As a faithful reader of this blog you know that one of my reoccurring themes is the great Philly Joe Jones. Well, it has reached the point where we have to talk about his relation to Coltrane. Like every musician who ever played with Coltrane it was the most important thing he ever did.He played on Coltrane's Blue Train and worked along side him, both as core members of the First Great Miles Davis Quintet. After the Quintet dismantled Miles took on Tony Williams, who he raves about in his autobiography, for his fusion phase. And Coltrane's drummer was Elvin Jones during his modal phase. Elvin Jones was the greatest drummer to ever live. Some people like to frame it up like Philly Joe Jones was either left behind or rejected the artistic directions of Miles and Trane. Neither of these assumptions are correct. He did, however, criticize specifically unnamed "horn" players of latching on to Coltrane despite incompetence. Great musicians tend to make terrible critics and it's obvious he was referring to Eric Dolphy and Pharoah Sanders, both geniuses. Nonetheless, Philly Joe Jones was not abandoned nor did he reject his bandmates. He continued in his hard bop tradition and we'll explore what he went on to do later.
|