ever been identified, but the original advance advertising said that the host would be Mort Fega, a jazz “disc jockey” on station WEVD in New York City. It doesn’t sound exactly like Fega to me, but it could be.)

In August 1961, released on Evenings at the Village Gate, Coltrane can be heard calling for “So What” at the end of “When Lights Are Low.” (Thank you to subscriber saxophonist Frank Basile for this.) And a few months later, in November 1961, Trane was still calling it “So What.” The recent releases of the “official” “Impressions” include a bit of talk at the end. Coltrane says to his musicians”So What,” then quickly realizes that’s what he just played, and says “I mean, uh, ‘Favorite Things.’” Turn up the volume and listen closely:

(“Things” was not recorded because the label knew they could not use it so soon after his version for Atlantic Records had been released in March 1961.)

But just a few weeks later, while on tour in Europe, he had a tentative name for it. He was calling the piece “Excerpts.” This always makes my students laugh, because they say, “After all, his theme is an excerpt from Morton Gould!” The late Joachim Ernst Berendt announced it by that name at two events in Germany, a concert broadcast on radio November 29 and a TV show taped December 2 (but broadcast later). Both announcements are about the same, so here is the one from radio, in German, with English translation below by one of my John Coltrane Reference coauthors, Wolf Schmaler:

Translation: “John Coltrane starts with a piece that is based on a phrase of ‘So What’ by Miles Davis. John Coltrane calls it ‘Excerpts,’ meaning, well, ‘Ausschnitte’ (a German word for “Excerpts.”) I asked him, ‘Excerpts of what?’ He said, ‘Excerpts of my music.’”

We know that he was still using the title “Excerpts” on June 20, 1962, when he recorded two short versions of this piece in the studio. In fact you can hear him say this to producer Bob Thiele on the unissued session tape (courtesy of Ken Druker of the Verve Label Group). First Thiele says “7:15,” apparently referring to the time, and John says “Okay,” and then says quickly to the band, “So What.” Overlapping John, someone, I think Elvin Jones, jokingly replies to Thiele in a faux-Southern accent, “Just what I said.” I guess you had to be there, but everybody cracks up at this comment! Finally they are ready to record again, and at 20 seconds, Thiele says “What are we doing?” (meaning “What piece will we record?”) and John says “Excerpts.” Thele repeats it, incorrectly, as “Excerpt,” but John doesn’t correct him. Listen:

(Thiele says at 0:25, “Let me just slate it here,” meaning “Let me announce the title and take and I.D.— matrix number—so that we can find it later on the reel of tape.” This meaning of “slate” originated with the silent films where the take number was written in chalk on a slate board.)

But in early 1963, apparently Trane decided against “Excerpts.” So in March 1963, when the quartet recorded four short takes that were released much later on Both Directions At Once, it was once again untitled! The tape box (also courtesy of Ken Druker of the Verve Label Group) lists it as an “original” piece with no title, and we’re back to “So What” in parentheses! Take a look:

He finally came up with a new name, “Impressions,” in time for the LP’s release in July 1963.

But why “Impressions”? And how did he come up with the bridge of this AABA form? I have some ideas about both choices:

A number of people have noted that the bridge on the “official” “Impressions” from the Village Vanguard is similar to a phrase by French composer Maurice Ravel. Similar, yes—but it’s not the same, as I’ll show. So is it based on Ravel or not? Well, there’s more to this story.

