Live Trane: The European Tours

A brief look at the European tours which are the source of most of the Live Trane box set.

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During the last twelve years of his life Coltrane made five trips to Europe, the first four of them under the aegis of Norman Granz and his Jazz At The Philharmonic concert tour series. The first trip, in March and April 1960, was with Miles Davis.  In fact these performances mark the end of Coltrane's tenure with Davis; he was working on his own in New York City later in April. 

Late in 1961 Granz paired Coltrane (by then leading a quintet with multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Elvin Jones) with Dizzy Gillespie’s group, in a tour of England and the continent.   This tour immediately followed the legendary stay at the Village Vanguard in New York City which led to the Live at the Village Vanguard recordings.   Coltrane did not do well in England, but the continental response was warm enough to persuade Granz to bring the quartet (Coltrane, Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and Jones) back in the fall of ’62 and again in ’63.

The final Coltrane tour of Europe was a short one, just a week or so at the end of July, beginning of August 1965.  That tour, not represented in the box set, produced a live version of A Love Supreme.

The '61 tour started in England with concerts in London (11/11), Birmingham (11/12),   Newcastel (11/13), Glasgow (11/14), Leicester (11/15), Brighton (11/16),  and Walthamstow (11/17).  The Continental portion began in Parris (11/18), followed by Scheveningen, Holland and Amsterdam (11/19), Copenhagen (11/20), Goteborg Sweden (11/21), Helsinki (11/22), Stockholm (11/23), a TV show taped in Baden-baden West Germany (11/24), Hamburg (11/25), Copenhagen (second concert, 11/26), Frankfurt (11/27), Dusseldorf (11/28), Stuttgart (1129), Nuremberg (11/30),  Munich (12/1) and finally Berlin (12/2).

1962's tour began in Paris (11/17), followed by Stockholm (11/19), Helsinki (11/20), 11/21 (Oslo), Copenhagen (11/22), Dusseldorf (1123), Hamburg (11/25), Graz (11/28), Zurich (11/30), Scheveningen and Amsterdam (12/1), and  Milan (12/2).  (Some additional concerts occurred in Germany on the open dates).

In 1963 the tour started in Stockholm (10/22), moving to Oslo (10/23), Helsinki (10/24), Copenhagen (10/25), Amsterdam (10/26), Frankfurt (10/31), Paris (11/1), Berlin (11/2) and Stuttgart (11/4), with some other concerts on the open dates. 

(quick listing from Fujioka)...