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PHOTO: JOHN COLTRANE (1926-1967)
A titan of the 20th century, the saxophonist pioneered many of the jazz revolutions of the post-hard bop era
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-coltrane-mn0000175553#biography
John Coltrane
(1926-1967)
Biography
by William Ruhlmann
A towering musical figure of the 20th century, saxophonist John Coltrane reset the parameters of jazz during his decade as a leader. At the outset, he was a vigorous practitioner of hard bop, gaining prominence as a sideman for Miles Davis before setting out as a leader in 1957, when he released Coltrane on Prestige and Blue Train on Blue Note. Coltrane quickly expanded his horizons, pioneering a technique critic Ira Gitler dubbed "sheets of sound," consisting of the saxophonist playing a flurry of notes on his tenor within the confines of a few chords. During his last days with Davis, along with his earliest records for Atlantic, Coltrane leaned into this technique, but as he developed his career as a leader in the early '60s, he also turned lyrical. His sweet, fluid soprano sax distinguished My Favorite Things, which helped turn the album into a standard upon its release in 1961, but Coltrane soon backed away from mainstream acceptance. Working with pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, and bassist Jimmy Garrison -- a band that would be labeled the "Classic Quartet" -- Coltrane entered a fearless exploratory phase, explicitly incorporating his spiritual quest into his experimental music. A Love Supreme, an album released on Impulse! in 1965, marked the popular height of this period, but Coltrane continued to voyage to the outer edges of jazz in his final years, collaborating with Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders. Liver cancer ended his life prematurely: he died at the age of 40 in 1967, just ten years after his first LP as a leader -- but Coltrane's legacy was so varied and rich, he remained the touchstone for creativity in jazz for decades after his passing.
Coltrane was the son of John R. Coltrane, a tailor and amateur musician, and Alice (Blair) Coltrane. Two months after his birth, his maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was promoted to presiding elder in the A.M.E. Zion Church and moved his family, including his infant grandson, to High Point, North Carolina, where Coltrane grew up. Shortly after he graduated from grammar school in 1939, his father, his grandparents, and his uncle died, leaving him to be raised in a family consisting of his mother, his aunt, and his cousin. His mother worked as a domestic to support the family. The same year, he joined a community band in which he played clarinet and E flat alto horn; he took up the alto saxophone in his high school band. During World War II, Coltrane's mother, aunt, and cousin moved north to New Jersey to seek work, leaving him with family friends; in 1943, when he graduated from high school, he too headed north, settling in Philadelphia. Eventually, the family was reunited there.
While taking jobs outside music, Coltrane briefly attended the Ornstein School of Music and studied at Granoff Studios. He also began playing in local clubs. In 1945, he was drafted into the navy and stationed in Hawaii. He never saw combat, but he continued to play music and, in fact, made his first recording with a quartet of other sailors on July 13, 1946. A performance of Tadd Dameron's "Hot House," it was released in 1993 on the Rhino Records anthology The Last Giant. Coltrane was discharged in the summer of 1946 and returned to Philadelphia. That fall, he began playing in the Joe Webb Band. In early 1947, he switched to the King Kolax Band. During the year, he switched from alto to tenor saxophone. One account claims that this was as the result of encountering alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and feeling the better-known musician had exhausted the possibilities on the instrument; another says that the switch occurred simply because Coltrane next joined a band led by Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, who was an alto player, forcing Coltrane to play tenor. He moved on to Jimmy Heath's group in mid-1948, staying with the band, which evolved into the Howard McGhee All Stars until early 1949, when he returned to Philadelphia. That fall, he joined a big band led by Dizzy Gillespie, remaining until the spring of 1951, by which time the band had been trimmed to a septet. On March 1, 1951, he took his first solo on record during a performance of "We Love to Boogie" with Gillespie.
At some point during this period, Coltrane became a heroin addict, which made him more difficult to employ. He played with various bands, mostly around Philadelphia, during the early '50s, his next important job coming in the spring of 1954, when Johnny Hodges, temporarily out of the Duke Ellington band, hired him. But he was fired because of his addiction in September 1954. He returned to Philadelphia, where he was playing when he was hired by Miles Davis a year later. His association with Davis was the big break that finally established him as an important jazz musician. Davis, a former drug addict himself, had kicked his habit and gained recognition at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, resulting in a contract with Columbia Records and the opportunity to organize a permanent band, which, in addition to him and Coltrane, consisted of pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer "Philly" Joe Jones. This unit immediately began to record extensively, not only because of the Columbia contract, but also because Davis had signed with the major label before fulfilling a deal with jazz independent Prestige Records that still had five albums to run. The trumpeter's Columbia debut, 'Round About Midnight, which he immediately commenced recording, did not appear until March 1957. The first fruits of his association with Coltrane came in April 1956 with the release of The New Miles Davis Quintet (aka Miles), recorded for Prestige on November 16, 1955. During 1956, in addition to his recordings for Columbia, Davis held two marathon sessions for Prestige to fulfill his obligation to the label, which released the material over a period of time under the titles Cookin' (1957), Relaxin' (1957), Workin' (1958), and Steamin' (1961).
Coltrane's association with Davis inaugurated a period when he began to frequently record as a sideman. Davis may have been trying to end his association with Prestige, but Coltrane began appearing on many of the label's sessions. After he became better known in the '60s, Prestige and other labels began to repackage this work under his name, as if he had been the leader, a process that has continued to the present day. (Prestige was acquired by Fantasy Records in 1972, and many of the recordings in which Coltrane participated have been reissued on Fantasy's Original Jazz Classics [OJC] imprint.)
Coltrane tried and failed to kick heroin in the summer of 1956, and in October, Davis fired him, though the trumpeter had relented and taken him back by the end of November. Early in 1957, Coltrane formally signed with Prestige as a solo artist, though he remained in the Davis band and also continued to record as a sideman for other labels. In April, Davis fired him again. This may have given him the impetus to finally kick his drug habit, and freed of the necessity of playing gigs with Davis, he began to record even more frequently. On May 31, 1957, he finally made his recording debut as a leader, putting together a pickup band consisting of trumpeter Johnny Splawn, baritone saxophonist Sahib Shihab, pianists Mal Waldron and Red Garland (on different tracks), bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Al "Tootie" Heath. They cut an album Prestige simply titled Coltrane upon release in September 1957. (It has since been reissued under the title First Trane.)
In June 1957, Coltrane joined the Thelonious Monk Quartet, consisting of Monk on piano, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. During this period, he developed a technique of playing several notes at once, and his solos began to go on longer. In August, he recorded material belatedly released on the Prestige albums Lush Life (1960) and The Last Trane (1965), as well as the material for John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio, released later in the year. (It was later reissued under the title Traneing In.) But Coltrane's second album to be recorded and released contemporaneously under his name alone was cut in September for Blue Note Records. This was Blue Train, featuring trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Kenny Drew, and the Miles Davis rhythm section of Chambers and "Philly" Joe Jones; it was released in December 1957. That month, Coltrane rejoined Davis, playing in what was now a sextet that also featured Cannonball Adderley. In January 1958, he led a recording session for Prestige that produced tracks later released on Lush Life, The Last Trane, and The Believer (1964). In February and March, he recorded Davis' album Milestones, released later in 1958. In between the sessions, he cut his third album to be released under his name alone, Soultrane, issued in September by Prestige. Also in March 1958, he cut tracks as a leader that would be released later on the Prestige collection Settin' the Pace (1961). In May, he again recorded for Prestige as a leader, though the results would not be heard until the release of Black Pearls in 1964.
Coltrane appeared as part of the Miles Davis group at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1958. The band's set was recorded and released in 1964 on an LP also featuring a performance by Thelonious Monk as Miles & Monk at Newport. In 1988, Columbia reissued the material on an album called Miles & Coltrane. The performance inspired a review in Down Beat, the leading jazz magazine, that was an early indication of the differing opinions on Coltrane that would be expressed throughout the rest of his career and long after his death. The review referred to his "angry tenor," which, it said, hampered the solidarity of the Davis band. The review led directly to an article published in the magazine on October 16, 1958, in which critic Ira Gitler defended the saxophonist and coined the much-repeated phrase "sheets of sound" to describe his playing.
Coltrane's next Prestige session as a leader occurred in July 1958 and resulted in tracks later released on the albums Standard Coltrane (1962), Stardust (1963), and Bahia (1965). All of these tracks were later compiled on a reissue called The Stardust Session. He did a final session for Prestige in December 1958, recording tracks later released on The Believer, Stardust, and Bahia. This completed his commitment to the label, and he signed to Atlantic Records, making his first recording for his new employers on January 15, 1959 with a session on which he was co-billed with vibes player Milt Jackson, though it did not appear until 1961 with the LP Bags and Trane. In March and April 1959, Coltrane participated with the Davis group on the album Kind of Blue. Released on August 17, 1959, this landmark album known for its "modal" playing (improvisations based on scales or "modes," rather than chords) became one of the best-selling and most-acclaimed recordings in the history of jazz.
By the end of 1959, Coltrane had recorded what would be his Atlantic debut, Giant Steps, released in early 1960. The album, consisting entirely of Coltrane compositions, in a sense marked his real debut as a leading jazz performer, even though the 33-year-old musician had released three previous solo albums and made numerous other recordings. His next Atlantic album, Coltrane Jazz, was mostly recorded in November and December 1959 and released in February 1961. In April 1960, he finally left the Davis band and formally launched his solo career, beginning an engagement at the Jazz Gallery in New York, accompanied by pianist Steve Kuhn (soon replaced by McCoy Tyner), bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Pete La Roca (later replaced by Billy Higgins and then Elvin Jones). During this period, he increasingly played soprano saxophone as well as tenor.
In October 1960, Coltrane recorded a series of sessions for Atlantic that would produce material for several albums, including a final track used on Coltrane Jazz and tunes used on My Favorite Things (March 1961), Coltrane Plays the Blues (July 1962), and Coltrane's Sound (June 1964). His soprano version of "My Favorite Things," from the Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II musical The Sound of Music, would become a signature song for him. During the winter of 1960-1961, bassist Reggie Workman replaced Steve Davis in his band, and saxophone and flute player Eric Dolphy gradually became a member of the group.
In the wake of the commercial success of "My Favorite Things," Coltrane's star rose, and he was signed away from Atlantic as the flagship artist of the newly formed Impulse! Records label, an imprint of ABC-Paramount, though in May he cut a final album for Atlantic, Olé (February 1962). The following month, he completed his Impulse! debut, Africa/Brass. By this time, his playing was frequently in a style alternately dubbed "avant-garde," "free," or "The New Thing." Like Ornette Coleman, he played seemingly formless, extended solos that some listeners found tremendously impressive, and others decried as noise. In November 1961, John Tynan, writing in Down Beat, referred to Coltrane's playing as "anti-jazz." That month, however, Coltrane recorded one of his most celebrated albums, Live at the Village Vanguard, an LP paced by the 16-minute improvisation "Chasin' the Trane."
Between April and June 1962, Coltrane cut his next Impulse! studio album, another release called simply Coltrane when it appeared later in the year. Working with producer Bob Thiele, he began to do extensive studio sessions, far more than Impulse! could profitably release at the time, especially with Prestige and Atlantic still putting out their own archival albums. But the material would serve the label well after the saxophonist's untimely death. Thiele acknowledged that Coltrane's next three Impulse! albums to be released, Ballads, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, and John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman (all 1963), were recorded at his behest to quiet the critics of Coltrane's more extreme playing. Impressions (1963), drawn from live and studio recordings made in 1962 and 1963, was a more representative effort, as was 1964's Live at Birdland, also a combination of live and studio tracks, despite its title. But Crescent, also released in 1964, seemed to find a middle ground between traditional and free playing, and was welcomed by critics. This trend was continued with 1965's A Love Supreme, one of Coltrane's best-loved albums, which earned him two Grammy nominations, for Jazz Composition and Performance, and became his biggest-selling record. Also during the year, Impulse! released the standards collection The John Coltrane Quartet Plays... and another album of "free" playing, Ascension, as well as New Thing at Newport, a live album consisting of one side by Coltrane and the other by Archie Shepp.
The year 1966 saw the release of the albums Kulu Se Mama and Meditations, Coltrane's last recordings to appear during his lifetime, though he had finished and approved release for his next album, Expression, the Friday before his death in July 1967. He died suddenly of liver cancer, entering the hospital on a Sunday and expiring in the early morning hours of the next day. He had left behind a considerable body of unreleased work that came out in subsequent years, including "Live" at the Village Vanguard Again! (1967), Om (1967), Cosmic Music (1968), Selflessness (1969), Transition (1969), Sun Ship (1971), Africa/Brass, Vol. 2 (1974), Interstellar Space (1974), and First Meditations (For Quartet) (1977), all on Impulse!
