New Coltrane Recordings Show Saxophonist at a Transition Point

Barry Baldwin has extensive background driving busses with the New York City Transit Authority. Longtime New York resident Barry Baldwin is passionate about music and has listed no various genres from rock and pop to American classics, such as jazz and the blues.

For fans of John Coltrane, a welcome discovery last year was a 1963 recording from New Jersey’s Van Gelder studios that remained lost for more than half a century. With McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass, the session features the same quartet that recorded the groundbreaking album “A Love Supreme.”

With the master likely destroyed by Impulse! In the 1970s as part of storage cost-saving efforts, a reference tape was given by Coltrane to his wife Naima and the recordings remained with the family over the decades.

One aspect of the recordings of interest to fans is that two of the seven tracks, with Coltrane on soprano sax, are never-before-heard untitled originals. A third track “One Up, One Down” has only surfaced once in a Birdland jazz club bootleg recording.

Another remarkable aspect of the “Both Directions at Once” sessions is that they capture Coltrane just as he was moving beyond his bebop roots into the free jazz modality that would characterize his later work. One of the tracks that illustrate this transition is a straightforward three-minute recording of Nature Boy. Coltrane would return to this Nat King Cole composition in 1965, with a studio version that was much freer and featured extended soloing.

Keb’ Mo’ – Keeping the Legacy of the Blues and Americana Alive

Barry Baldwin is a longtime Brooklyn, New York resident who served as a bus operator with the New York City Transit Authority for many years. Passionate about music, Barry Baldwin enjoys a range of classic styles that include R&B, rock, blues, and jazz.

One of the contemporary artists who keeps the legacy of the blues alive on stage is Keb’ Mo’, a Grammy winning artist who has had a career as diverse as the music genre itself. Born Kevin Roosevelt Moore, he grew up in Los Angeles where he had his mother’s album collection, which featured music ranging from Johnny Mathis to Jimmy Smith, as inspiration.

As Keb’ Mo’ grew older, musical influences such as Otis Redding, Taj Mahal, Santana, and Bob Dylan came to the fore. He also delved deep into the roots of the sound and gained a mastery of Delta blues rhythms, as well as country music, calypso, and the Great American Songbook.

This mix of styles was apparent on his 1980 debut album, and he has achieved acclaim for slide-guitar infused songs such as “Old Me Better” and “Soon As I Get Paid.” Interviewed recently by Rolling Stone, Keb’ Mo’ pointed to a primary motivator being the opportunity to “shed a light on truth, history, and situations.”