John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman – John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman

By George Moraitis

Label:	Impulse! – Stereo A-40, Impulse! – AS-40
Format:	Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, Gatefold
Country:	US
Released:	1963
Genre:	Jazz, Pop
Style:	Hard Bop, Vocal, Ballad

Here’s the short version of my recommendation:
Get your hands on this album. It should be an essential part of your collection if you are an appreciator of the Jazz artform and/or a hopeless romantic. Done. Thank you. Next.

Here’s the longer version:
This enchanting album is unique in jazz history as the only recording on which Coltrane, the most relentlessly experimental member of the 60’s jazz generation, collaborated with a singer. The only one! It’s also the performance with which Hartman secured his enduring reputation. Considering the somewhat unusual way the production came about, Coltrane/Hartman could be considered an anomaly, or a lucky accident. A famous Jazz critic once said: “The chances of anyone consciously planning and executing such an album are akin to those of an arranged marriage igniting into a passionate inferno on the wedding night: slim to none.”

But isn’t this how masterpieces are born? From the unpredictable confluence of disparate circumstances?

This album consists of six ballads. Recorded in 1963 on the Impulse! Label at Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio in New Jersey, it remains perfectly suited to any encounter in which romance is meant to play a part. Six perfectly sung renditions of highly articulate lyrics and sophisticated melodies create a narrative arc that moves through successive stages of hope, promise, devotion, disengagement, acceptance and memory. So folks… planning a special candlelit dinner? A romantic weekend away? If there’s a human with whom you want to strike a spark, kindle a fire with or just enjoy some feel good time together, I recommend that you have this album at hand.

Throughout the album, the baritone Hartman, tenor saxophonist Coltrane and his peerless rhythm trio – pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones – make music that seems to be so present, free, so up-close-and-personal, that it conjures a sense of shared intimacy. Hartman’s voice embodies masculine maturity with a smoky, relaxed tone. Here it is cushioned by a sophisticated, intricate piano accompaniment, rhythms brushed lightly with implication, basslines so soft they go unnoticed, beguiling saxophone solos and intentioned constraint.

It is interesting to consider where both artists were in their career journeys at the time of this recording. Coltrane emerged from anonymity in the mid-’50s to a prominent position as a featured player with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and had established himself as a master of the tenor sax. In 1961, he left Atlantic for a newly established label, Impulse! Coltrane increasingly blew variations of simple themes with increasing density, volatility and complexity, sometimes breaking into harsh cries, atonal runs or extreme registers of his horn. His improvisations were causing a division of opinion, with influential jazz press labelling his direction as ‘horrifying’, ‘anti-jazz’ & ‘gobbledegook’. Thiele responded for his artist by conceiving three albums that would solidify Coltrane’s mainstream bona fides: one made up of well-known ballads, a second with the highly esteemed Duke Ellington and the third with a vocalist.

Johnny Hartman, some 15 years into his career, was holding on to a style that was receding in popularity. A native of Chicago, Hartman first gained notice after returning from military service during World War II to sing in the big bands of Earl Hines and Dizzy Gillespie. Early on, Hartman, tall and handsome, was hailed as a ‘Bronze Sinatra’, a crooner of slow- to mid-tempo swing whose articulation of language and placement of pitch were proper and precise. The 1950’s heralded a dramatic change in music trends as rhythm and blues, Doo-wop, rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll won over young audiences. Hartman adapted by working with small combos in supper clubs and cabarets, went to Europe in 1959 and was doing a tour of Japan, singing with drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, when the call came from Bob Thiele, inviting him to collaborate with Coltrane.

“Johnny Hartman – a man that I had just stuck up in my mind somewhere – I just felt something about him.” Coltrane later said of his one-time-only partner. “I liked his sound, I thought there was something there I had to hear.” The two had never worked together. They’d both been in Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra, but at different times.

Although Coltrane was so sure he wanted Hartman that he rejected Thiele’s suggestions of other singers including Sarah Vaughan, Hartman had his doubts. “I didn’t know if John could play that kind of stuff I did.” he told writer Frank Kofsky a decade after the fact. “So I was a little reluctant at first. Then John was working at Birdland, and he asked me to come down there, and after hearing him play ballads the way he did, man, I said, ‘Hey, beautiful.’ So that’s how we got together.”

And so the unlikely happened. The essence & spirit of both artists came together and created an album with timeless quality, one with unquestioned credibility. In 1963, Coltrane was 37, fairly young, yet even a cursory encounter with his music makes it clear he was a person containing profound depths. Hartman was 40, and not susceptible to passing trends. They may have held contrasting positions on an aesthetic continuum, but their gravitas was a match.

Tenderness, compassion and emotional transparency are impressions one takes away from an encounter with John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, as well as admiration for its subdued lyricism and psychological acuity. Then there’s the sheer pleasure one takes from close engagement with an object of multifaceted, inexhaustible beauty.

John Coltrane died in 1967, having continued to probe the far reaches of music he could create with his saxophone. Johnny Hartman lived until 1983. After making four more albums produced by Bob Thiele, he spent the 70’s and early 80’s performing mostly in lounges and supper clubs, recording for small independent labels. In 1981, he was nominated for a Grammy for ‘Best Male Jazz Vocalist’ for an album titled Once in Every Life. In 1995, director Clint Eastwood used seven tracks from that record, which had fallen out of print, on the soundtrack of his film Bridges of Madison County.

This delicate, seductive album stands immortalised in time as tribute, a nod to the genius that was Coltrane/Hartman. The more you listen to it, the more subtle genius details reveal themselves to you, in particular how the saxophone helps tell the story with nuance, sensitivity and respect.

Enjoy!

Track listing

1. They Say It’s Wonderful
2. Dedicated To You
3. My One And Only Love
4. Lush Life
5. You Are Too Beautiful
6. Autumn Serenade