# Coltrane and Dolphy: Unknown Silent Film Footage, 12 minutes, 1962! Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/02/26/coltrane-and-dolphy-unknown-silent-film-footage-12-minutes-1962-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-02-26T00:02:17+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Hello Friends! First, a general note about this newsletter, _Playback with Lewis
Porter_:**

I hope you have subscribed, because that way you will always get my posts in your
email. You won’t have to check all the time to see if I posted something new. I 
put things up about twice a week, but not on a regular schedule—I post whenever 
I have completed some research and it is ready to be shared with you. I have posted
maybe 40 items since September 2022, and yet you have only seen a _very_ _small_
sample of what is in my files. I am working on many, many posts to come that will
astound you, I promise.

Please remember and respect that everything that I post is my copyrighted intellectual
property. In other words, please _Never_ forward or post my actual content to anywhere(
I mean, don’t cut and paste my text or send the audio or video files)—but please
_DO forward_ the links to everywhere and to everybody!! (That includes the URL address
at the top of this page of course.) THANK YOU!

NOW: TODAY’S POST is some remarkable silent film footage of Coltrane and Dolphy 
at the original Birdland nightclub (on Broadway in Manhattan, just north of 52nd
Street) sometime between February 8th and 21st, 1962. During those two weeks, John
Coltrane’s quartet with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison (he had replaced
Reggie Workman at the end of 1961), plus Eric Dolphy, were performing there every
night except Mondays. They were alternating sets with the Bill Evans Trio, and with
the Clara Ward gospel singers. Here’s an ad that appeared in the _New York Times_
on February 9, 1962:

![](https://i0.wp.com/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%
3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%
2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde396055-b15f-4c90-97cb-2a9534afa983_632x694.png?resize=632%
2C694&ssl=1)

This film was taken by Burt Goldblatt (1924-2006), an accomplished still photographer
and artist.

He created many iconic jazz album covers, and his work also appeared on television
shows and in books. Musicians clearly liked him, and they sometimes paid tribute
to him in song titles and so on. [Here is an interview](https://angelynngrant.com/the-golden-age-of-jazz-covers/)
with him (it gives the wrong birth year, but is very informative). [At this link you can see](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1913830-Burt-Goldblatt?layout=big)
many of his creations. Here are two examples:


Sometimes when Goldblatt was photographing musicians, he also made home movies on
his 8-millimeter silent film camera, just for himself. Eventually he had these films
transferred to VHS videotapes, and some of the VHS tapes were sold by the family
after he died. I digitized this Coltrane and Dolphy footage myself, allowing me 
to share it with you now.

First you will see Dolphy playing bass clarinet and alto sax. At 4:55 it switches
to Coltrane on tenor. And at the very end, at 11:00, you will see the outside of
Birdland, and the poster advertising the three groups performing. (That poster says
Coltrane “quartet,” but the _Times_ ad above correctly says “quintet.”) You can 
see Garrison briefly at 0:25, but Tyner is not shown . You also see the drum set
at 9:41 but Elvin is not visible.

Luckily, you do not need to imagine what the band sounded like. They were broadcast
both weekends on the radio, and the legendary collector Boris Rose recorded those
at home. Sometimes these are listed as Friday broadcasts, but they were around midnight,
so they were technically Saturday mornings. Here is the broadcast from Saturday 
morning, February 10, 1962 (but please know that the last track, which starts at
40:03, is from June 1962, not from the weeks with Dolphy):

And here is the quintet broadcasting on February 17. First there is one second of
the gospel singers—I’m not sure why that’s on the tape (probably Rose rewound the
tape to erase it and missed that second). Then there is a funny moment when the 
veteran radio host “Symphony Sid” Torin cannot understand what Coltrane is saying
and makes him repeat “Inch Worm” a few times. Coltrane laughs during this exchange.
Then he and his group perform some phenomenal music:

I’ll see you again soon. In the meantime, be well!

**All the best, Lewis**

P.S. All newly found material, including this film, will be mentioned in the new
edition of our _John Coltrane Reference_, due out in 2024.

![Bootleg of John Coltrane 4tet + Eric Dolphy in Copenhagen 1961 | bernie's  bootlegs-
YouTube](https://i0.wp.com/i.ytimg.com/vi/CWCdcA9SUfM/hqdefault.jpg?resize=640%2C480&
ssl=1)

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