I first met John Tchicai when I recorded his 1995 album, Love is Touching. I was several days into the project when I learned that, among others, he had played with John Lennon, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, playing on the latter's landmark recording, Ascension. At that point I was mostly retired from the studio and working on magazines, on the path that would eventually lead me to become the publisher of Tape Op. I had taken the Tchicai session largely because I was charmed by John's demeanor and found myself taking the sessions on, despite having several good engineers working at my studio at the time. I called my wife Maria to let her know that she'd be eating alone on Thursday nights for the next couple of weeks. My instinctual decision to work with John turned out to be a good one, as spending time with him and recording Love is Touching was one of the high points of my time spent as a recording engineer.
John, along with his wife Margriet and son, Yolo, have since moved to France but were recently back in town to visit and play shows. I took advantage of the opportunity to interview him about his time spent working with Rudy Van Gelder. On a beautiful Sacramento morning we met at the Tower Café over tea and coffee.
John met John Coltrane for the first time in Copenhagen, where he was living when Coltrane played there. When John later moved to New York City in 1962, his relationship with Coltrane continued. They would play together and were both involved in the Jazz Composers Guild. At this time Archie Shepp was part of their circle and Coltrane secured Shepp a recording deal with Impulse. Tchicai was asked to play on that record, Four For Trane, which was recorded by Van Gelder and produced by Bob Thiele at the Englewood Cliffs studio. Later, John made a record of his own, Mohawk, with the New York Art Quartet at Van Gelder's for the Fontana label. The next record that John recorded with Van Gelder was Coltrane's Ascension. Tchicai remarks that, "They were all very nice experiences, but playing with Coltrane in that big formation was fantastic. All those guys. Very nice. Being inside that big avant gardé wildness of the music."