Compilations and releases of archival live recordings brought him a series of Grammy nominations, including Best Jazz Performance for the Atlantic album The Coltrane Legacy in 1970; Best Jazz Performance, Group, and Best Jazz Performance, Soloist, for "Giant Steps" from the Atlantic album Alternate Takes in 1974; and Best Jazz Performance, Group, and Best Jazz Performance, Soloist, for Afro Blue Impressions in 1977. He won the 1981 Grammy for Best Jazz Performance, Soloist, for Bye Bye Blackbird, an album of recordings made live in Europe in 1962, and he was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, 25 years after his death.
Even more previously unreleased material has surfaced since then, including the discovery of the Monk and Coltrane live concert At Carnegie Hall and a complete version of his 1966 Seattle concert, Offering: Live at Temple University. The saxophonist was also the subject of director John Scheinfeld's acclaimed 2017 film Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. In 2018, Impulse! released Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, an archival release documenting a previously unheard session from 1963. The next year brought another unreleased album, Blue World, which dated from a June 1964 session recorded in between the sessions for Crescent and A Love Supreme.
John Coltrane is sometimes described as one of jazz's most influential musicians, and certainly there are other artists whose playing is heavily indebted to him. Perhaps more to the point, Coltrane is influential by example, inspiring musicians to experiment, take chances, and devote themselves to their craft. The controversy about his work has never died down, but partially as a result, his name lives on and his recordings continue to remain available and to be reissued frequently.
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love John Coltrane
Coltrane
changed the game in American music a few times over. Here’s a guided
tour to his career, courtesy of 15 musicians, scholars, poets, writers
and other experts.
February 7, 2024
New York Times
Yes, it’s time for this series to focus on John Coltrane — perhaps the most sanctified musician in the whole Black American tradition, who other artists sometimes refer to simply as “St. John.”
Born in Hamlet, N.C., and raised in High Point, Coltrane arrived on the New York scene in the 1950s, by way of Philadelphia and the Miles Davis Quintet. In the short years between that arrival and his death, in 1967, the world around Coltrane would change dramatically. He reached the peak of his creative forces as a saxophonist just as American society was bursting apart in the 1960s, and as freedom movements drummed colonialism out of the African continent. Though introspective and soft-spoken, singularly allergic to grandstanding, Coltrane felt powerfully concerned with the fate of the world, and he was sure that music had a role to play in turning the tides.
He closely studied spiritual and musical systems from Africa and India, sensing that ancient, non-Western traditions might light the path toward a new creative approach. For many of his contemporaries, Trane’s saxophone became synonymous with a liberated mind and body. And, however ineffable, it carried a message. As A.B. Spellman wrote in a poem after the saxophonist’s death, “trane’s horn had words in it.”
Coltrane changed the game in American music a few times over: first, with a style that felt like such a force of nature, one critic labeled it “sheets of sound,” as if he were commanding monsoon rains. Then, in 1960, the flipbook-fast harmonies of “Giant Steps” upped the expectations for jazz improvisers by a big margin. Swinging in the other direction, Trane brought his whirling-dervish attack to a more stationary style of music: raga-like, harmonically planted “modal” tunes such as “Impressions,” “Africa” and “India.”
In the mid-60s, compelled by his own spirituality, by the outward-bound “free jazz” being made by artists like Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, and by the music he’d been playing at home with his second wife, the pianist and composer Alice (McLeod) Coltrane, the saxophonist wrote and recorded his masterpiece, “A Love Supreme.” A paean to God, it also sounds like an attempt to unleash purifying flames on a world gone wrong. And from there, he went even further; his last two years saw Coltrane pushing rhythm and tone beyond their breaking points.
Below you’ll find a guided tour of Coltrane’s career, courtesy of 15 musicians, scholars, poets, writers and other experts whose lives have been cleansed, and made brighter, by the sheets of sound. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.
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A.B. Spellman, poet and author
“Blue Train”
When at the end I compile the elements of my life into debits and assets, near the top of the assets list will be my many cathartic evenings spent in clubs listening to John Coltrane live. If you think that the recordings are powerful, imagine sitting 15 feet from that power as it was in the making. I can vividly remember hearing Trane and Thelonious Monk, every set, every night, at the 5 Spot after Monk’s return to club gigs in New York in 1957. Before that summer, nobody in the New York jazz world would have marked Coltrane as the next big thing — he was thought to be a middle-of-the-pack hard-bop saxophonist. But he blossomed under Monk. The wonder of the 5 Spot evenings was in bearing witness to his blooming into this Godzilla expressionist who grew larger every set, every evening.
There was an open logic to his lines. “Blue Train,” the record that he made to satisfy his contract with Blue Note, was a masterpiece exemplification of that period. Of the tunes on that date, the title track was the summary statement. It had a sort of free grammar to it, a long solo comprising three themes all stated and developed with clarity, deep emotional meaning and perfect resolution. I have heard this solo hundreds of times, and it is new each time. “Blue Train” is why we return to art when the terrors of the material world chase us home.
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Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin, scholar
“Naima”
A love song inspired by and named for John Coltrane’s first wife, “Naima” is a contemplative ballad that exudes a sense of reverence for the beloved. The saxophonist known for long, complex solos does not take one. He chooses instead to open and close with a slow, meditative statement, made all the more so because it glides over the sustained, repeated pedal tone played by Paul Chambers on bass. Following Wynton Kelly’s eloquent piano solo, Trane returns and we accompany him someplace close to heaven, and it’s oh so pretty there. This love song is a prayer. As such, it looks toward his more explicitly spiritual works that follow in the years to come. Is it any wonder that generations of jazz musicians approach “Naima” not only as a standard, but also as scripture? Listen closely and fall in love.
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Dr. Joshua Myers, scholar
“Alabama”
I could see the grief fill the eyes of the poet Askia Muhammad Touré: “It was like, oh, they are killing our babies?” Moments after recounting what it was to be Black and alive in the days after the Sept. 15, 1963, killings of children at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., he was the first person to fully capture for me the meaning of John Coltrane’s “Alabama.” Composed as an offering of solidarity in the wake of Black collective grief, these are melodic lines atop a pulsating rhythm, imploring us — then, and especially now — to never allow the children to be sacrificed again.
◆ ◆ ◆
Dave Liebman, saxophonist
“Crescent”
“Crescent” is my all-time favorite recording, presenting an amazing opportunity to get into the musical language that Trane was speaking. The power of the music lies in the great feel and skill of the rhythm section. “Crescent” has several outstanding elements. There is a very apparent, deep feeling that John carried with him all the time but especially in the late period, when his sound broadened and took on a darker tone quality. “Crescent” features some melodic passages that are clearly lyrical. Additionally, the harmony of the chord changes makes this track very interesting and moving. It demands attentive listening.
◆ ◆ ◆
Yusef Komunyakaa, poet
“My Favorite Things”
John Coltrane had come a long ways from Hamlet, N.C. Trane could wail through brass, and then create a lyrical contrast that catches the listener slightly off guard. He even could take a popular tune and internalize it until it was his, and such is the case with “My Favorite Things.” Yes, one hears a practiced reaching and ascension — a translation of 14-hour rehearsals. His tone was mind and body, honed into a ritual of purification. Coltrane did not believe his fellow musicians were mere sidemen. As a group, they could articulate and blow true feeling — without sentimentality. Because a conversation grows between instruments, the listener participates without being over-conscious of popping fingers, tapping feet or shaking hips. Thus, listening is active, and perhaps this is why Coltrane said, “When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.”
To lift myself up, I tune into a joyful reminder — yes, I return to Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” often. His spirit journeys to the melody, and we improvise our own personal catalog of delights. He elongates a tune into a precise tonal reckoning — no mishaps or blips on the cosmic screen. In fact, this man was blowing feeling as a way of dealing with the mind and heart at the same time, even holding himself accountable. There’s a taking apart, and then a putting back together tonally. Trane knew how to walk the listener to the edge of extended possibility, to peer down into the existential void, and then sweet-talk the listener to a sanctuary of the hour. And, in this sense, especially in a tune such as “My Favorite Things,” one may enter the John Coltrane Church, where we participants become co-creators of meaning.
◆ ◆ ◆
Willard Jenkins, journalist and author
“Out of This World”
Pondering John Coltrane track recommendations, the inevitable faves float by the mind first: “Blue Train,” “My Favorite Things,” “Giant Steps,” “Africa” or the “A Love Supreme” suite. And don’t dare sleep on the hypnotic “Tunji,” used powerfully by Spike Lee in his 1990 film “Mo’ Better Blues.” But the more I contemplated, I kept coming back to Trane’s engagement with “Out of This World,” from the “Coltrane” album (Impulse!), a classic example of his transforming a Great American Songbook selection. The Coltrane quartet takes that piece to regions the songwriters Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer doubtless never imagined, deep to an African realm, particularly courtesy of Elvin Jones’s distinctive, roiling drums, with Jimmy Garrison’s cascading bass lines and McCoy Tyner’s insistent block chords propelling Coltrane’s tenor saxophone theme statement and subsequent essay. Clocking in at over 14 minutes, there’s plenty to dig into for both the Trane-addicted and the newly initiated.
◆ ◆ ◆
Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic
“Acknowledgment”
Coltrane’s landmark suite “A Love Supreme” ends with “Psalm,” a slow, seeking devotional, its melody set to a poem giving thanks to God. It is a remarkably direct conversation between a musician and the divine, channeled through his roaring quartet. But the part of the suite that will stick most firmly in your mind and body comes at the start. Part 1, “Acknowledgment,” features a plodding incantation, first set by Jimmy Garrison’s bass, then played by the saxophone, then intoned in Coltrane’s husky voice: “A love supreme. A love supreme.” It is among the simplest things that this master of midair complexity would ever play. It feels so foundational, so grounding, that it’s almost like a creation myth. But jazz, as a discipline, had already been around for more than 50 years when he wrote it. What, then, was he creating? Once it was recorded, Coltrane knew he had reached some kind of summit: This was the beginning of the end for his legendary quartet. It had made some of the most transcendent music of the 20th century; its mission was accomplished.
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Dr. Lewis Porter, pianist and Coltrane biographer
“Hackensack” (live)
In my continuing research on Coltrane, I find that listeners new to his work often have difficulty relating it to the jazz tradition. This excerpt from a TV program, taped on March 28, 1960, in Düsseldorf, Germany, is not part of his “official” legacy of recordings, but we are lucky that it was preserved. It is perfect evidence that Coltrane had established deep roots in swing and blues before moving out from there. The tune is “Hackensack,” by Thelonious Monk, and the AABA chord sequence is taken from Gershwin’s swing classic “Oh, Lady Be Good!”
Coltrane begins his improvisation at 1:05 with some down-home riffing, so that when he then brings on some incredibly fast notes, it makes a tremendously effective contrast. He always seemed to get right into “the zone,” and he generates so much power during his three-chorus solo that one almost marvels that the unflappable Stan Getz follows him at all. At 6:55, Coltrane brings in some new riffing, again illustrating how connected he is to the jazz tradition. Speaking of the tradition: At the bridge (7:12), the saxophonists look at each other, trying to decide who will take over, and then wordlessly decide to keep playing together.
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Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer
“Sun Ship”
When jazz purists consider John Coltrane’s discography, they often stop around 1965, when the saxophonist eschewed calm arrangements for harsher ones. The band, which included McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, still sought communion with higher powers, but it seemed they wanted to play the loudest notes possible to foster it. So when people hear “Sun Ship,” they might hear noise. But I hear freedom in the stomping drums, in the volcanic wail of the horn. I hear a band breaking the rules of what jazz was supposed to be, and a bandleader sidestepping a box he never fit. In the song’s opening moments, Jones and Coltrane trade equally riotous commotion: The drum kit sounds like it’s being assaulted; the sax all belchy and heaving. By the time Garrison and Tyner join the fray, the intensity heightens, barreling through like a truck with no brakes. I realize this imagery makes the song seem unpleasant, but the beauty is in the challenge it presents. It’s a rewarding listen, conveying angst and autonomy at every turn.
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Laura Karpman, film composer
“Summertime”
I have spent most of my adult musical life thinking about how sound and imagery interact. What makes music dark, what makes it light. How can you create specific identifiable emotions? Music is a powerful tool to create multiple subtexts. John Coltrane would’ve been an absolutely spectacular film composer. The decisions he makes are so often rooted in drama.
In “My Favorite Things” (1961), he takes a simple tune at its most shell-like value, makes some rhythmic changes and enriches the harmonic language, but the piece gets truly radical in its long solo. Here, Coltrane creates an entirely new composition. He sticks fundamentally to one chord — an E major 9 — and stays with it. It is the brightest of lights: The music ascends and ascends, builds and bursts even greater blinding optimism, creating a new, powerful original composition. He builds an entire world out of a single chord.
