Offering: Live At Temple University

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Offering: Live at Temple University is a live album by John Coltrane recorded in 1966 and released posthumously by Resonance Records on September 23, 2014, Coltrane's 88th birthday. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Album Notes and was well-received by critics. Proceeds from the album benefit the John Coltrane Home. Background Coltrane and his quintet, which featured saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, pianist Alice Coltrane, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Rashied Ali, toured Japan in July 1966 (documented on Live in Japan). Immediately upon their return, they played a two-week stint at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco (July 26 – August 7), followed by an appearance at the Village Theatre in New York City on August 12. Toward the end of the summer, Garrison, who had played with Coltrane since 1961, and who was the last remaining member of the "classic quartet," announced that he would depart Coltrane's group in order to join a trio led by pianist Hampton Hawes. He was replaced for the most part by Sonny Johnson (brother of trumpeter Dewey Johnson, who had participated in the recording of Coltrane's Ascension), although Sirone occasionally played with the group during this time as well. While in Japan, Coltrane began experiencing intense headaches, causing him to "gulp... aspirin by the bottle," and hinting at the presence of the liver cancer that would take his life the following year. (After Coltrane's death, Rashied Ali noticed that a number of the photographs that he had taken during the Japan tour showed Coltrane holding his hand over his liver, "like he was trying to stop that pain he must have been feeling all by himself.") In an interview with Frank Kofsky, Coltrane stated: "the pace I've been leading has been so hard and I've gained so much weight, that sometimes it's been a little hard physically." Upon returning from the tour, Coltrane told producer George Wein that he felt weak and had stopped eating, and cancelled a proposed fall European tour which would have included England, The Netherlands, and the Berlin Jazz Festival. Coltrane did not perform during the month of September, during which he turned forty. From this point on, Coltrane's schedule of public appearances became more sporadic and less demanding. On October 7, he and his group (without Sanders), performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kresge Auditorium. Coltrane was also listed in an advertisement for a benefit concert on October 30 at the Village Gate, but it is not certain that he appeared. In early November, he played at a benefit concert at the Church of the Advocate in his home town of Philadelphia. His group at this concert consisted of Sanders, Alice Coltrane, possibly Sonny Johnson on bass, and Muhammad Ali, Rashied's younger brother, on drums. They were joined by Algie DeWitt on percussion and saxophonist Sonny Fortune, who sat in. This was followed by the November 11 concert at Temple University's Mitten Hall Auditorium, which was broadcast live on radio station WRTI, and which appears on Offering. The audience "included university students, members of the black radical organization The Revolutionary Action Movement, old friends of Coltrane, and local fans and musicians. One of them was an 18-year-old Michael Brecker." Afterwards, incomplete bootleg tapes of the concert circulated among fans for years. In 1997, Coltrane's son Ravi gave a copy of one of these tapes to Coltrane scholar Yasuhiro Fujioka, who then managed to track down the full, original tapes, which were in the possession of Michael Biel, who had been program director at WRTI in 1966. Biel was then introduced to an executive from Universal Music, which has rights to Coltrane's late recordings, and Universal then licensed the project to Resonance Records. The recording was transferred from the original master reels, remastered, and released in 2014. Personnel For the November 11 concert, Coltrane's group included Sanders, who had participated in the recording of Don Cherry's album Where Is Brooklyn? earlier that day, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Johnson, possibly Jimmy Garrison, and Rashied Ali. They were supplemented by Algie DeWitt (a Batá drummer whom Coltrane had met the previous week at the Church of the Advocate concert), Omar Ali (Rashied's older brother), Robert Kenyatta, and Charles Brown, all playing percussion. Coltrane had experimented with using multiple drummers for well over a year, explaining that he had "drum fever". In the liner notes for Meditations, he stated: "I feel the need for more time, more rhythm all around me. And with more than one drummer, the rhythm can be more multi-directional. Someday I may add a conga drummer or even a company of drummers." In a 1990 interview, Rashied Ali recalled: " was in a drummer thing... There were times I played with Trane, he had a battery of drummers, like about three conga players, guys playing batas, shakers and barrels and everything. On one of his records he did that. At the Village Vanguard, live, we had a whole bunch of drummers plus the traps. And then sometimes he would have double traps." In addition to this group, two local alto saxophonists, Arnold Joyner and Steven Knoblauch (who was an 18-year-old college student at the time), were permitted to sit in, and each took a solo. Their presence was consistent with Coltrane's habit of inviting younger, relatively unknown musicians to participate. (Dave Liebman recalled attending a concert in which Coltrane featured "what looked like an army of guys he got off the street.") Personnel: John Coltrane Quintet John Coltrane – soprano and tenor saxophones, flute, vocals, bandleader Rashied Ali – drums Alice Coltrane – piano Sonny Johnson – upright bass Pharoah Sanders – tenor saxophone and piccolo Additional musicians Omar Ali – percussion Charles Brown – percussion Algie DeWitt – percussion Arnold Joyner – alto saxophone Robert Kenyatta – percussion Steven Knoblauch – alto saxophone Technical personnel Bernie Grundman – mastering Ashley Kahn – liner notes Frank Kofsky – photography.

via Last.fm