Customer Reviews

The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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

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.

For years I wondered why no one had written a history of Impulse Records - now I am indeed very happy to see it in my hands. It does a very good job of trailing the road to one of the greatest achievements in the history of modern jazz, and it is a good read for anyone interested in the music of Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp and other icons of jazz.

Why was the ABC Impulse! album spine black and orange? How did Coletrane get to make so many albums? How come Mingues and so many otherr artists from so many other labels had one or two albums on this wonderful label?
Why where the labals different every few years? When did Shirley Scott............

For years, questions about Impulse! records were shrouded in mystrey, like myths from the distant past. Ashley Khan has answered many of these in this wonderful book. He brings together all the information about the biggest Impulse! gods to the one off artists that are buried in jazz distrographies. Khan tells the Impulse story cronologically, comprehensively. You get the overall narrative of the rise and diminishing of the label, and the little stories about the little artists you thought you would never hear. What happened to Dewey Johnson after he played on Coltrane's Assention. Who the hell WAS Dewey Johnson anyway?

Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Duke, Mingus--all our old friends are here. And you are going to make some new ones. (If you are not hip to Mel Brown's Chicken Fat album, you should be.) In the back of the book, you get a full listing of every album ever made on Impulse. Most of this is great music, and, bleleive me, there is enough to keep any collector spending and busy for a long time.

I don't agree with every conclusion Khan comes to (he makes it look like Impulse was about the avant gaurde exclusively, but the distography does not bare this out,) but his research and grasp of detail is just impecable, and you really do get that fly-on-the-wall feeling, as if your with Trane and Bob Thiele in Rudy Van Gelders studio in summer, 1965, recording the next masterpiece. Khan's writting is as viceral as it is accurate.

This book is a must, if you are an expert, or someone who knows nothing about jazz but is ready to find out

Blue Note gets all the hype about jazz labels, but this book makes the convincing case that Impulse was every bit as influential in its recordings as that that other legendary jazz house. Coltrane, and the musicians around him, such as Archie Shepp, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Alice Coltrane, were the bedrock of the Impulse label, and still are 45 years later. In more than 300 titles issued in its heyday of the '60s, Impulse built a library of timeless classics. Some big Impulse stars back then don't get their due today: Gabor Szabo, Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri, to name three. But some of their Impulse titles are still available and worth looking for. This book centers on the producers: Bob Thiele, Creed Taylor, Ed Michel, Steve Backer and Michael Cuscuna, as architects of the label, but there are more than 30 two-page album profiles and ample interviews with many of the musicians. GRP did a great job reissuing Impulse titles a few years back when it owned the label. Jazz is primarily a reissue proposition today. But this book takes you back to when new jazz records had people talking. It's a fun nostalgia trip.

Having read the other two jazz books by Ashley Kahn," Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece" and " A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album ," I was eager to read his keen insights into Impulse Records. The way he titled it further inticed me as I am a big John Coltrane fan, going back to when the master was alive and I was just a pup. I'm listening to one of those beautiful Impulse records as I write, it is gorgeous in presentation, an aqua blue cover, rendering a shadowy image of Trane blowing and simply entitled Coltrane. The CD release is nowhere as awesome as the original 1962 recording version on Lp but that is another story. The point is, Ashley Kahn demosnstrates in his book, that the people who ran Impulse were masterminds in presenting their records and artists to the public. The album covers were works of art, matching the virtuosity of Trane and the artists that followed. The book begins slowly, almost to most of boring, with background information on Creed Taylor the man behind the signature look and artists of Impulse. Here the author covers the early artists like Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughn and Oliver Nelson. When Bob Thiele is introduced in the book it gets more interesting . Enter John Coltrane and the book has any jazz fan captivated at this point. He relies heavily on John Coltrane information, which is just fine. Give credit where credit is due. With the inclusion of Rudy Van Gelder, the engineer responsible for creating the magic in his New Jersey studios and you've got history unveiling itself. Although the author gives full credit to Trane as being the foundation and reponsible for the success of Impulse, he also gives credit to others. He details the contributions of the other artists, the former Trane protege and star in his own right, Pharoah Sanders Tauhid, Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo Spellbinder, wife of John Coltrane and bearer of the Trane legacy Alice Coltrane The Impulse Story and sax legends Sonny Rollins Sonny Rollins on Impulse!, Gato Barbieri, The Impulse Story, Albert Ayler, The Impulse Story and Archie Shepp Four for Trane, amongst others. One of the more interesting aspects of the book is the details revealed about certain recordings. Ashley Kahn takes a particular album like the collaborative John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, highlights the two pages in grey and delves into a sidebar that just deals with aspects surrounding the recording. This is pretty cool as it breaks up the reading but more importantly sheds some light on little known aspects of the recording. teh author takes the mundane business world of records and sprinkles enough tid bits to keep the readers interest. Mr. Kahn supplements his readers knowledge with original thought , artwork of covers, offbeat releases, newsclips from various newspapers, excellent photographs, copies of letters, notes, musical notation and the poem for Trane's remarkable suite A Love Supreme. The book is meticulously written but not overbearing. Included is a complete discography of Impulse Records from 1961-1977, discus personae(who's who), bibliography and source notes. If you are a jazz lover you will enjoy this book. Recommended for jazz aficionados, people who love the records of Impulse and John Coltrane's contribution to music. The slogan for Impulse was " The New Wave of Jazz is on Impulse." It is never too late to catch the wave, check it out.

The House That Trane Built should be read by anyone who loves jazz. The book is very well-written, providing insight into the ways that records were produced, including some of the behind-the-scenes corporate shenanigans. Most importantly, the book is written in chronological order of record release dates, giving historical insight into the musicians, their session goals, and their interaction with the producers of Impulse Records. After reading the book, you will feel compelled to enlarge your collection of Impulse recordings.

Ashley Kahn laid the foundation for this book length retrospective with his last book which told the story of the recording of John Coltrane's monumental album A Love Supreme. This book aims to tell the whole story of Impulse Records, for which Coltrane recorded as did other avant-garde luminaries like Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler. On the positive side, Kahn writes well and there are some wonderful photos of the musicians that have passed through the Impulse ranks over the years. The problem I found with the narrative however, was that much of the book too often on the producers and record men (i.e. the "head white men in charge") rather than the musicians involved and the music they produced. It's a novel angle, but as important as men like Bob Thiele were, at the end of the day, it's the music and the men and women who made it that will be remembered, with the producers and administrators a mere footnote.

Since these were turbulent times in America and many of the musicians involved in Impulse were active in the civil rights movement and in spiritual concerns (especially Albert Ayler - what really happened to him?), I would have liked to read a little more about that as well, there must be some great tales to tell. This is something of a missed opportunity for readers, but not for Verve Records (current owners of the Impulse catalog) who have raided the vaults yet again to promote compilations of dubious value in conjunction with the book. One wonders if that crass marketing plan is the reason for the somewhat sanitized account of the label. This book would have made a solid feature article in a magazine, but as a monograph there is too much left out to recommend it.

Buy this book, it is absolutely INDISPENSIBLE if you LOVE
1) Record label bios
2) Jazz
3) TRANE!