“Summertime,” from the same album, is another perfect example of Coltrane’s ability to radically recontextualize pre-existing music. I’ve always thought that “Summertime” was highly influenced, even lifted, from the spiritual “Motherless Child.” In Gershwin’s original, as well as countless covers, it has a winsome, beautiful lullaby quality. But Coltrane attacks it in this version — it’s sharp, it’s angular, it has edges. He doesn’t want this “Summertime” to be a remembrance of things past, but a midcentury modernist call to action. Coltrane consistently takes existing tunes and recomposes them to add emotional drama and rich subtext. Pure genius.
Hear John Coltrane's Story
Soon after, Coltrane resolved to clean up his act. He would later write, in the 1964 liner notes to A Love Supreme, "In the year of 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life."
But Coltrane didn't always stay the clean course. As he also wrote in the album's notes, "As time and events moved on, I entered into a phase which is contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path. But thankfully now, through the merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been fully reinformed of his omnipotence. It is truly a love supreme."
The album is, in many ways, a reaffirmation of faith. And the suite lays out what you might call its four phases: "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance" and "Psalms." A Love Supreme has even spawned something of a religious sect. Reverend Franzo Wayne King is pastor of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco. The congregation mixes African Orthodox liturgy with Coltrane's quotes and a heavy dose of his music. Pastor King calls the album the cornerstone of his 200-member church.
While it's unknown whether Coltrane would have wanted to be worshiped or have his art deified, it's clear in every way that he saw A Love Supreme as much more than just another recording. Coltrane took control of every detail of the album, unlike any of his other works, including writing the liner notes and an accompanying poem. The poem, it's been discovered, is written to match the slow music of the fourth movement, "Psalms." It's a connection Coltrane hints at cryptically in the liner notes.
Pastor King remembers the day his congregation made the discovery. "It was so funny. We were here. We had been collected as a community, and we used to just read it and try to put some passion in it, you know. And then one day, we were reading the album, because he said the last part is 'Psalms,' which is in context, written context. And we said, 'Well, what is he trying to say here?' And then we put it on and sang, 'A love supreme. I would do all I can to be worthy of you, oh, Lord.' It's kind of like Pentecostal preaching, you know," Pastor King says. "We had a great day. We woke up and found out that the music and the words went together, and that was like a further encouragement that John Coltrane was, indeed, you know, sent by God and that that sound had really jumped down from the throne of heaven, so to speak."
While Pastor King sees explicit Christian symbolism in A Love Supreme, others point out that Coltrane took a much more general view. Coltrane was careful to say that while he was raised Christian, his searchings had led him to realize that all religions had a piece of the truth.
"He told me, he says, 'I respond to what's around me,'" remembers Tyner. "That's the way it should be, you know? And it was just—I couldn't wait to go to work at night. It was just such a wonderful experience. I mean, I didn't know what we were going to do. We couldn't really explain why things came together so well, you know, and why it was, you know, meant to be. I mean, it's hard to explain things like that."
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Coltrane-at-80-a-talent-supreme-2469266.php
Coltrane at 80 -- A talent supreme
by Greg Tate
Special to The San Francisco Chronicle
September 22, 2006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane
John Coltrane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Coltrane, 1963
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.
Born and raised in North Carolina, Coltrane moved to Philadelphia after graduating from high school, where he studied music. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, as exemplified on his most acclaimed album A Love Supreme (1965) and others.[1] Decades after his death, Coltrane remains influential, and he has received numerous posthumous awards, including a special Pulitzer Prize, and was canonized by the African Orthodox Church.[2]
His second wife was pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane. The couple had three children: John Jr.[3] (1964–1982), a bassist; Ravi (born 1965), a saxophonist; and Oran (born 1967), a saxophonist, guitarist, drummer and singer.[4][5][6]
Biography
1926–1945: Early life
Coltrane was born in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926.[7] His father was John R. Coltrane[8] and his mother was Alice Blair.[9] He grew up in High Point, North Carolina, and attended William Penn High School. While in high school, Coltrane played clarinet and alto horn in a community band[10] before switching to the saxophone, after being influenced by the likes of Lester Young and Johnny Hodges.[11][12] Beginning in December 1938, his father, aunt, and grandparents died within a few months of one another, leaving him to be raised by his mother and a close cousin.[13] In June 1943, shortly after graduating from high school, Coltrane and his family moved to Philadelphia, where he got a job at a sugar refinery. In September that year, his 17th birthday, his mother bought him his first saxophone, an alto.[9] From 1944 to 1945, Coltrane took saxophone lessons at the Ornstein School of Music with Mike Guerra.[14] From early to mid-1945, he had his first professional work as a musician: a "cocktail lounge trio" with piano and guitar.[15]
An important moment in the progression of Coltrane's musical development occurred on June 5, 1945, when he saw Charlie Parker perform for the first time. In a DownBeat magazine article in 1960 he recalled: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."
1945–1946: Military service
To avoid being drafted by the Army, Coltrane enlisted in the Navy on August 6, 1945, the day the first U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.[16] He was trained as an apprentice seaman at Sampson Naval Training Station in upstate New York before he was shipped to Pearl Harbor,[16] where he was stationed at Manana Barracks,[17] the largest posting of African American servicemen in the world.[18] By the time he got to Hawaii in late 1945, the Navy was downsizing. Coltrane's musical talent was recognized, and he became one of the few Navy men to serve as a musician without having been granted musician's rating when he joined the Melody Masters, the base swing band.[16] Because the Melody Masters was an all-white band, Coltrane was treated as a guest performer to avoid alerting superior officers of his participation in the band.[19] He continued to perform other duties when not playing with the band, including kitchen and security details. By the end of his service, he had assumed a leadership role in the band. His first recordings, an informal session in Hawaii with Navy musicians, occurred on July 13, 1946.[20] He played alto saxophone on a selection of jazz standards and bebop tunes.[21] He was officially discharged from the Navy on August 8, 1946. He was awarded the American Campaign Medal, Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
1946–1954: Immediate post-war career
After being discharged from the Navy as a seaman first class in August 1946, Coltrane returned to Philadelphia, where the city's bustling jazz scene offered him many opportunities for both learning and playing.[22] Coltrane used the G.I. Bill to enroll at the Granoff School of Music, where he studied music theory with jazz guitarist and composer Dennis Sandole.[23] Coltrane would continue to be under Sandole's tutelage from 1946 into the early 1950s.[24] Coltrane also took saxophone lessons with Matthew Rastelli, a saxophone teacher at Granoff once a week for about two or three years, but the lessons stopped when Coltrane's G.I. Bill funds ran out.[25] After touring with King Kolax, he joined a band led by Jimmy Heath, who was introduced to Coltrane's playing by his former Navy buddy, trumpeter William Massey, who had played with Coltrane in the Melody Masters.[26] Although he started on alto saxophone, he began playing tenor saxophone in 1947 with Eddie Vinson.[27]
Coltrane called this a time when "a wider area of listening opened up for me. There were many things that people like Hawk [Coleman Hawkins], and Ben [Webster] and Tab Smith were doing in the '40s that I didn't understand, but that I felt emotionally."[28] A significant influence, according to tenor saxophonist Odean Pope, was the Philadelphia pianist, composer, and theorist Hasaan Ibn Ali. "Hasaan was the clue to...the system that Trane uses. Hasaan was the great influence on Trane's melodic concept."[29] Coltrane became fanatical about practicing and developing his craft, practicing "25 hours a day" according to Jimmy Heath. Heath recalls an incident in a hotel in San Francisco when after a complaint was issued, Coltrane took the horn out of his mouth and practiced fingering for a full hour.[30] Such was his dedication; it was common for him to fall asleep with the horn still in his mouth or practice a single note for hours on end.[31]
Charlie Parker, who Coltrane had first heard perform before his time in the Navy, became an idol, and he and Coltrane would play together occasionally in the late 1940s. He was a member of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, and Johnny Hodges in the early to mid-1950s.
1955–1957: Miles and Monk period
In 1955, Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia while studying with Sandole when he received a call from trumpeter Miles Davis. Davis had been successful in the 1940s, but his reputation and work had been damaged in part by heroin addiction; he was again active and about to form a quintet. Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "First Great Quintet"—along with Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums) from October 1955 to April 1957 (with a few absences). During this period Davis released several influential recordings that revealed the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability. This quintet, represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956, resulted in the albums Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'. The "First Great Quintet" disbanded due in part to Coltrane's heroin addiction.[32]
During the later part of 1957, Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York's Five Spot Café, and played in Monk's quartet (July–December 1957), but, owing to contractual conflicts, took part in only one official studio recording session with this group. Coltrane recorded many sessions for Prestige under his own name at this time, but Monk refused to record for his old label.[33] A private recording made by Juanita Naima Coltrane of a 1958 reunion of the group was issued by Blue Note Records as Live at the Five Spot—Discovery! in 1993. A high quality tape of a concert given by this quartet in November 1957 was found later, and was released by Blue Note in 2005. Recorded by Voice of America, the performances confirm the group's reputation, and the resulting album, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, is very highly rated.
Blue Train, Coltrane's sole date as leader for Blue Note, featuring trumpeter Lee Morgan, bassist Paul Chambers, and trombonist Curtis Fuller, is often considered his best album from this period. Four of its five tracks are original Coltrane compositions, and the title track, "Moment's Notice", and "Lazy Bird", have become standards.
1958: Davis and Coltrane
Coltrane rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October of that year, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of sound"[34] to describe the style Coltrane developed with Monk and was perfecting in Davis's group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, with rapid runs cascading in very many notes per minute. Coltrane recalled: "I found that there were a certain number of chord progressions to play in a given time, and sometimes what I played didn't work out in eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or triplets. I had to put the notes in uneven groups like fives and sevens in order to get them all in."[35]
Coltrane stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley; pianists Red Garland, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly; bassist Paul Chambers; and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb. During this time he participated in the Davis sessions Milestones and Kind of Blue, and the concert recordings Miles & Monk at Newport (1963) and Jazz at the Plaza (1958).
1959–1961: Period with Atlantic Records
At the end of this period, Coltrane recorded Giant Steps (1960), his issued album as leader for Atlantic which contained only his compositions.[36] The album's title track is generally considered to have one of the most difficult chord progressions of any widely played jazz composition,[37] eventually referred to as Coltrane changes.[38] His development of these cycles led to further experimentation with improvised melody and harmony that he continued throughout his career.[39]
Coltrane formed his first quartet for live performances in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City.[40] After moving through different personnel, including Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, and Billy Higgins, he kept pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones.[41][42] Tyner, a native of Philadelphia, had been a friend of Coltrane for some years, and the two men had an understanding that Tyner would join the band when he felt ready.[43][44] My Favorite Things (1961) was the first album recorded by this band.[45] It was Coltrane's first album on soprano saxophone,[46] which he began practicing while with Miles Davis.[47] It was considered an unconventional move because the instrument was more associated with earlier jazz.[48]
1961–1962: First years with Impulse! Records
In May 1961, Coltrane's contract with Atlantic was bought by Impulse!.[49] The move to Impulse! meant that Coltrane resumed his recording relationship with engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had recorded his and Davis's sessions for Prestige. He recorded most of his albums for Impulse! at Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman, while Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn. The quintet had a celebrated and extensively recorded residency at the Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane's new direction. It included the most experimental music he had played, influenced by Indian ragas, modal jazz, and free jazz. John Gilmore, a longtime saxophonist with musician Sun Ra, was particularly influential; after hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said, "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!"[50] The most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues "Chasin' the 'Trane", was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music.[51]
In 1961, Coltrane began pairing Workman with a second bassist, usually Art Davis or Donald Garrett. Garrett recalled playing a tape for Coltrane where "I was playing with another bass player. We were doing some things rhythmically, and Coltrane became excited about the sound. We got the same kind of sound you get from the East Indian water drum. One bass remains in the lower register and is the stabilizing, pulsating thing, while the other bass is free to improvise, like the right hand would be on the drum. So Coltrane liked the idea."[52] Coltrane also recalled: "I thought another bass would add that certain rhythmic sound. We were playing a lot of stuff with a sort of suspended rhythm, with one bass playing a series of notes around one point, and it seemed that another bass could fill in the spaces."[53] According to Eric Dolphy, one night: "Wilbur Ware came in and up on the stand so they had three basses going. John and I got off the stand and listened."[53] Coltrane employed two basses on the 1961 albums Olé Coltrane and Africa/Brass, and later on The John Coltrane Quartet Plays and Ascension. Both Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison play bass on the 1961 Village Vanguard recordings of "India" and "Miles' Mode". [54]
During this period, critics were divided in their estimation of Coltrane, who had radically altered his style. Audiences, too, were perplexed; in France he was booed during his final tour with Davis. In 1961, DownBeat magazine called Coltrane and Dolphy players of "anti-jazz" in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians.[51] Coltrane admitted some of his early solos were based mostly on technical ideas. Furthermore, Dolphy's angular, voice-like playing earned him a reputation as a figurehead of the "New Thing", also known as free jazz, a movement led by Ornette Coleman which was denigrated by some jazz musicians (including Davis) and critics. But as Coltrane's style developed, he was determined to make every performance "a whole expression of one's being".[55]
1962–1965: Classic Quartet period
In 1962, Dolphy departed and Jimmy Garrison replaced Workman as bassist. From then on, the "Classic Quartet", as it came to be known, with Tyner, Garrison, and Jones, produced searching, spiritually driven work. Coltrane was moving toward a more harmonically static style that allowed him to expand his improvisations rhythmically, melodically, and motivically. Harmonically complex music was still present, but on stage Coltrane heavily favored continually reworking his "standards": "Impressions", "My Favorite Things", and "I Want to Talk About You".
