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The House That Trane Built

By Ashley Kahn

Granta, 348pp., Ł20

the-house-that-trane-built-cover Ashley Kahn has swiftly built an enviable reputation for himself with his previous books on Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme, and his study of Impulse! Records, The House That Trane Built (Granta, 348pp., Ł20), can only enhance it.

Let's get the minor quibbles out of the way first: the occasional caption misidentifies those pictured or mistitles an album, there is the odd repetition that should have been spotted by Kahn's editor, and my copy of the book fell apart, gathering by gathering, as I read it.

These problems aside, the book is something of a triumph for its readability, the clear exposition of its story and the depth of its research.

Rivalled only by Blue Note as an aficionado's label, Impulse! has a special place in jazz lovers' hearts; in the days of vinyl, all one needed to do to assess the seriousness of an acquaintance's dedication to the music was glance over at his or her collection to see how many orange and black spines were present in it, and (again as with Blue Note), listeners frequently bought Impulse! albums on trust despite unfamiliarity with their makers.

Kahn's book conveys this mystique extremely well, but is also painstakingly detailed in its dealings with the various label supremos, from Creed Taylor to Bob Thiele and Ed Michel; the extraordinary variety of music produced during their reigns (far from being just the home of the avant-garde or 'New Thing', the label documented everyone from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Criss); the intra-label politicking that went on behind the scenes; the extraordinary relationship between Coltrane and Thiele etc. etc.

Kahn is particularly adept at balancing interviewee quotes with factual material so that a rounded picture emerges, and in this he is considerably helped by the book's format which, like his previous two, intersperses spreads (here, on specific albums) with straight narrative in a most beguiling way.

A must for anyone whose collection contains any or all of those classic Coltrane quartet albums, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Keith Jarrett's American quartet, or Albert Ayler's New Grass.