Let’s listen to the Ravel phrase in question. As you may know, many of the most beloved melodies in classical music go by so quickly, with no repeat, that it can be frustrating. In the 1930s and ‘40s, especially, songwriters captured some of these melodies and turned them into songs that could be repeated and enjoyed. Well, one short cadential phrase from Ravel’s “Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte” stayed in people’s minds. Here it is, as played by Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter at a concert in Moscow in 1954 (Ravel also wrote a version for orchestra):

That tiny excerpt from an approximately 7-minute piece inspired a song. The original sheet music for “The Lamp Is Low,” with music by Peter De Rose and Bert Shefter and lyrics by Mitchell (misspelled on the sheet music!) Parrish, bears an inscription at the top of the first page: “Melody based on a Theme from Maurice Ravel's Pavane.” You can see that here:

The vocal melody on this page, after six bars of solo piano, is the “verse,” a scene-setting introduction that is only sung once. Most “Great American Songbook” pieces begin with a verse, but jazz artists rarely perform them. The next page, not shown here, has the familiar repeated melody or “chorus.” We’ll hear that shortly.

Upon its publication in early 1939, “The Lamp Is Low” was immediately recorded and performed by leading bandleaders such as Glenn Miller, and Tommy Dorsey made a particularly popular version of it. But first, it was sung by Mildred Bailey with the John Kirby sextet plus her husband Red Norvo on xylophone in April of 1939. This remarkable arrangement, with an unexpected introduction, is by Eddie Sauter. At 1:42 Sauter has the instruments play the beginning of Ravel’s piece, with xylophone tremolos in the background. As is standard in jazz, Bailey doesn’t sing the verse, only the chorus:

This is a lovely recording to hear, but let’s focus on that small phrase that Trane used for his bridge, which she sings at 0:14-0:24. There are 9 notes—I’ve put them into Coltrane’s key for comparison. Here is the phrase from “The Lamp is Low” (and Ravel).

But here is what Coltrane plays at the Vanguard:

What the…!!?? Three of the notes are different, which is a lot when you only have nine to start with! I noticed this many years ago, so I always wondered why people said it was based on “The Lamp Is Low.” It seemed like a pretty vague comparison, based on a slight resemblance. In fact, it is indeed based on “Lamp,” but one has to follow Coltrane’s development of the bridge to hear that. Let’s do that now:

On the earliest existing recording of “Impressions,” made by an audience member at the Showboat club in Philadelphia in July 1960, Coltrane simply plays the Gould theme again for the bridge, but up a half-step. That is similar to the original Gould piece. We heard this recording in Part 1, because it’s also one where he plays Gould’s background riff at the end of each phrase. Here it is again, and this time listen to the bridge:

As we will see in Part 4, this version of the piece, where the same theme is played on the bridge, circulated to other jazz groups.

But by the time of the next existing recording, taken off a radio broadcast from Chicago's Sutherland Lounge in March 1961, Coltrane is playing “The Lamp is Low,” clearly recognizable because 8 of the 9 notes are the same! The only difference is that instead if playing the F at the end of the second measure, he plays Gb. That’s pretty logical, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s simply how he remembered it, without checking any sheet music. He fills out the bridge with some improvisation. The person who recorded this missed the beginning, but luckily we have the ending theme complete. At the end of McCoy Tyner’s piano solo, Coltrane begins playing the theme, off-mike, then comes up to the mike:

He played the same “Lamp” bridge a few months later, at Newport, July 1, 1961. Here is what he played immediately after the spoken intro that you heard above:

Yet another version comes from late July, at the Showboat Lounge in Philadelphia, and again the only difference is the Gb:

Clearly, by November 1961, he had changed the bridge. What happened? It seems to me that the exact melody of “Lamp” which he used at first seems to stop at the end of the 9 notes. After all, it leads to a cadence (phrase ending) in the original Ravel and in the song. He revised the melody in order to create the momentum he needed, while still keeping the family resemblance to “Lamp” that some listeners noticed. From then on, he played this modified bridge.

But wait, friends—you didn’t ask the obvious question: Why did he decide to use “The Lamp Is Low” as his B section? That choice appears ot be kind of random, doesn’t it? Why not just compose a bridge, as is usual? Or why not choose any of a million other songs to use for the bridge?

And I didn’t yet answer the question—why was it so hard for John to title this, and why did he finally settle on “Impressions”?

These will be some of the topics addressed in Part 3—coming soon!

All the best,

Lewis