The criticism of the quintet with Dolphy may have affected Coltrane. In contrast to the radicalism of his 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, his studio albums in the following two years (with the exception of Coltrane, 1962, which featured a blistering version of Harold Arlen's "Out of This World") were much more conservative. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in album collaborations with Duke Ellington and singer Johnny Hartman, a baritone who specialized in ballads. The album Ballads (recorded 1961–62) is emblematic of Coltrane's versatility, as the quartet shed new light on standards such as "It's Easy to Remember". Despite a more polished approach in the studio, in concert the quartet continued to balance "standards" and its own more exploratory and challenging music, as can be heard on the albums Impressions (recorded 1961–63), Live at Birdland and Newport '63 (both recorded 1963). Impressions consists of two extended jams including the title track along with "Dear Old Stockholm", "After the Rain" and a blues. Coltrane later said he enjoyed having a "balanced catalogue".[56]
On March 6, 1963, the group entered Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey and recorded a session that was lost for decades after its master tape was destroyed by Impulse Records to cut down on storage space. On June 29, 2018, Impulse! released Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, made up of seven tracks made from a spare copy Coltrane had given to his wife.[57][58] On March 7, 1963, they were joined in the studio by Hartman for the recording of six tracks for the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, released that July.
Impulse! followed the successful "lost album" release with 2019's Blue World, made up of a 1964 soundtrack to the film The Cat in the Bag, recorded in June 1964.
The Classic Quartet produced their best-selling album, A Love Supreme, in December 1964. A culmination of much of Coltrane's work up to this point, this four-part suite is an ode to his faith in and love for God. These spiritual concerns characterized much of Coltrane's composing and playing from this point onwards—as can be seen from album titles such as Ascension, Om and Meditations. The fourth movement of A Love Supreme, "Psalm", is, in fact, a musical setting for an original poem to God written by Coltrane, and printed in the album's liner notes. Coltrane plays almost exactly one note for each syllable of the poem, and bases his phrasing on the words. The album was composed at Coltrane's home in Dix Hills on Long Island.
The quartet played A Love Supreme live only three times, recorded twice – in July 1965 at a concert in Antibes, France and in October 1965 in Seattle, Washington.[59] A recording of the Antibes concert was released by Impulse! in 2002 on the remastered Deluxe Edition of A Love Supreme,[60] and again in 2015 on the "Super Deluxe Edition" of The Complete Masters.[61] A recently discovered second amateur recording titled "A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle" was released in 2021.[62]
1965: Adding to the quartet and Avant-garde Jazz
In his late period, Coltrane showed an interest in the avant-garde jazz of Ornette Coleman,[63] Albert Ayler,[64] and Sun Ra. He was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock,[65] who had worked with Paul Bley, and drummer Sunny Murray, whose playing was honed with Cecil Taylor as leader. Coltrane championed many young free jazz musicians such as Archie Shepp,[66] and under his influence Impulse! became a leading free jazz label.
After A Love Supreme was recorded, Ayler's style became more prominent in Coltrane's music. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, use of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return of Coltrane's sheets of sound. In the studio, he all but abandoned soprano saxophone to concentrate on tenor. The quartet responded by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the albums The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Living Space, Transition, New Thing at Newport, Sun Ship, and First Meditations.
In June 1965, he went into Van Gelder's studio with ten other musicians (including Shepp,[67] Pharoah Sanders,[67] Freddie Hubbard,[67] Marion Brown, and John Tchicai[67]) to record Ascension, a 38-minute piece that included solos by young avant-garde musicians.[66] The album was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Sanders to join the band in September 1965. While Coltrane frequently used overblowing as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders "was involved in the search for 'human' sounds on his instrument,"[68] employing "a tone which blasted like a blow torch"[69] and drastically expanding the vocabulary of his horn by employing multiphonics, growling, and "high register squeals [that] could imitate not only the human song but the human cry and shriek as well."[70] Regarding Coltrane's decision to add Sanders to the band, Gary Giddins wrote "Those who had followed Coltrane to the edge of the galaxy now had the added challenge of a player who appeared to have little contact with earth."[71]
1965–1967: The second quartet
By late 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians. Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. This was the end of the quartet. Claiming he was unable to hear himself over the two drummers, Tyner left the band shortly after the recording of Meditations. Jones left in early 1966, dissatisfied by sharing drumming duties with Ali and stating that, concerning Coltrane's latest music, "only poets can understand it".[72] In interviews, Tyner and Jones both voiced their displeasure with the music's direction; however, they would incorporate some of the intensity of free jazz in their solo work. Later, both musicians expressed tremendous respect for Coltrane: regarding his late music, Jones stated: "Well, of course it's far out, because this is a tremendous mind that's involved, you know. You wouldn't expect Einstein to be playing jacks, would you?"[73] Tyner recalled: "He was constantly pushing forward. He never rested on his laurels, he was always looking for what's next... he was always searching, like a scientist in a lab, looking for something new, a different direction... He kept hearing these sounds in his head..."[74] Jones and Tyner both recorded tributes to Coltrane, Tyner with Echoes of a Friend (1972) and Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane (1987), and Jones with Live in Japan 1978: Dear John C. (1978) and Tribute to John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" (1994).
There is speculation that in 1965 Coltrane began using LSD,[75][76] informing the "cosmic" transcendence of his late period. Nat Hentoff wrote: "it is as if he and Sanders were speaking with 'the gift of tongues' - as if their insights were of such compelling force that they have to transcend ordinary ways of musical speech and ordinary textures to be able to convey that part of the essence of being they have touched."[77] After the departure of Tyner and Jones, Coltrane led a quintet with Sanders on tenor saxophone, his second wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Garrison on bass, and Ali on drums. When touring, the group was known for playing long versions of their repertoire, many stretching beyond 30 minutes to an hour. In concert, solos by band members often extended beyond fifteen minutes.
The group can be heard on several concert recordings from 1966, including Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and Live in Japan. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times. Although pieces with Sanders have surfaced (the unusual "To Be" has both men on flute), most of the recordings were either with the quartet minus Sanders (Expression and Stellar Regions) or as a duo with Ali. The latter duo produced six performances that appear on the album Interstellar Space. Coltrane also continued to tour with the second quartet up until two months before his death; his penultimate live performance and final recorded one, a radio broadcast for the Olatunji Center of African Culture in New York City, was eventually released as an album in 2001.
1967: Illness and death
Coltrane died of liver cancer at the age of 40 on July 17, 1967, at Huntington Hospital on Long Island. His funeral was held four days later at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City. The service was started by the Albert Ayler Quartet and finished by the Ornette Coleman Quartet.[78] Coltrane is buried at Pinelawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.
Coltrane's death surprised many in the music community who were unaware of his condition. Miles Davis said, "Coltrane's death shocked everyone, took everyone by surprise. I knew he hadn't looked too good ... But I didn't know he was that sick—or even sick at all."[82]
Instruments
Coltrane started out on alto saxophone, but in 1947, when he joined King Kolax's band, he switched to tenor saxophone, the instrument he became known for playing.[83] In the early 1960s, during his contract with Atlantic, he also played soprano saxophone.[83]
His preference for playing melody higher on the range of the tenor saxophone is attributed to his training on alto horn and clarinet. His "sound concept", manipulated in one's vocal tract, of the tenor was set higher than the normal range of the instrument.[84] Coltrane observed how his experience playing the soprano saxophone gradually affected his style on the tenor, stating "the soprano, by being this small instrument, I found that playing the lowest note on it was like playing ... one of the middle notes in the tenor ... I found that I would play all over this instrument ... And on tenor, I hadn't always played all over it, because I was playing certain ideas which would just run in certain ranges ... By playing on the soprano and becoming accustomed to playing from that low B-flat on up, it soon got so when I went to tenor, I found myself doing the same thing ... And this caused ... the willingness to change and just try to play... as much of the instrument as possible."[85]
Toward the end of his career, he experimented with flute in his live performances and studio recordings (Live at the Village Vanguard Again!, Expression). After Eric Dolphy died in June 1964, his mother gave Coltrane his flute and bass clarinet.[86]
According to drummer Rashied Ali, Coltrane had an interest in the drums.[87] He would often have a spare drum set on concert stages that he would play.[88] His interest in the drums and his penchant for having solos with the drums resonated on tracks such as "Pursuance" and "The Drum Thing" from A Love Supreme and Crescent, respectively. It resulted in the album Interstellar Space with Ali.[89] In an interview with Nat Hentoff in late 1965 or early 1966, Coltrane stated: "I feel the need for more time, more rhythm all around me. And with more than one drummer, the rhythm can be more multi-directional."[77] In an August 1966 interview with Frank Kofsky, Coltrane repeatedly emphasized his affinity for drums, saying "I feel so strongly about drums, I really do."[90] Later that year, Coltrane would record the music released posthumously on Offering: Live at Temple University, which features Ali on drums supplemented by three percussionists.
Coltrane's tenor (Selmer Mark VI, serial number 125571, dated 1965) and soprano (Selmer Mark VI, serial number 99626, dated 1962) saxophones were auctioned on February 20, 2005, to raise money for the John Coltrane Foundation.[91]
Although he rarely played alto, he owned a prototype Yamaha alto saxophone given to him by the company as an endorsement in 1966. He can be heard playing it on live albums recorded in Japan, such as Second Night in Tokyo, and is pictured using it on the cover of the compilation Live in Japan. He can also be heard playing the Yamaha alto on the album Stellar Regions.[92]
Personal life and religious beliefs
Upbringing and early influences
Coltrane was born and raised in a Christian home. He was influenced by religion and spirituality beginning in childhood. His maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was a minister at an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church[93][94] in High Point, North Carolina, and his paternal grandfather, the Reverend William H. Coltrane, was an A.M.E. Zion minister in Hamlet, North Carolina.[93] Critic Norman Weinstein observed the parallel between Coltrane's music and his experience in the southern church,[95] which included practicing music there as a youth.
First marriage
In 1955, Coltrane married Naima (née Juanita Grubbs). Naima Coltrane, a Muslim convert, heavily influenced his spirituality. When the couple married, she had a five-year-old daughter named Antonia, later named Syeeda. Coltrane adopted Syeeda. He met Naima at the home of bassist Steve Davis in Philadelphia. The love ballad he wrote to honor his wife, "Naima", was Coltrane's favorite composition. In 1956, the couple left Philadelphia with their six-year-old daughter in tow and moved to New York City. In August 1957, Coltrane, Naima and Syeeda moved into an apartment on 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York. A few years later, John and Naima Coltrane purchased a home at 116-60 Mexico Street in St. Albans, Queens.[96] This is the house where they would break up in 1963.[97]
About the breakup, Naima said in J. C. Thomas's Chasin' the Trane: "I could feel it was going to happen sooner or later, so I wasn't really surprised when John moved out of the house in the summer of 1963. He didn't offer any explanation. He just told me there were things he had to do, and he left only with his clothes and his horns. He stayed in a hotel sometimes, other times with his mother in Philadelphia. All he said was, 'Naima, I'm going to make a change.' Even though I could feel it coming, it hurt, and I didn't get over it for at least another year." But Coltrane kept a close relationship with Naima, even calling her in 1964 to tell her that 90% of his playing would be prayer. They remained in touch until his death in 1967. Naima Coltrane died of a heart attack in October 1996.
