JOHN COLTRANE & DON CHERRY
The Avant-Garde (Rhino)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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This album was mis-titled. Anything else might have done--The Experimental Phase, Testing The Waters, or perhaps Thinking About It--because this music wasn't avant-garde. The term indicates something that is at the sharp point of the arrow, way out in the lead. This is wonderful hard-bop, and the influence of Ornette Coleman is clear, but it was Coleman who was riding point, the true avant-garde, while Coltrane and Cherry were just beginning to feel the whole thing out by the time of this 1960 Atlantic date.

Listening to it for the highly inventive hard-bop that it was, The Avant-Garde is no disappointment. It features one of the greatest and most creative bass players of all time in Charlie Haden, and the exciting, fluid drumming of Ed Blackwell. On a few tracks the bass is ably handled by Percy Heath (of Modern Jazz Quartet fame).

Cherry and Coltrane were reportedly uncomfortable at times during the recording of this album, not sure of the what-goes-wheres as they tried to push the envelope. Perhaps my ear isn't well-trained enough to catch that. What I hear is Cherry finding a good balancing point between Coleman's rhythm section (brought in exactly BECAUSE they were Coleman's guys) and an experimenting Coltrane who was not yet playing too far outside, but was adding new harmonic elements to his sheets of sound. The best example is his solo that begins the last half of "The Invisible" and slithers, skips, bites, and even hushes as if he was walking away from the microphone.

Sitting here forty years past this recording date, we know that Coltrane did indeed turn the corner into the avant-garde. Playing this side-by-side with Interstellar Space is a recipe for whiplash, such is the ordered chaos of Interstellar Space and the relative calm of Avant-Garde. From a historian's viewpoint, The Avant-Garde is clearly valued as a point before a turning point, a foreshadowing of wilder things to come. For the layman, the person who just pops the CD in and lets it flow, it's a wonderful and smooth listen and a great mood-enhancer.

Interesting post-script: This thing sat on the shelf for six years before Atlantic decided to release it. By 1966, the true avant-garde had left this territory well in the dust. If the title was strange in 1960, it was laughable in 1966.

© 2000 - DJ Johnson