January 20, 2007 - We Love You, Alice Coltrane
The latest edition of the Free Kick show featured a lot of great music, but for me the real high points were the Alice Coltrane tracks we played as a little memorial to this great but under-appreciated musician, who passed away on Friday January 12 at the age of 69.

Hailing from Detroit, Alice McLeod started out as a bebop piano player in the Bud Powell style. She joined John Coltrane's quartet in late 1965, continuing in that role until Trane's death in 1967 (they got married in 1966). In her best known solo recordings of the 1970s like Journey in Satchidananda, Universal Consciousness and Ptah the El Daoud, she developed a unique Indian-flavoured style of playing over meditative grooves, on the harp and Wurlitzer organ as well as the piano - and this is what we heard on Saturday's show. A beautiful, soulful, sweeping wash of sound. It's a sure bet you'll hear more of this great music on future editions of the Free Kick.

Here are some links to more Alice Coltrane-related stuff:

• An interview in The Wire from 2002
• Some mp3s recently posted on the Chunklet blog
• The Vedanta Center she founded in California and where she taught under the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda.

If you want to hear last Saturday's show again, you can use these links to download it from the CKUT archives:

• medium quality mp3 (64 mbps)

If you want to stream the show, go to the CKUT archives page and get the show for Saturday Jan 20 from 21:04 to 23:01.

Next show is on Feb. 3, from 9-11 pm eastern time. I'll be away, so Shawn will be dispensing the musical goodness solo.

A bientot!

Dave