1957 "spiritual awakening"
In 1957, Coltrane had a religious experience that may have helped him overcome the heroin addiction[98][99] and alcoholism[99] he had struggled with since 1948.[100] In the liner notes of A Love Supreme, Coltrane states that in 1957 he experienced "by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music." The liner notes appear to mention God in a Universalist sense and do not advocate one religion over another.[101] Further evidence of this universal view can be found in the liner notes of Meditations (1965) in which Coltrane declares, "I believe in all religions."[102]
Second marriage
In 1963, he met pianist Alice McLeod.[103] He and Alice moved in together and had two sons before he became "officially divorced from Naima in 1966, at which time [he] and Alice were immediately married."[102] John Jr. was born in 1964, Ravi in 1965, and Oranyan ("Oran") in 1967.[102] According to the musician Peter Lavezzoli, "Alice brought happiness and stability to John's life, not only because they had children, but also because they shared many of the same spiritual beliefs, particularly a mutual interest in Indian philosophy. Alice also understood what it was like to be a professional musician."[102]
Spiritual influence in music, religious exploration
After A Love Supreme, many of the titles of his songs and albums had spiritual connotations: Ascension, Meditations, Om, Selflessness, "Amen", "Ascent", "Attaining", "Dear Lord", "Prayer and Meditation Suite", and "The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost".[102] His library of books included The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the Bhagavad Gita, and Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. The last of these describes, in Lavezzoli's words, a "search for universal truth, a journey that Coltrane had also undertaken. Yogananda believed that both Eastern and Western spiritual paths were efficacious, and wrote of the similarities between Krishna and Christ. This openness to different traditions resonated with Coltrane, who studied the Qur'an, the Bible, Kabbalah, and astrology with equal sincerity."[104] He also explored Hinduism, Jiddu Krishnamurti, African history, the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle,[105] and Zen Buddhism.[106]
In October 1965, Coltrane recorded Om, referring to the sacred syllable in Hinduism, which symbolizes the infinite or the entire universe. Coltrane described Om as the "first syllable, the primal word, the word of power".[107] The 29-minute recording contains chants from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita[108] and the Buddhist Tibetan Book of the Dead,[109] and a recitation of a passage describing the primal verbalization "om" as a cosmic/spiritual common denominator in all things.
Study of world music
Coltrane's spiritual journey was interwoven with his investigation of world music. He believed in not only a universal musical structure that transcended ethnic distinctions, but also being able to harness the mystical language of music itself. His study of Indian music led him to believe that certain sounds and scales could "produce specific emotional meanings." According to Coltrane, the goal of a musician was to understand these forces, control them, and elicit a response from the audience. He said, "I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed."[110]
Veneration
Saint John Coltrane | |
|---|---|
 Coltrane icon at St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church | |
| Born | September 23, 1926 Hamlet, North Carolina, US |
| Died | July 17, 1967 (aged 40) Huntington, New York, US |
| Venerated in | African Orthodox Church Episcopal Church |
| Canonized | 1982, St. John Coltrane Church, 2097 Turk Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94115 by African Orthodox Church[111] |
| Feast | December 8 (AOC) |
| Patronage | All Artists |
After Coltrane's death, a congregation called the Yardbird Temple in San Francisco began worshipping him as God incarnate.[112] The group was named after Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, whom they equated to John the Baptist.[112] The congregation became affiliated with the African Orthodox Church; this involved changing Coltrane's status from a god to a saint.[112] The resultant St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, San Francisco, is the only African Orthodox church that incorporates Coltrane's music and his lyrics as prayers in its liturgy.[113]
Rev. F. W. King, describing the African Orthodox Church of Saint John Coltrane, said "We are Coltrane-conscious...God dwells in the musical majesty of his sounds."[114]
Samuel G. Freedman wrote in The New York Times that
... the Coltrane church is not a gimmick or a forced alloy of nightclub music and ethereal faith. Its message of deliverance through divine sound is actually quite consistent with Coltrane's own experience and message. ... In both implicit and explicit ways, Coltrane also functioned as a religious figure. Addicted to heroin in the 1950s, he quit cold turkey, and later explained that he had heard the voice of God during his anguishing withdrawal. ... In 1966, an interviewer in Japan asked Coltrane what he hoped to be in five years, and Coltrane replied, "a saint".[112]
Coltrane is depicted as one of the 90 saints in the Dancing Saints icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The icon is a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) painting in the Byzantine iconographic style that wraps around the entire church rotunda. It was executed by Mark Dukes, an ordained deacon at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church who painted other icons of Coltrane for the Coltrane Church.[115] Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, included Coltrane on its list of historical black saints and made a "case for sainthood" for him in an article on its website.[116]
Documentaries about Coltrane and the church include Alan Klingenstein's The Church of Saint Coltrane (1996),[111][117] and a 2004 program presented by Alan Yentob for the BBC.[118]
Selected discography
The discography below lists albums conceived and approved by Coltrane as a leader during his lifetime. It does not include his many releases as a sideman, sessions assembled into albums by various record labels after Coltrane's contract expired, sessions with Coltrane as a sideman later reissued with his name featured more prominently, or posthumous compilations, except for the one he approved before his death. See main discography link above for full list.
Prestige and Blue Note records
- Coltrane (debut solo LP; 1957)
- Blue Train (1958)
- John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio (1958)
- Soultrane (1958)
Atlantic records
- Giant Steps (1960)
- Coltrane Jazz (1961)
- My Favorite Things (1961)
- Olé Coltrane (1961)
Impulse! Records
- Africa/Brass (1961)
- "Live" at the Village Vanguard (1962)
- Coltrane (1962)
- Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1963)
- Ballads (1963)
- John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (1963)
- Impressions (1963)
- Live at Birdland (1964)
- Crescent (1964)
- A Love Supreme (1965)
- The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (1965)
- Ascension (1966)
- New Thing at Newport (1966)
- Meditations (1966)
- Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (1966)
- Kulu Sé Mama (1967)
- Expression (1967)
Sessionography
Awards and honors
In 1965, Coltrane was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1972, A Love Supreme was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over half a million copies in Japan. This album was certified gold in the United States in 2001. In 1982 he was awarded a posthumous Grammy for Best Jazz Solo Performance on the album Bye Bye Blackbird, and in 1997 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[28] In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named him one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.[119] He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2007 citing his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."[2] He was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[120]
A former home, the John Coltrane House in Philadelphia, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999. His last home, the John Coltrane Home in the Dix Hills district of Huntington, New York, where he resided from 1964 until his death, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 2007.
In media
A documentary on Jazz was made in 1990 by fellow musician Robert Palmer, called The World According to John Coltrane.
Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, is a 2016 American film directed by John Scheinfeld.[121]
External links
- Official website
- John Coltrane at Curlie
- John Coltrane discography at Discogs
- John Coltrane infography
- John Coltrane discography
- Coltrane Church Website site
- John Coltrane 1957 Carnegie Hall performance in transcription and analysis
- John Coltrane Images of Trane by Lee Tanner in Jazz Times, June 1997
- Interviews from 1958–1966
LINER NOTES TO 'JOHN COLTRANE: LIVE AT BIRDLAND' BY LEROI JONES (aka) AMIRI BARAKA--Impulse label-- October 8, 1963
PHOTO: Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka and John Coltrane, 1963
Live at Birdland – John Coltrane
*Bonus Track
JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET:
Original Liner Notes by Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka)
Live At Birdland, Impulse Records, AS-50
October 8, 1963
One of the most baffling things about America is that despite its essentially vile profile, so much beauty continues to exist here. Perhaps it's as so many thinkers have said, that it is because of the vileness, or call it adversity, that such beauty does exist. (As balance?).
Thinking along these lines, even the title of this album can be rendered "symbolic" and more directly meaningful. John Coltrane Live At Birdland. To me, Birdland is only America in microcosm, and we know how high the mortality rate is for artists in this instant tomb. Yet, the title tells us that John Coltrane is there live. In this tiny America where the most delirious happiness can only be caused by the dollar, a man continues to make daring reference to some other kind of thought. Impossible? Listen to I Want To Talk About You.
Coltrane apparently doesn't need an ivory tower. Now that he is a master, and the slightest sound from his instrument is valuable, he is able, literally, to make his statements anywhere. Birdland included. It does not seem to matter to him (nor should it) that hovering in the background are people and artifacts that have no more to do with his music than silence.
But now I forget why I went off into this direction. Nightclubs are, finally, nightclubs. And their value is that even though they are raised or opened strictly for gain (and not the musician's) if we go to them and are able to sit, as I was for this session, and hold on, if it is a master we are listening to, we are very likely to be moved beyond the pettiness and stupidity of our beautiful enemies. John Coltrane can do this for us. He has done it for me many times, and his music is one of the reasons suicide seems so boring.
There are three numbers on the album that were recorded Live at Birdland, Afro-Blue, I Want To Talk About You, and The Promise. And while some of the non-musical hysteria has vanished from the recording, that is, after riding a subway through New York's bowels, and that subway full of all the things any man should expect to find in some thing's bowels, and then coming up stairs, to the street, and walking slowly, head down, through the traffic and failure that does shape the area, and then entering "The Jazz Corner Of The World" (a temple erected in praise of what God?), and then finally amidst that noise and glare to hear a man destroy all of it, completely, like Sodom, with just the first few notes from his horn, your "critical" sense can be erased completely, and that experience can place you somewhere a long way off from anything ugly. Still, what was of musical value that I heard that night does remain, and the emotions ... some of them completely new ... that I experience at each "objective" rehearing of this music are as valuable as anything else I know about. And all of this is on this record, and the studio pieces, Alabama and Your Lady, are among the strongest efforts on the album.
But since records, recorded "Live" or otherwise, are artifacts, that is the way they should be talked about. The few people who were at Birdland the night of October 8 who really beard what Coltrane, Jones, Tyner and Garrison were doing will probably tell you, if you ever run into them, just "exactly" what went on, and how we all reacted. I wish I had a list of all those people so that interested parties could call them and get the whole story, but then, almost anyone who's heard John and the others at a nightclub or some kind of live performance has got stories of their own. I know I've got a lot of them.
But in terms of the artifact, what you're holding in your hand now, I would say first of all, if you can hear, you're going to be moved. Afro-Blue, the long tune of the album, is in the tradition of all the African-Indian-Latin flavored pieces Trane has done on soprano, since picking up that horn and reclaiming it as a jazz instrument. (In this sense The Promise is in that same genre.) Even though the head-melody is simple and song-like, it is a song given by making what feels to me like an almost unintelligible lyricism suddenly marvelously intelligible. McCoy Tyner too, who is the polished formalist of the group, makes his less cautious lyrical statements on this, but driven, almost harassed, as Trane is too, by the mad ritual drama that Elvin Jones taunts them with. There is no way to "describe" Elvin's playing, or, I would suppose, Elvin himself. The long tag of Afro-Blue, with Elvin thrashing and cursing beneath Trane's line, is unbelievable. Beautiful has nothing to do with it, but it is. (I got up and danced while writing these notes, screaming at Elvin to cool it.) You feel when this is finished, amidst the crashing cymbals, bombarded tomtoms, and above it all Coltrane's soprano singing like any song you can remember, that it really did not have to end at all, that this music could have gone on and on like the wild pulse of all living.
Trane did Billy Eckstine's I Want To Talk About You some years ago, but I don't think it's any news that his style has changed a great deal since then, and so this Talk is something completely different. It is now a virtuoso tenor piece (and the tenor is still Trane's "real" instrument) and instead of the simplistic though touching note-for-note replay of the ballad's line, on this performance each note is tested given a slight tremolo or emotional vibrato (note to chord to scale reference), which makes it seem as if each one of the notes is given the possibility of "infinite" qualification, i.e., scalar or chordal, expansion, "threatening" us with those "sheets of sound," but also proving that the ballad as it was written was only the beginning of the story. The tag on this is an unaccompanied solo of Trane's that is a tenor lesson-performance that seems to get more precisely stated with each rehearing.
If you have heard Slow Dance or After The Rain, then you might be prepared for the kind of feeling that Alabama carries. I didn't realize until now what a beautiful word Alabama is. That is one function of art, to reveal beauty, common or uncommon, uncommonly. And that's what Trane does. Bob Thiele asked Trane if the title "had any significance to today's problems." I suppose he meant literally. Coltrane answered, "It represents, musically, something that I saw down there translated into music from inside me." Which is to say, Listen. And what we're given is a slow delicate introspective sadness, almost hopelessness, except for Elvin, rising in the background like something out of nature ... a fattening thunder, storm clouds or jungle war clouds. The whole is a frightening emotional portrait of some place, in these musicians' feelings. If that "real" Alabama was the catalyst, more power to it, and may it be this beautiful, even in its destruction.
Your Lady is the sweetest song in the album. And it is pure song, say, as an accompaniment for some very elegant uptown song and dance man. Elvin Jones' heavy tingling parallel counterpoint sweeps the line along, and the way he is able to solo constantly beneath Trane's flights, commenting, extending, or just going off on his own, is a very important part of the total sound and effect of this Coltrane group. Jimmy Garrison's constancy and power, which must be fantastic to support, stimulate and push this group of powerful (and diverse) personalities, is already almost legendary. On tunes like Lady or Afro-Blue Garrison's bass booms so symmetrically and steadily and emotionally, and again, with such strength, that one wild guess that he must be able to tear safes open with his fingers.
