The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records [Hardcover]

Ashley Kahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2006

The dynamic fifteen-year saga of the enduringly popular jazz record label guided by legendary saxophonist John Coltrane.

Following the path of its star musician John Coltrane, Impulse Records cut a creative swath through the 1960s and 1970s with the politically charged avant-garde jazz that defined the label's musical and spiritual identity. The House That Trane Built tells the story of the label, balancing tales of individual passion, artistic vision, and commercial motivation. Weaving together research, dynamic album covers, session photographs, and nearly one hundred interviews with executives, journalists, producers, and musicians from Ray Charles and Alice Coltrane to Quincy Jones, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, and others--this is the riveting tale of an era-shaping jazz label in the age of rock. The thirty-eight Album Profiles--a veritable book within a book--offer a consumer's guide to the best and most timeless titles on Impulse. 120 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Noted jazz writer Kahn follows up his in-depth account of the making of jazz legend John Coltrane's most famous album, A Love Supreme, with a history of the record label Coltrane ushered into jazz history. Always a corporate entity (though it changed hands several times between its inception in 1961 and the present), Impulse! was founded by legendary jazz producer Creed Taylor as an imprint of ABC-Paramount records. During Taylor's short stint as label head (before being recruited to overhaul Verve Records), he signed Impulse!'s first exclusive artist, Coltrane, who, through his endless musical questing, recommendations of other artists and status as the label's bestseller, would define Impulse!'s sound and proclivity toward the avant-garde. Taylor's successor, Bob Thiele, was the major driving force at Impulse!, however, supporting Coltrane through his prolific, often confounding musical experiments and producing records by such other influential artists as Archie Shepp, McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders. Kahn mingles engaging stories of corporate politics with insider accounts of music-making and anecdotal takes on particular albums. His history of Impulse! is also the story of the genesis of an American art form and the evolution of the record industry through the tumultuous 1960s—and will compel readers to seek out this label's masterful albums. Photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Kahn follows the excellent Kind of Blue (2000) and A Love Supreme (2002), on, respectively, Miles Davis' and John Coltrane's most popular albums, with a history of the record label that, dominating the 1960s, blazed trails for jazz thereafter. Lasting from 1961 to 1977, Impulse Records started big with career-best albums by Ray Charles, Gil Evans, and Oliver Nelson and stayed big thanks to the astonishingly popular avant-garde music of John Coltrane, until and beyond his 1967 death. If "suits" at parent company ABC Paramount started it and remained largely sympathetic, Impulse owed its unprecedented success to original producer Bob Thiele, who let musicians choose their repertoire and play it as they wished, and to terrific packaging: gatefold covers, a distinctive orange-and-black ground-color scheme, superb performance photography. Depending heavily on interviews, mostly original, with virtually everyone of significance before and behind the microphones, as well as the written record, Kahn genially traces the company's passage, interspersing two- to three-page sidebars on dozens of particular albums and freighting the pages with graphics. A jazz lover's delight. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (June 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393058794
• ISBN-13: 978-0393058796
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,060,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kahn builds on prior Love Supreme work, July 16, 2006

By 

souldrummer (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records (Hardcover)

Ashley Kahn is carving out a serious niche for himself as a fans' chronicler of classic jazz CDs. I've found his works on "Kind of Blue" and "Love Supreme" helpful, and "House that Trane Built" expands the interviews and research he did for "Love Supreme" into a history that jazz fans will find insightful.

It's hard to move beyond Trane on Impulse. I've got most of his stuff for the label, and I'm hard pressed to think of albums that I listen to regularly outside of Trane from Impulse. Blues and the Abstract Truth comes to mind. Some Pharoah Sanders. I've been meaning to get Gil Evans Out of the Cool for awhile. But I haven't been collecting jazz much lately, and this book will inspire me to pick up some more stuff.

The story of this book is as much the producers of Impulse as it is 'Trane's work. I did not realize how Impulse differed from Blue Note in that it was born with the cash to make an immediate impact. Not only was it born with cash, but it was also born with an artist: Ray Charles, who hit with "One Mint Julep" on his album "Genius + Soul = Jazz". Creed Taylor, he of the more popular oriented CTI Records, shows a true heart for the music in his initial choices for impulse artists. Bob Thiele, however, is the costar of this book. Kahn goes through great pains to show how Thiele's opening up to Coltrane and avant-garde music helped give him the latitude and the courage to work with some of the more "out" artists like Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler.

For those readers who are new to jazz, a good way to decide whether you want to purchase the book would to be focus on the album sketches that are interspersed throughout the book. In the first two-thirds of the book, most of these are titles that jazz fans will recall with fondness. But there are some examples of albums that fell by the wayside like a Curtis Fuller orchestral session and some of the rock experiments that formed a small but significant part of Impulse's later years.

I dig this book. As a former musician, I'm always looking for background that helps to ground musicians in the history and tradition of the music. This book will help jazz fans understand how a jazz label can exist within a major conglomerate and still produce risk-taking music. One can only hope that somewhere someone can figure out to find similarly breathtaking music that can function as both commerce and art.

5 stars

--SD

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No jazz library would be complete, September 23, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records (Hardcover)

This is the 45th anniversary of the Impulse record label, and to mark the occasion is a powerful review THE HOUSE THAT TRANE BUILT: THE STORY OF IMPULSE RECORDS - which is, concurrently, a story of the roots of jazz recording. Paired with a 10 'best of Impulse' cd collection plus a 4-cd companion to the book, THE HOUSE THAT TRANE BUILT has also become a radio program and provides a close analysis of the relationship between jazz great John Coltrane and Impulse Records. Nearly two decades of artistic creation are chronicled from marketing wins and insider experiences - derived from interviews with over fifty musicians, industry executives and producers - to other powerful artists and recordings to evolve from the Impulse record label. In its heyday Impulse fostered new technologies, new sounds, and new artists: no jazz library would be complete without THE HOUSE THAT TRANE BUILT, which shows how all this was achieved.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview - nitpickers need not apply, November 28, 2006

By 

anonymous (U.S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records (Hardcover)

I'm glad someone came out with a behind the scenes look at Bob Thiele & Co. since I had not known much about him or read his book "What A Wonderful World" that came out a few years back.

The pictures of Van Gelder's studio are beyond words and some of the mini-reviews have inspired me to check out the likes of artists such as Sam Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders and Alice Coltrane. Even if it lacks any in-depth information about them, it gave me a taste for further investigation.

I guess if you are looking for a musical theory book, or a tome on race relations & guilt trips from the 1960s, then this book isn't for you. True, the music matters, but this is about a specific record label, not just any specific artists that were on it. Do a Google search and you will find plenty of other books out there about that.

Besides, if it weren't for the likes of "head white men in charge" (as another reviewer contemptuously put it) like Bob Thiele or Creed Taylor, Impulse would never have happened in the first place.

I consider it a valuable book for a newcomer who wants to be introduced to the subject.