And we would improvise without any constraints for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes , exploring our different instruments like mad men . Sometimes , Monk , after two pieces , would return to the dressing room and stay there looking through the window for two or three hours .
The harmonic space then became clear :
Wilbur Ware is so inventive . He plays things that are kind of foreign . If you didn ’ t know the song , you wouldn ’ t be able to find it , because he ’ s superimposing things , he ’ s playing around and under and over or something . Building tensions . Sometimes , he would be playing altered changes , and I would be playing altered changes . And he would be playing some other kind of altered changes from the cycle I ’ d be playing . And neither one of us would be playing the changes of the tune until we ’ d reach a certain spot and then we ’ d get there together . We ’ re lucky . And then Monk comes back in to save everybody , and nobody knows where he is .
Trombonist J . J . Johnson recalled :
Since Charlie Parker , the most electrifying sound that I ’ ve heard in contemporary jazz was Coltrane playing with Monk at the Five Spot . It ’ s not possible to put it into words .
Second stint with Miles . In early 1958 , when Miles Davis returned from his stay in Paris , during which he had recorded the score for the film Ascenseur pour l ’ échafaud , he called up a transformed Coltrane to form a sextet with alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley , with Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones being quickly
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