All the music on this album is Live, whether it was recorded above drinking and talk at Birdland, in the studio. There is a daringly human quality to John Coltrane's music that makes itself felt, wherever he records. If you can hear, this music will make you think of a lot of weird and wonderful things. You might even become one of them.
PHOTO: Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka and John Coltrane, 1963
http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/2014/01/liner-notes-live-birdland-leroi-jones/
Liner Notes: LeRoi Jones on John Coltrane’s Live at Birdland
January 31, 2014
Political,
fiery, critical, poetic, inspirational…All of this shows up in Amiri
Baraka’s brilliant liner notes to the 1963 recording of John Coltrane’s
Live at Birdland. At the time known as LeRoi Jones, Baraka’s liner notes
to this album were the first time the jazz writer Stanley Crouch “had
seen that kind of poetic sensibility brought to the discussion of jazz.
It was as new to me as the way Coltrane and his band were reinventing
the 4/4 swing, blues, ballads, and Afro-Hispanic rhythms that are the
four elements essential to jazz…His was the first Negro voice that
sailed to the center of my taste by combining the spunk and the raw
horrors of the sidewalk with the library, for an elegant manhandling of
the form.”
These notes were written at the time of Jones’ 1963
Down Beat essay “Jazz and the White Critic,” which, in the words of
Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics author John Gennari, was a
“challenge to jazz writers of all backgrounds to reckon with the lived
experience of black Americans and to consider how this experience had
been embedded in the notes, tones, and rhythms of the music.” Keep
that in mind when reading these notes…
http://decanting-cerebral.tumblr.com/post/72872532210/amiri-baraka-speaks-of-john-coltrane
10th Jan 2014 | 7 notes
Amiri Baraka Speaks Of John Coltrane:
1.
Trane emerged as the process of historical clarification itself, of a
particular social/aesthetic development. When we see him standing next
to Bird and Diz, an excited young inlooker inside the torrent of the
rising bop statement, right next to the chief creators of that fervent
expression of new black life, we are seeing actually point and line,
note and phrase of the continuum. As if we could also see Louis and
Bechet hovering over them, with Pres hovering just to the side awaiting
his entrance, and then beyond, in a deeper, yet-to-be-revealed hover,
Pharoah and Albert and David and Wynton or Olu in the mist, there about
to be, when called by the notes of what had struck yet before all
mentioned.
2. Trane carried the deepness in as thru Bird and
Diz, and back to us. He reclaimed the bop fire, the Africa, polyrythmic,
improvisational, blue, spirituality of us. The starter of one thing yet
the anchor of something before. In the relay of our constant rise and
rerise, phoenix describing its birth as a description of yet another
(though there is not another) process. Trane carrying Bird-Diz bop
revolution and its opposing force to the death force of slavery and
corporate co-optation, went through various changes in life, in music.
He carried the Southern black church music, and blues and rhythm &
blues, as way stations of his personal development, not just theory or
abstract history. He played in all these musics and was all these
persons. His apprenticeship was extensive and deep; the changes a
revealed continuity.
3. The point of demarcation was Miles’
classic quintet, with Cannonball the other up-front stylistic vector.
Style and philosophy confirmed each other. As I have said before,
Cannonball was Miles’ confection of blues that would later be called
fusion. Simple and charming in that context, but very soon commercial on
the way to not. Trane, on the other side, was the way of expressionism.
Nuclear and carrying the rush of birth and death and rebirth and
redeath and new life and yet again forever, what is, as the Africans
said, Is Is. Ja Is (Jazz) The Come Music.
4. The ‘60s, when he
appeared full-up, was a period, a rhythm of intensity, the giant steps
of revolution. This is why we always associate him with Malcom X, as a
parallel of that turbulence. Trane’s annihilation of the popular song,
so-called, was its restatement as a broader, more universal popular. His
“My Favorite Things” could not be Hollywood’s. Hollywood is to make
animalism and exploitation glamorous, and Trane was trying to speak of
what will exist beyond animals, what had created them, and what will
carry them away as waste. What is disposed.
5. Trane’s constant
assaults on the given, the status quo, the Tin Pan Alley of the soul,
was what Malcolm attempted in our social life. And both African
Americans, they carried that reference, Black Life, as their starting
point and historical confirmation. The Truth sounds bland only if we
don’t understand what it is said in opposition to. Since it is
transcendent, invincible, existent even past whatever else we claim
exists. Even the lie must use real life as a reference to trick us, as
it claims to be truth. But Trane made no claims, either in his life or
his work - what he did, he got from life, and we either recognize it
with our selves or risk being wasted. Like Malcolm, what he was was
reality; not to grasp it defines the quality of our consciousness, our
closeness to what cannot finally be denied.
–-
Amiri Baraka, “The Coltrane Legacy,” from liner notes included with
“The Last Giant: The John Coltrane Anthology,” Rhino Records, 1993
http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2008/09/john-coltrane-michael-s-harper-and.html
Monday, September 22, 2008
John Coltrane, Michael S. Harper, and Amiri Baraka: Jazz Music and Poetry
In Jazz Is,
his collection of reflections on jazz musicians, Nat Hentoff describes
John Coltrane: “Coltrane, a man of almost unbelievable gentleness made
human to us lesser mortals by his very occasional rages. Coltrane, an
authentically spiritual man, but not innocent of carnal imperatives. Or
perhaps more accurately, a man, in his last years, especially but not
exclusively consumed by affairs of the spirit. That is, having
constructed a personal world view (or view of the cosmos) on a residue
of Christianity and an infusion of Eastern meditative practices and
concerns, Coltrane became a theosophist of jazz. The music was a way of
self-purgation so that he could learn more about himself to the end of
making himself and his music part of the unity of all being. He truly
believed this, and in this respect, as well as musically, he has been a
powerful influence on many musicians since.”
As we approach John
Coltrane’s birthday tomorrow (born September 23, 1926), this occasion
offers another opportunity to recognize the close associations between
jazz and poetry during the last half-century. Perhaps no example
displays the merging of these two art forms better than Michael S,
Harper’s “Dear John, Dear Coltrane,” the title poem from his 1970
collection that responds to Coltrane’s music, particularly his
magnificent 1965 recording, A Love Supreme. (A rare film clip of
Coltrane performing an excerpt of “A Love Supreme” appears above.)
Harper explains his poem actually was written just before Coltrane’s
death in 1967, yet the poem’s later publication and its content
certainly lend a sense of elegy to the work.
DEAR JOHN, DEAR COLTRANE
by Michael S. Harper
a love supreme, a love supreme
a love supreme, a love supreme
Sex fingers toes
in the marketplace
near your father's church
in Hamlet, North Carolina—
witness to this love
in this calm fallow
of these minds,
there is no substitute for pain:
genitals gone or going,
seed burned out,
you tuck the roots in the earth,
turn back, and move
by river through the swamps,
singing: a love supreme, a love supreme;
what does it all mean?
Loss, so great each black
woman expects your failure
in mute change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city—
your song now crystal and
the blues. You pick up the horn
with some will and blow
into the freezing night:
a love supreme, a love supreme—
Dawn comes and you cook
up the thick sin 'tween
impotence and death, fuel
the tenor sax cannibal
heart, genitals, and sweat
that makes you clean—
a love supreme, a love supreme—
Why you so black?
cause I am
why you so funky?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
why you so sweet?
cause I am
why you so black?
cause I am
a love supreme, a love supreme:
So sick
you couldn't play Naima,
so flat we ached
for song you'd concealed
with your own blood,
your diseased liver gave
out its purity,
the inflated heart
pumps out, the tenor kiss,
tenor love:
a love supreme, a love supreme—
a love supreme, a love supreme—
Some
of Harper’s own comments on John Coltrane, jazz, spirituality, and this
poem inspired by Coltrane’s music or biographical details are engaging
and enlightening:
Black musicians have always melded the private
and the historical into the aesthetics of human speech and music, the
blues and jazz. The blues and jazz are the finest extensions of a
bedrock of the testamental process. Blacks have been witnesses victims;
they have paid their dues. “Dear John, Dear Coltrane” was written before
John Coltrane died; its aim is the redemptive nature of black
experience in terms of the private life of a black musician. Coltrane’s
music should be seen as a progression from the personal to incantation
and prophesy. It is a fusing of tenderness, pain, and power in their
melding, and the [furbishing] is at once an internal and external
journey or passage: to live with integrity means “to live”—“to create”;
its anthem—“there is no substitute for pain”—The poem is a declaration
of tenderness, and a reminder to the reader of a suffering beyond the
personal and historical to the cultural, that there can be no
reservations fixed to sensibility, that personality gives power through
the synthesis of personal history and the overtones of America in and by
contact. The poem begins with a catalog of sexual trophies, for whites,
a lesson to blacks not to assert their manhood, and that black men are
suspect because they are potent. The mingling of trophy and Christian
vision, Coltrane’s minister-father, indicates an emphasis on physical
facts—that there is no refinement beyond the body. The antiphonal,
call-response/retort stanza simulates the black church, and gives the
answer of renewal to any question raised—“cause I am.” It is Coltrane
himself who chants, in life, “a love supreme”; jazz and the blues, as
open-ended forms, cannot be programmatic or abstract, but modal . . ..
Coltrane’s music is the recognition and embodiment of life-force; his
music is testament in modal forms of expression that unfold in their
many modal aspects. His music testifies to life; one is witness to the
spirit and power of life; and one is rejuvenated and renewed in a living
experience, the music that provides images strong enough to give back
that power that renews. . ..
Len Lyons, in The 101 Best Jazz
Albums: A History of Jazz on Records, has written about Coltrane’s
music: “A Love Supreme, recorded in December, is a remarkably warm,
hopeful, and energetic outpouring. Coltrane was explicit about the
religious inspiration of the music in his poem which serves as the
album’s liner notes. John once told his mother that he had experienced
visions of God while preparing the music, which was ominous to her
because she felt that ‘when someone is seeing God, that means he is
going to die.’”
Although obviously not demonstrating the quality
of Harper’s poetry, John Coltrane explicitly indicated his own
understanding of the interaction between poetry and music with the
inclusion of his poem as guidance to listeners in the liner notes for A
Love Supreme.
http://www.njarts.net/350-jersey-songs/i-love-music-for-john-coltrane-amiri-baraka/
‘I Love Music (For John Coltrane),’ Amiri Baraka
by Jay Lustig | March 16, 2015
New Jersey Arts
“The poem ‘I Love Music’ was written to recall when I was locked up in solitary confinement after the Newark rebellions in 1967,” Baraka once said.”I sat one afternoon and whistled all the Trane I remembered. And then later that afternoon they told me he had died. But I knew even then that that was impossible.”
Coltrane did in fact die on July 17, 1967, the last day of the Newark riots. What Baraka meant, I’m sure, was that the spirit of his music would never die.
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday last year. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we are marking the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, for almost a year — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. We started in September 2014, and will keep going until late in the summer.
http://www.npr.org/2000/10/23/148148986/a-love-supreme
The Story Of 'A Love Supreme'
March 7, 2012
by Eric Westervelt
Listen To The Story
All Things Considered
National Public Radiio (NPR)
From the opening gong and tenor saxophone flutter, a four-note bass line builds under the sound. This simple riff becomes the musical framework for the rich improvisations that comprise John Coltrane's 33-minute musical journey.
"I remember they cut the lights down kind of," says McCoy Tyner, who played piano on A Love Supreme as a member of Coltrane's band in the early and mid-'60s. "The lights were dimmed in the studio. I guess they were trying to get a nightclub effect or whatever. I don't know if it was John's suggestion or whatever. I remember the lights being dimmed."It made sense to try to imitate the dim-lighted intimacy of a club during the studio recordings, he says, because it was on stage during live shows where the quartet would explore, practice and rehearse new material. He says there was an amazing unspoken communication during the "Love Supreme" sessions. In fact, he says, Coltrane gave very few verbal directions. Tyner calls the album a culmination and natural extension of chemistry honed through years of playing together live.
"You see, one thing about that music is that it showed you that we had reached a level where you could move the music around. John had a very wonderful way of being flexible with the music, flexing it, stretching it. You know, we reflected that kind of thing. He gave us the freedom to do that. We thought of something, 'Oh, then we'll play it,' you know? And he said, 'Yeah, I have a feeling'—you know? And all that freedom just came together when we did that record."
It was that free-wheeling openness which allowed the musicians—Coltrane, Tyner, along with drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison—to build a complex four-part suite around a relatively basic musical idea.
Lewis Porter heads the masters program in jazz history and research at Rutgers University-Newark. He's the author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Porter says that simple idea culminating in the first movement with an unprecedented verbal chant by Coltrane forms the foundation of the entire suite. It's a theme Coltrane consciously uses in subtle and careful ways throughout A Love Supreme. For example, toward the end of part one, "Acknowledgement," Coltrane plays the riff in every key.
