John Coltrane - Olé Coltrane (1961)

Always my Coltrane of choice, Olé may have been in some way influenced by Miles Davis' Sketches Of Spain from the previous year.  The sound of John Coltrane's 'Spanish tinge' album, however, was much looser and freer than those meticulous Gil Evans arrangements, and looks forward to the (further) fireworks Coltrane was just about to unleash: he'd started recording for Impulse two days prior to this Atlantic session.

The title track takes up all of the first side, and never loses your attention throughout its propulsive, thrilling 18 minutes.  McCoy Tyner keeps it on the rails throughout whilst Coltrane, Eric Dolphy (moonlighting as "George Lane") and Freddie Hubbard take turns in the spotlight.  Even the two-bass battle between Art Davis and Reggie Workman hits the spot.  The other two tracks are equally wonderful, with Dahomey Dance a great blues-based strut and the Tyner-penned Aisha an absolutely gorgeous ballad to close.

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Freddie Hubbard / İlhan Mimaroǧlu - Sing Me A Song Of Songmy (1971)

A unique and still powerful collision between jazz, recited poetry/other spoken word and the electronic/composed avant-garde, this album is very much a product of its time, but continues to resonate.  Credited first to the legendary trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (and solely to him on the spine of the CD I have here), Sing Me A Song Of Songmy was however foremost a project by Turkish-born composer İlhan Mimaroǧlu (1926-2012).  As a producer at Atlantic, Mimaroǧlu had top-notch facilities at his disposal to indulge in an album this bizarre and still get a major label release out of it, and Hubbard's quintet were game to provide an underlying backbone of post-bop accessibility.

Before even hearing the record, listeners of the time would've been aware that there were weighty themes within - 'Songmy' was an anglicization of Sơn Mỹ, the Vietnamese village in which the 1968 My Lai massacre took place; the cover painting was Picasso's Massacre In Korea, and the gatefold a collage of contemporary anti-war content.  Alongside Mimaroǧlu's "Fantasy For Electromagnetic Tape", with occasional quotes of older classical music, and Hubbard's quintet, were readings of poems by Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca and Nha-Khe, and texts by Kierkegaard and Che Guevara.

The album opens with another then-contemporary recitation, of Susan Atkins' testimony at the Manson Family trials, accompanied by a nightmarish sound collage giving way to a string orchestra overture and more electronics.  If this is a bit too much of a chucking in at the deep end, a few minutes of Hubbard and band follow with minimum disturbance, before the electronic processing gradually leads to the first piece of war poetry.  The album continues in collage mode, jumping from jazz to processed noise to orchestrated passages to recitation and sometimes piling on all at once, clearly intended to be unsettling, provocative and thought-provoking.  A must-listen, even today.


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Oliver Nelson - The Blues And The Abstract Truth (1961)

Simply one of the greatest jazz albums ever made.  More details needed?  Have a look at the all-star cast on the cover.  Still not convinced?  Download and enjoy. Six perfectly composed instant classics, with wonderfully harmonized main melodies each giving way to a round of solo spotlights, either in blues measure or near enough, and a sumptuous, reverb-bathed production.

The Blues And The Abstract Truth has always been a November album for me, ever since checking it out of the library at university, popping it in my Discman and walking through the darkening, windswept and rainy streets of Edinburgh listening to Stolen Moments for the first time.  Kind Of Blue, Blue Train et al became part of my life around that same month, but this album has stayed with me more consistently than any other from the 50s-early 60s canon.

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