StLJN Saturday at the Movies:Three views of "Impressions"

Today's videos serve as a demonstration of what different musicians can do with the same piece of material. In this case, the song is "Impressions," a jazz standard made famous by saxophonist John Coltrane. The tune shares a chord progression with "So What," a 32-bar structure consisting of 16 bars of Dm7, 8 bars of Ebm7 and 8 more bars of Dm7. It's a simple harmonic structure compared to the complex tunes of the bebop era, but it serves as an effective springboard for the modal, scale-based style of improvisation popularized by Miles Davis on Kind of Blue and taken to another level by Coltrane during his career as a solo artist. It's also malleable enough to lend itself to a variety of interpretations, as these clips show.

The first video features Coltrane performing the tune with his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, plus Eric Dolphy on alto sax. I'm not sure about the exact date of this video, but given that Dolphy was with Coltrane for only a relatively short time, it has to have been recorded in either 1961 or 1962.

The second clip, recorded in Belgium in 1965, shows guitarist Wes Montgomery performing his version of "Impressions," backed by Harold Mabern on piano, Arthur Harper on bass and Jimmy Lovelace on drums. And for a completely different take on "Impressions," check out the third video, which features avant-garde composer, conceptualist and saxophonist Anthony Braxton performing the tune in 1981 at the Woodstock Jazz Festival.