"Coltrane's more or less finished his improvisation, and he just starts playing the 'Love Supreme' motif, but he changes the key another time, another time, another time. This is something very unusual. It's not the way he usually improvises. It's not really improvised. It's something that he's doing. And if you actually follow it through, he ends up playing this little 'Love Supreme' theme in all 12 possible keys," says Porter. "To me, he's giving you a message here. First of all, he's introduced the idea. He's experimented with it. He's improvised with it with great intensity. Now he's saying it's everywhere. It's in all 12 keys. Anywhere you look, you're going to find this 'Love Supreme.' He's showing you that in a very conscious way on his saxophone. So to me, he's really very carefully thought about how he wants to present the idea."
http://radioopensource.org/speaking-of-coltrane-five-conversations-2/
Speaking of Coltrane: Five Conversations (2)
Speaking of Coltrane: Five Conversations (2)
Click to listen to Chris’s conversation with Amiri Baraka(19 MB MP3)
The conversation continues… If you feel a Coltrane sermon coming on, we want to hear it.Related Content
Amiri Baraka: Ennobled by Coltrane
Hear John Coltrane's Story
Soon after, Coltrane resolved to clean up his act. He would later write, in the 1964 liner notes to A Love Supreme, "In the year of 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening, which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life."
But Coltrane didn't always stay the clean course. As he also wrote in the album's notes, "As time and events moved on, I entered into a phase which is contradictory to the pledge and away from the esteemed path. But thankfully now, through the merciful hand of God, I do perceive and have been fully reinformed of his omnipotence. It is truly a love supreme."
The album is, in many ways, a reaffirmation of faith. And the suite lays out what you might call its four phases: "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance" and "Psalms." A Love Supreme has even spawned something of a religious sect. Reverend Franzo Wayne King is pastor of the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco. The congregation mixes African Orthodox liturgy with Coltrane's quotes and a heavy dose of his music. Pastor King calls the album the cornerstone of his 200-member church.
While it's unknown whether Coltrane would have wanted to be worshiped or have his art deified, it's clear in every way that he saw A Love Supreme as much more than just another recording. Coltrane took control of every detail of the album, unlike any of his other works, including writing the liner notes and an accompanying poem. The poem, it's been discovered, is written to match the slow music of the fourth movement, "Psalms." It's a connection Coltrane hints at cryptically in the liner notes.
Pastor King remembers the day his congregation made the discovery. "It was so funny. We were here. We had been collected as a community, and we used to just read it and try to put some passion in it, you know. And then one day, we were reading the album, because he said the last part is 'Psalms,' which is in context, written context. And we said, 'Well, what is he trying to say here?' And then we put it on and sang, 'A love supreme. I would do all I can to be worthy of you, oh, Lord.' It's kind of like Pentecostal preaching, you know," Pastor King says. "We had a great day. We woke up and found out that the music and the words went together, and that was like a further encouragement that John Coltrane was, indeed, you know, sent by God and that that sound had really jumped down from the throne of heaven, so to speak."
While Pastor King sees explicit Christian symbolism in A Love Supreme, others point out that Coltrane took a much more general view. Coltrane was careful to say that while he was raised Christian, his searchings had led him to realize that all religions had a piece of the truth.
Only once did Coltrane perform the entire "Love Supreme" suite live, and there are no recorded interviews in which he talks about the album's personal significance. In fact, Coltrane didn't even talk about it with his band mates. "We didn't talk about a lot of things," says Tyner. But he does say the band knew that A Love Supreme had unique chemistry.
"He told me, he says, 'I respond to what's around me,'" remembers Tyner. "That's the way it should be, you know? And it was just—I couldn't wait to go to work at night. It was just such a wonderful experience. I mean, I didn't know what we were going to do. We couldn't really explain why things came together so well, you know, and why it was, you know, meant to be. I mean, it's hard to explain things like that."
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Coltrane-at-80-a-talent-supreme-2469266.php
Coltrane at 80 -- A talent supreme
by Greg Tate
Special to The San Francisco Chronicle
September 22, 2006
https://www.johncoltrane.com/biography
John Coltrane departed this mortal plane more than fifty years ago;
today he remains among us, more alive than ever. His sound continues to
grab the ears of an ever-widening circle of fans. His legend is stone
solid: planted firmly in our culture as that of any 20th century musical
giant. His saxophone sound—brooding, searching, dark—is still one of
the most recognizable in modern jazz. His influence stretches over
styles and genres, and transcends cultural boundaries. The modern ideal
of music serving a deeply spiritual, connective purpose? A defining
facet of John Coltrane.
To Coltrane, a musician was a
message-giver; making music was an endeavor tied to a larger, greater
good. “I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others
happy through music,” Coltrane wrote in 1964 in a letter to his
listeners, telling of a prayer to God. In 1966, less than a year before
his death, he stated:
“I know that there are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to the world. I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.”
Coltrane
achieved his goal as a hard-working jazz player coming out of a proud,
rooted musical tradition, paying his dues as a sideman, learning the
ropes as a leader, working with primarily wordless music to convey his
message. He released twenty-five albums as a leader during his lifetime,
some attaining five-star, classic status: Blue Train, Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, his Grammy-nominated, “humble offering” to God, A Love Supreme.
One after another, from 1957 to ’67, his music defined a comet-like
path of rapid growth and dizzying rate of change. That Coltrane
accomplished all he did in a mere ten years accounts at least partly for
the saint-like devotion he often receives.
Jazz journalist Nat Hentoff, who interviewed and championed Coltrane, praised him more soberly. “By the time A Love Supreme
hit, Trane struck such a spiritual chord in so many listeners that
people started to think of him as being beyond human. I think that’s
unfair. He was just a human being like you and me -- but he was willing
to practice more, to do all the things that somebody has to do to excel.
The real value in what John Coltrane did was that what he accomplished,
he did as a human.”
Certain aspects of Coltrane’s humble
beginnings point to what he would become. Being born in 1926 in
small-town North Carolina—specifically Hamlet, and later High
Point—helps explain his predilection for the blues. His affinity for a
distinct, gospel feel—meditative, prayer-like songs and the
preacher-like tone in his saxophone—can be partially credited to being
raised in a religious family. His father preached, and his grandfather
was a community leader and minister. In 1938 both passed away suddenly,
then Coltrane’s grandmother and an aunt—all within months of each other.
Coltrane himself was barely twelve. The family was devastated,
emotionally and economically. Having just taken up the clarinet, music
became a lifeline of sorts for Coltrane.
Timing had much to do
with building Coltrane’s musical foundation as well. Being born in ‘26
meant that by his teenage years he was hearing the popular songs and
sophisticated arrangements at the height of the big band era. As he
approached adulthood in the mid ‘40s, the bebop of alto saxophonist
Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie grabbed the ears of his
generation. Johnny Hodges, the longtime alto saxophonist in Duke
Ellington’s famed orchestra; and Dexter Gordon, the tenor-sax playing,
first-generation bebopper, were two of Coltrane’s earliest heroes.
Bebop was a new exciting language that snapped and popped with a
fresh, rhythmic freedom, and expanded the harmonic bandwidth of the
music—requiring an under-the-hood familiarity with the mechanics of
music. Coltrane, already an autodidact, was hooked, intellectually and
emotionally.
Coltrane moved to Philadelphia in 1943, following
other family members, and immediately threw himself into the local music
scene, meeting other young, bebop-focused players, like saxophonists
Jimmy Heath and Benny Golson. A stint in the Navy in the closing days of
World War II gave him the chance to use the G.I. Bill to take music
classes after his discharge, and dedicate himself to music as a
profession.
Philadelphia featured one of the most developed and
vibrant African American communities in the post-WWII years. The black
parts of town were filled with bars, clubs, and theaters, all requiring
live music of all styles. Despite his dedication to bebop, Coltrane
became a journeyman musician on the circuit, blowing alto saxophone and
playing whatever the gig required.
Coltrane’s apprenticeship took
place from 1946 to 1955. He was a horn-for-hire, blowing the blues out
front of small groups, backing various jazz and R&B singers, adding
to the punch and blend of the sax section in a number of big bands. He
worked his way up the ranks, from local groups (Jimmy Heath’s big band
for one; Bill Carney’s Hi-Tones, a small R&B outfit, for another) to
national ensembles in the early ‘50s—like big bands led by saxophonists
Johnny Hodges, and Earl Bostic, and Dizzy Gillespie, the latter
demanding he switch from alto to tenor saxophone. Coltrane followed
orders, and his development continued.
It was during this endless
succession of gigs and travel when Coltrane first tried narcotics; by
1951, like too many of his peers, he acquired a heroin habit that would
stay with him for six years.
Coltrane was playing in organist
Jimmy Smith’s group at the end of summer 1955 when a call came from New
York City to audition for trumpeter Miles Davis’s band. Despite
Coltrane’s initial uncertainty—“I am quite ashamed of those early
records I made with Miles. Why he picked me, I don’t know”, he later
said—Miles liked what he heard. “After we started playing together for a
while, I knew that this guy was a bad motherfucker,” Davis wrote in his
autobiography. “[He] was just the voice I needed on tenor to set off my
voice.”
The four years Coltrane spent in Davis’s group—from 1955
through ’59—catapulted the unknown saxophonist from local obscurity to
national renown. Under the spotlight that came with playing alongside
Davis, Coltrane evolved from what many heard as faltering insecurity to
bold, chance-taking confidence. True to Miles’s words, the intensity and
density of Coltrane’s saxophone was an effective foil to Davis’s
subdued melancholy on trumpet. They had been born the same year and
grown to be so different in temperament. Yet they were, at the core,
equal in their obsession with the inner workings of music theory, and in
their need for musical challenge and surprise.
Davis provided
Coltrane an open-ended, instruction-less freedom to explore and find his
own voice; Coltrane referred to him as “Teacher”. Save for nine months
in 1957 when the trumpeter unceremoniously fired him due to his heroin
use impeding his appearance and performance—after which Coltrane kicked
his habit cold turkey—their relationship remains one of the most
fruitful and significant in jazz history.
1957, in fact, was the
year Coltrane truly became Coltrane. During that twelve-month period,
his compulsion to practice incessantly led to the first phase of his
signature style: slaloming through changes, playing and replaying scalar
patterns, an outpouring of harmonic stacking the critic Ira Gitler
famously dubbed “sheets of sound.” Once clean and back on the scene as a
freelancer, Coltrane’s workaholic nature propelled him into the
studio—as sideman on many tracks, recording his debut as a leader (Coltrane on Prestige), and the first album to reveal his gifts as a composer (Blue Train on Blue Note).
No event in ’57 proved more enduringly significant to Coltrane than his summer-long collaboration with the pianist/composer Thelonious Monk, of which Coltrane said:
“I learned from him in every way – through the senses, theoretically, technically.”
Monk's
tutelage—more direct and patient than Miles—helped him grasp music
riddled with strange melodic leaps and rhythmic breaks, and appealed
with its own logic. When Coltrane returned to Miles’s group at the end
of that year, the trumpeter was on his own way to developing a new
vocabulary.
The timing could not have been better. Miles’s shift
from traditional, chord-based song forms to more open-ended, modal
structures provided a needed freshness that helped improvisers avoid the
same old bebop clichés. This “modal jazz” was the foundational idea to
what is still Miles’s most famous album, 1959’s Kind of Blue.
For Coltrane, it was like pouring high-octane into a turbo-charged
engine. Liberated from the meticulous pathways in Monk’s music, he dove
with gusto into the harmonic freedoms that modal jazz offered, absorbing
and later developing the same ideas further in his own groundbreaking
groups of the 1960s.
“Miles's music gave me plenty of freedom," he said. "It's a beautiful approach...I found it easy to apply harmonic ideas that I had."
By the end of 1959, Coltrane was 33. While Miles tried
to keep him in his group, it was clear he was itching to go his own
way. He began gigging with his own bands, and continued writing
material. He had a booking agent and a lawyer, both recommended by
Miles, the latter who helped him start his own music publishing company
(Jowcol Music) and jump from his Prestige to a more lucrative contract
with the midsize Atlantic Records, a label known as much for its R&B
successes as for releasing jazz records.
1959 to ’61 mark Coltrane’s Atlantic period, during which he recorded one of his most important albums—Giant Steps—featuring
timeless tunes like “Naima”, “Cousin Mary”, and the title track;
collectively they served as a masterful farewell to the labyrinthine
chord changes of the bebop world. He began to focus more on the highly
emotional, melody-driven influence of the avant-garde jazz of the time,
inspired greatly by the music of Ornette Coleman—the Texas-born
saxophonist who had turned the jazz world on its ear upon arriving in
New York City in 1959.
