JAZZ LEGEND JOHN COLTRANE’S RECORDINGS FOR A 1964 QUEBEC FILM HAVE BEEN HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT IN A NATIONAL FILM BOARD ARCHIVE FOR DECADES. NOW, THE MUSIC IS SET TO BE RELEASED FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Songs recorded in 1964 finally get wide release

An unearthed album by the legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane has been hidden in plain sight for more than 50 years in the archives of the National Film Board of Canada.

Blue World, a collection of tracks that Coltrane recorded for the 1964 film Le chat dans le sac, is being released by Impulse Records on Sept. 27. Though the recordings have existed for decades, this is the first time they will be heard in their entirety beyond the film.

Le chat dans le sac, made by renowned French-canadian director Gilles Groulx and produced by the National Film Board of Canada, portrays the dissolution of a young romance against the backdrop of Quebec’s growing separation from the rest of the country.

According to Ashley Kahn, a music historian who was tasked with researching and writing the liner notes for the album, Groulx was a huge jazz fan and connected with Coltrane through his quartet’s bass player, Jimmy Garrison. Kahn said Groulx knew Garrison through a mutual friend who appeared in another one of his films, Voir Miami.

“Here was a possible project for Coltrane to expand into the film world,” Kahn said. “And what musician does not want to see multiple purposes for their music?”

Quebec’s revolutionary tendencies might have played a part in why Coltrane agreed to record the soundtrack in the first place. According to Kahn, Montreal’s more accepting, European sensibilities regarding race served as a stark contrast to the racist Jim Crow policies in the United States — and the province’s separatist movement rang familiar to civil rights advocates. A community of African-american expats began to form in the city. There were rumours that Groulx and Coltrane had first met at one of Montreal’s jazz bars.

“Using jazz and using music of the African-american community was as much a political decision as it was an aesthetic one,” Kahn said.

At the New York studio of famous producer Rudy Van Gelder, Coltrane recorded a session of his original tracks. With Groulx standing by, Coltrane and his “Classic Quartet” played for three hours and ended up with eight tracks. Groulx left the session with the master tapes, eager to cut them into his film.

Blue World includes three takes of “Village Blues,” two of “Naima,” “Traneing In,” “Sonny,” and the titular “Blue World” — a contrafact of “Out of This World.”

Kahn said that despite having an original full 37-minute recording made by one of his favourite artists, Groulx only used about 10 minutes of the sessions in Le chat dans le sac. In the film, Coltrane can be heard only when the two main characters, Barbara and Claude, are together in Montreal. When they leave the city, Coltrane is omitted.

While the movie made waves in Quebec, it failed to reach an international audience. So while Coltrane’s name appeared in the credits, his contribution to the film went largely unnoticed for decades.

“This stuff was somewhat hidden from us, especially to the jazz community and Coltrane experts. But it’s been hiding in plain sight,” Kahn said.

According to Frédéric Savard of the NFB, the tapes were rediscovered by the film board in the early 2000s when Carol Faucher, tasked with putting together a box set of Groulx’s films, found the original recordings of the sessions in the archives, alongside the original contracts between the film’s producer and Coltrane.

The NFB was always aware that Groulx had used Coltrane’s songs in Le chat dans le sac, it was only then that they realized it wasn’t just licensed tracks, but an entirely original recording made specifically for the film.

But even though they owned the only known copy, the NFB couldn’t legally release the album because Coltrane and his catalogue were under an exclusive contract with Impulse Records.

“We have the tape, but we don’t own the rights,” Savard said. “It was a bit of a catch-22, where the NFB owned the only copy of the tape, but we didn’t own the copy(right) to publish these.”

So they remained shelved for years.

But slowly, jazz fans began to take notice of the mysterious Coltrane songs in this obscure French-canadian film. Rumours began to spread that claimed the NFB had lost the original recordings. So Savard got permission to make a post clarifying that the originals still existed.

“To me, it was kind of unreal that we had copy one out of one,” Savard said, “(and that) the only existing copy in the entire world was sitting in our archives.”

That message got the attention of Impulse Records, who Savard said had no idea the recording took place.

“They were flabbergasted. To them, that was unreal.”

Despite being under an exclusive contract, Coltrane had agreed to do the soundtrack for Groulx’s film and signed the deal without notifying his record company, Savard said, which is why they had no official record of it ever taking place.

For the next few years, Savard worked with Impulse to help make the recording public. He said Impulse was respectful throughout the process to the history of the making of the recording.

“They’re really acknowledging the fact that this was made for a Quebec film in ‘64,” Savard said. “That’s part of what I was so interested in. I wanted the film to get the recognition it deserves.”