Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Billy Valentine Session -- a little confusion

Authoritative sources are in conflict over the date of the John Coltrane sessions with Billy Valentine. As indicated previously, the notes at jazzdisco show the session as November 7, 1949, thus predating the Dizzy Gillespie session with which this discussion began. But the John Coltrane Reference documents that the session occurred March 1, 1950, and specifically refutes the earlier date with facts and references that are persuasive. Even so, there is a lot of uncertainty over details of the session such as which takes made it onto the records and precisely which personnel were present. Coltrane is listed on tenor.

The only tune from the session available on CD is “Beer Drinking Baby” which was secondarily issued on the 8-CD set called “The Mercury Blues 'n' Rhythm Story 1945-1955: West Coast Blues” (Mercury 314-528-292-2, and Polygram B000001EH1 ). One of the takes of “Ain't Gonna Cry No More” and/or “I Want You to Love Me” appears to have been released on an LP of the Chicago label, issue number CH-LP-213, title unknown.


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