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Tonight marks the end of a mystery that has bugged me for about a year. For it was about this time last year that I happened to hear an intriguing jazz piece on the radio. It was played during a Sunday afternoon broadcast of the show "Jazz Profiles" on WKCR radio, up at Columbia University. The show is generally an in-depth look at the work of a particular artist, and on this particular day it focused on the work of pianist McCoy Tyner. The show was playing in the background during a birthday party, but what I heard was nothing less than tantalizing. It was one of those long jazz epics that ususally grab me when I hear them mid-way. This once happened at the HMV record store on 86th St. and Lexington Ave. (now sadly gone) when I walked into the lower-level jazz section about six or seven minutes into the 11-minute saga "The Gigolo". It was an auspicious introduction. I bought it and one other of Lee Morgan record that day "The Sidewinder" for which Morgan was actually better known, and became a Morgan admirer for life.

And so back to this curious McCoy Tyner piece. As always happens when you really want to hear the name of the song, the radio announcer is less than completely helpful. She rattled off a long list of tunes she had played in the set, and from the best I could determine, the piece that got my interested was one in which Tyner was playing with none other than John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard. The title wasn't apparent, just the fact that the set was Tyner, Coltrane live at the Vanguard in 1961.

I wrote to WKCR by email, asking what it was, and naturally got no response. At this I let the mystery lie figuring it was another of those jazz tunes I would never track down for lack of information.

Fast forward to July, when I heard what I think was the same tune once again, and again as a fragment on a radio program. This time it was "Sounds Eclectic" on KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif. which I happen to record occasionally online. If you listen to the July 25, 2004 show and fast-forward to about the 55th minute, you'll hear what I think was my elusive Coltrane-Tyner tune, but only briefly, as a background while Nic Harcourt is talking between segments. He did not ID the tune.

Again I write the radio station, but get no info.

I let the mystery lie again, but then intermittenly search through iTunes for hints as to what the tune may be. I finally remember the Village Vanguard connection, and come to arrive at the conclusion that the elusive tune was indeed "India" as it sounds like the kind of long, complicated epic, with a bit of a Middle-Eastern or south Asian flair worked into it.

So the puzzle is this: Which is the original mystery tune from February? Is it "India" or is it the unnamed tune from "Sounds Eclectic"? The unnamed tune sounds closer to what I remember hearing in passing, but "India" more closely resembles the notes I took from the radio announcer that day.

More searching takes place over the months that follow. At this writing I don't quite remember how I came to discover that the unnamed tune was actually "Olé" a powerful 18-minute slugfest from "Olé Coltrane," which was Coltrane's final album for Atlantic Records in 1961. But now the unnamed tune has a name. And yes, it turns out that McCoy Tyner is indeed the pianist on "Olé." So now both "India" and "Olé" are candidates.

Well my copy of "Olé" arrived today, and I recently bought a live version of "India" from the 1961 Coltrane album "Impressions" from iTunes, and I'm still convinced that either one could be the original mystery tune. Both are brilliant, long, complex and fascinating, and as it happens, were recorded during the same year: 1961. Yet I may never know which it was I that so intrigued me that Sunday afternoon a year ago.

Below is an audio sample of "Olé"

Here's a sample of "India"

Now how could I possibly mistake one for the other or vice versa? Listen to them both in their entirety, and I think you'll hear subtle similarities that underlie their obvious differences. In Ole we have two chords underneath everything else. In India only one. From a certain detached and distracted distance, I think the mistake isn't hard to make.

One side of me says "India," the other "Olé". Maybe both were strung together in the playlist and formed what I remember as a cohesive whole, where one bled into the other. The mystery is at once both solved, because I now know it had to be one, and yet not, because I know not which.

Posted 2/07/2005 10:26:00 PM

A Musical Mystery Solved, But Not Really