Coltrane’s “Alabama” On TV

Following the release of the John Coltrane Quartet’s album Live At Birdland, the band appeared on Ralph J. Gleason’s Jazz Casual program on public television. Here, Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones revisit “Alabama,” the high point of the Birdland album and a major musical statement about the brutality of racists who bombed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1953 and killed four little girls. As the piece begins, we have a brief glimpse of Ralph Gleason.