By late 1958, Davis employed one of the best and most profitable working bands pursuing the hard bop style. His personnel had become stable: alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Bill Evans, long-serving bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb. His band played a mixture of pop standards and bebop originals by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and Tadd Dameron. As with all bebop-based jazz, Davis’s groups improvised on the chord changes of a given song. Davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop, and saw its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering creativity.

Coltrane . Live at the Village Vanguard

John Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard is one of my favorite jazz albums and when Jac hippied me to the fact that the club had recently celebrated  75 years of music history - I had to share. The vanguard is an institution in NYC and a living testament to an era of Jazz.

The Village Vanguard celebrates its 75th birthday. This legendary club located in the West Village neighborhood of New York City has been what many believe to be the heart and soul of jazz for generations. Every fan worth their salt has his or her favorite album recorded in the tiny pie-shaped room that seats a mere 123 patrons – Bill Evans’s ‘Waltz for Debby’ and ‘Sunday at the Village Vanguard’ probably being the most famous, but John Coltrane’s ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’ is legendary. The Vanguard is where giants walked the earth and their spirit lives on.

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