It's always a treat when an artist sends you back into the library to pull out old vinyl or CDs that you have not thought about for awhile. Kurt Elling, the jazz singer, and the saxophonist Ernie Watts are touring with a tribute to "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," the album of duets they recorded on March 7, 1963. The album  is one of those distinctly beautiful and romantic albums that any jazz fan would hold onto it with a hope to someday share it; it's jazz at its most sensual and inviting.
Hartman's baritone, Trane's tenor sax and McCoy Tyner's supple piano take the album's six ballads at a relaxed pace, each note articulated with warmth and belying the fact that there was little, if any, rehearsal for the work. It reflected Coltrane's mood at the time, his most recent recordings being the equally sensitive "Ballads" and his collaboration with Duke Ellington. (Their "Prelude to a Kiss" still sends shivers).
Elling and Watts, whose best known work has been with Charlie Haden's Quartet West, add a string quartet and take their program into more upbeat terrain. Thursday at USC's Bing Theater, "Coltrane and Hartman" was a starting point - two of the album's cuts, "Lush Life" and "Autumn Serenade," went into a medley with "What's New" and  "My One and Only Love" was partnered "Nancy (With the Laughing  Face)." The emphasis was Coltrane, with Elling using his voice in the styles of both Hartman and Trane. He connected in the baritone with the singer, using flourishes, some of them wordless, to channel a Coltrane improvisation.
Watts has a tone substantially  different from Coltrane. Trane's playing at the time was moans, caresses and hallelujahs; Watts opts for pleas, promises and linear thought. Pianist Laurence Hobgood, who has been with Elling for 15 years, combined Tyner's romanticism with some of Bill Evans'' pensiveness in addition to writing the arrangements for the evening.
There are no plans at this time to record the program, which also includes Coltrane versions of "Bessie's Blues," "All of Nothing at All and "Say It (Over and Over Again)."   Elling, who now records for Concord after a decade with Blue Note, is in the early stages of selecting songs with producer Don Was for his next album.   
On a side note, Elling has one of the most interesting collection of links I have ever seen on a website.

For the record, my quest to attend 100 shows and see 300 acts this year is down to  34 shows and 128 acts to go.

Today - July 17, 2007 - marks the 40th anniversary of the death of John Coltrane. The tenor saxophonist who affected jazz on a level parallel to the effect the Beatles had on pop music, his legacy continues to grows for a handful of reasons. No 1: Listeners finally get it. It has taken box sets, tribute concerts, McCoy Tyner's testifying and arrangements for big bands for it all to set in - the passion this man transferred from his lips and lungs into sound remains untouched - there was no one better before and no one has come close to touching his legacy since. And for novices, the simple way to assess his music is in chronological order; it all becomes crystal clear if one hears "A Love Supreme" later rather than sooner.
Clearly he was the last giant figure in the music's history: no jazz players have approached his depth as a composer, innovator and performer. The most recent raiding of the vaults has produced "My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport," a 1965 concert that was released two weeks ago.
A roundup of today's Coltrane offerings on the Web: Bret Primack has a documentary on the relationship between Coltrane and Sonny Rollins; Newsday has a piece on Coltrane's New York home and a classic video; one 1965 performance of "Naima" is on YouTube; and details are set for the 30th John Coltrane Memorial Concert, which will take place in September in Boston. Sadly, JohnColtrane.com has not been updated for some time.
P.S. It was the critic Ira Gitler who coined the phrase "Sheets of Sound" to describe Trane's style. he came up with the term in late 1958 after Coltrane had left Miles Davis band and was about to embark on of the greatest journeys in the history of American music.