Coltrane often visited and in fact
received instruction from Coleman; “He was interested in non-chordal
playing and I had cut my teeth on that stuff," Coleman reported years
after. "He later sent me a letter which included thirty dollars for each
lesson . . ."
In his last year with Atlantic, Coltrane added the
soprano saxophone to his repertoire and the pianist McCoy Tyner to his
band. The confluence of the two led him to record the waltz-time
Broadway show tune “My Favorite Things” (from the musical The Sound Of Music) as a raga-flavored, modal piece; the unlikely reimagining became a radio hit and his biggest commercial success.
By
the end of 1961, Coltrane was able to push higher, signing with Impulse
Records—the jazz imprint within the major label ABC-Paramount Records.
It was with Impulse—from ’61 through his death in July ‘67—that Coltrane
would reach his highest career crest, and reveal the full range of his
projects: first with his quintet that featured saxophonist/flutist Eric
Dolphy, then his so-called “Classic Quartet” (with Tyner, drummer Elvin
Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison), various big band efforts (Africa/Brass, Ascension),
and finally the quintet that included Garrison, his wife, pianist Alice
Coltrane, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and drummer Rashied Ali.
Coltrane’s
Impulse recordings, from 1961 through most of ’64, show him with one
foot in the more traditional jazz world, playing standards (Ballads)
and collaborating with the likes of the legendary Duke Ellington and
vocalist Johnny Hartman, while the other foot rested in more avant-garde
territory. His release schedule balanced fiery, live recordings (Live! at the Village Vanguard, Live at Birdland, some tracks on Impressions) with studio recordings sharing a softer, more meditative side to his composing (other tracks on Impressions, Coltrane, Crescent).
By the early ‘60s, Coltrane was a nightclub and festival headliner, a
force in terms of record sales and box office receipts, and a major
influence on many of his peers—his albums by then were required
listening for jazz, R&B, and rock players alike.
Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme at
the end of ’64, calling it his “attempt to say ‘THANK YOU GOD’ through
our work”—a musical offering in gratitude for his spiritual re-awakening
in ’57, the year he rid himself of his drug habit. It was a four-part
suite, the first of a series of larger works that held to a higher
intent and focus. It was carefully composed and planned in September
’64, just after the birth of his first son John Jr. with his new wife,
the Detroit-born, bebop-enthused Alice Coltrane—née McLeod.
Their relationship would prove to be one of the most prodigious and
prolific husband-wife pairings of the jazz world. John’s musical and
spiritual influence on Alice would redirect her life and career. After
his death, she carried his music and universalist message forward in her
own way, fusing modern jazz, Indian ragas, and Vedic devotional songs
on eighteen very special albums, and eventually put her career aside to
establish and lead an ashram of spiritual followers in southern
California.
A Love Supreme was atypical for a jazz recording in many ways. It included
Coltrane’s voice, chanting the album’s title. The album cover featured a
letter to the listener and a poem, both penned by Coltrane and both
espousing a universalist spirituality, and addressing his role as a
musician. When released in early ’65, it quickly became Coltrane’s
best-known album, a kind of musical self-portrait that earned him two
Grammy nominations, induction into Downbeat magazine’s Hall of
Fame, and a newer generation of fans—many of who were likewise looking
to alternative spiritual paths. A few weeks before Coltrane composed A Love Supreme,
jazz writer Leonard Feather noted that his “most devoted followers are
young listeners” and asked how they could fully appreciate music that
“demands technical knowledge and intense attention.”
“As long as there is some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood,” Coltrane replied. “After all, I used to love music myself long before I could even identify a G minor seventh chord…eventually the listeners move right along with the musicians.”
Coltrane’s put this truism to the test through 1965 as his musical explorations— inviting other players into his band, writing music that grew increasingly discordant, dense, and multi-rhythmic—tested the patience of both his audience and members of his Classic Quartet. Before the year was out, both Tyner and Jones departed: Alice took over the piano seat, the young Rashied Ali was added on drums, and Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone.
From 1966 until his death in ’67, Coltrane was seen as the point of
the spear by a new generation of jazz avant-gardists—a generation more
politically charged and socially conscious than those before, and whose
music reflected the growing political outrage of the time. Coltrane
himself remained a humanist, more in tune with the non-violent
philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., than the confrontational
attitude of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers. Yet his music was an
indelible part of the soundtrack of that turbulent era, and the
recordings he made between ’65 and ’67 remain the most controversial of
his entire career.
Through the last months of his life, Coltrane
continued to push ahead with sessions that swung between tracks that
could be grating and intense, and sonic tapestries deeply introspective
and calm. The musical seeds that sprouted during the A Love Supreme
sessions predicted where Coltrane would go with his music. His measured
key-hopping on “Acknowledgement” presaged a passionate atonality. His
chanting was heard again on the album Om. His love of poetry resurfaced on Kulu Se Mama.
His hymn-like titles became an unbroken theme—“Dear Lord”, “Welcome”,
“The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost”—their meditative sonority
reflecting that of A Love Supreme.
In the last year of
his life, as Coltrane’s reputation and notoriety reached its highest
level, those close to him were aware something was wrong. He was often
in pain, suffering from liver cancer, as it was later learned. Yet
Coltrane did not let up. He continued to perform and record, only weeks
before his passing on July 17, 1967. The impact on the music scene was
seismic; he left behind a stunned community of musicians, as well as his
wife Alice, a daughter Michelle and three sons—John Jr., Ravi, and
Oran—and a catalogue of recordings from which music continues to be
issued and reissued.
Coltrane died in mid-search, musically driven till the end. As he told Nat Hentoff in late ’66:
“There is never any end…there are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are . . . we have to keep on cleaning the mirror.”
Many
have sought the same purification and, through their creative process,
achieved it. Yet few have searched as deeply, provoked as consistently,
succeeded as profoundly as Coltrane. Even fewer have ended as they
began: still challenging themselves and their audience.
Still
Coltrane rises, in stature and significance. His compositions and
recordings are now permanent parts of the canon of great American music,
recognized by the Library of Congress, with many inducted into The
Grammy Hall of Fame; all are now required study for young musicians
hoping to unlock the secrets of the jazz tradition. In today’s
mainstream media, Coltrane is often name-checked on television shows and
referenced in major Hollywood films like "Malcolm X", "Mo Better
Blues", "Jerry McGuire", "Mr. Holland’s Opus", and many others. There’s
even a street named in his honor at Universal Studios Hollywood, close
to the Universal Music archives where many of his original reel-to-reel
masters are shelved.
Posthumous honors persist: in 1995, the United States Postal
Service placed Coltrane on a commemorative postage stamp. In ’97, he was
bestowed the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In ’01, the National
Endowment for the Arts chose “My Favorite Things” for its list of 360
Songs Of The Century. In ’07, Coltrane was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, as a
Special Citation for a lifetime of innovative and influential work.
All
distinctions aside, it’s clear that Coltrane’s importance today rests
in his enduring role as a paragon of artistic sacrifice and spiritual
vision, an original voice who sits atop the pantheon of African American
cultural heroes. The inspiration his legacy continues to instill
remains as strong as it is necessary—evidence of the unifying power of
music: an argument to cherish our collective heritage; a dictate to
listen to and learn from each other.
In 2009, a new President was
elected and in the private residence of the White House he hung a
candid portrait of Coltrane snapped by the photographer Jim Marshall,
showing the saxophonist in a particularly pensive moment backstage in
1966. A few weeks later, the Coltrane family received a photo of the
President contemplating the image, with the inscription:
“…from a huge fan of your father’s, Barack Obama.”
— By Ashley Kahn
https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/.../john-coltrane…
Saturday, September 19, 2015
JOHN COLTRANE (1926-1967): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, music theorist, ensemble leader, producer, philosopher, and teacher
FOR JOHN COLTRANE
by Kofi Natambu
Coltrane subdivides the air into
massive columns of Space
He fills all the Space all the
Time with brazen mathematical emotions
Firestorms of disciplined thoughts
burn down the paths of certainty
A roaring expansion into millions of singing
labyrinths thundering toward the precise
articulation of what he knows & does not
No All the Time in all the Space
A face exploding into trillions of sounds
A heart mowing down memories
a soul sucking up the light soaking the bones
in Oceans of Energy Air charging molecules
inside holograms of Awareness
Intervals smashing stars and spitting them out
into the empty black sky
Coltrane is a terrible cleansing force
A holy dive-bomber in saxophone jets
A killer with the Healing Eye
A Melodic Arsonist
A Harmonic Hieroglyph
A Rhythmic Hurricane
Flowers that bleed
real tears
© 1991, The Melody Never Stops by Kofi Natambu, Past Tents Press.
(From: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS
by Kofi Natambu
Past Tents Press, 1991)
https://panopticonreview.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-coltrane-vs-philosophical.html
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on August 4, 2008):
Monday, August 4, 2008
The Art of John Coltrane vs. The Philosophical Limitations of Jazz Criticism
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
Coltrane: The story of a sound. by Ben Ratliff.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007
Book Review
by Kofi Natambu
"We take for granted the social and cultural milieu and philosophy that produced Mozart. As Western people the socio-cultural thinking of eighteenth-century Europe comes to us as a historical legacy that is a continuous and organic part of the twentieth-century West. The socio-cultural philosophy of the Negro in America (as a continuous historical phenomenon) is no less specific and no less important for any critical speculation about the music that came out of it...this is not a plea for narrow sociological analysis of Jazz, but rather that this music cannot be completely understood (in critical terms) without some attention to the attitudes which produced it. It is the philosophy of Negro music that is most important, and this philosophy is only partially the result of the sociological disposition of Negroes in America. There is, of course, much more to it than that.”
---Amiri Baraka, "Jazz and the White Critic," (1963)
“I recognize an individual when I see his contribution; and when I know a man’s sound, well, to me that’s him, that’s the man. That’s the way I look at it. Labels I don’t bother with.”
This is a curiously schizophrenic, self-serving, and ultimately shallow book. On the one hand it proposes to provide readers with a broad general outline of the ‘artistic history’ of John Coltrane’s career and on the other critically examine his ongoing impact and influence, musical and extramusical, on both his contemporaries and subsequent generations of musicians since his early death at the age of forty in 1967.
Throughout, the author--Ben Ratliff, Jazz critic for the New York Times—engages in a highly digressive running commentary on what he thinks Coltrane’s career as player, composer, and cultural avatar means to the history of Jazz and to our understanding and appreciation of an individual American aesthetic and cultural icon.
However, these otherwise laudable, useful, and intriguing ambitions are seriously marred by Ratliff’s intellectually reductive presumptions about both the music he proposes to critique and examine and the cultural philosophy of the individual creative personality he wants to portray. The major source of Ratliff’s analytical flaws and blind spots (which are considerable) lies with his studied quasi-philosophical over-reliance and even lazy intellectual dependency on an empirical framework that consistently reduces profound and unsettling questions of aesthetic, cultural and expressive identity and philosophy to almost rudimentary descriptions and examinations of the largely academic categories of style, formal structure, method, and technique(s). Thus we are treated to quite a bit of admittedly lucid but predominately expository writing about how and why Coltrane’s music differs in cosmetic terms from that of other musical styles, traditions, forms, and genres in Western music particularly of the United States and Europe. However, the much broader and more specific historical, social, cultural, ideological, economic, and political contexts of Coltrane’s music (and persona) as it was actually created, produced, marketed, distributed and consumed in the society he and his music lived/lives in is either ignored or given very short shrift in Ratliff’s analysis.
Ratliff’s annoying and often condescending tendency to churlishly dismiss or discount the significance of the central historical roles that political economy, racism, and most importantly, competing cultural and aesthetic philosophies have played and continue to play in both the creative and social ecosphere of Jazz is a major weakness in a book that almost coyly demands that we accept, if not embrace, its highly problematic fundamental premises. These premises are the following: That Coltrane was not primarily interested in expressing and supporting creatively provocative ideas and values per se but in obsessively pursuing matters of craft, stylistic expression, and technical prowess; that Coltrane was not really interested in the social, cultural, and political implications of what he was playing or the form and content of the highly varied reactions of audiences to what he was playing and why; that the 1960s ‘black power’ movement had a negative or distorting effect on the study, appreciation, and understanding of what the complex musical evolution known as “late Coltrane” (1965-1967) meant to the artist and black and white American audiences alike. And that to fully grasp what Coltrane finally accomplished or was trying to do in his work one had to surrender to a romantic aesthetic notion rooted in the 19th century and later promulgated in the 20th century by the late modernist poet Robert Lowell (an aesthetic theory Ratliff suggestively paraphrases and appropriates for a historically different artistic and cultural context) that Coltrane and his music represented and embodied the “monotony of the sublime” found in other radical forms of American art making. Further Ratliff asserts that Coltrane was making a music of “his interior cosmos” and was finally consumed by a music of “meditation and chant” in the last years after December 1964 (and the pivotal appearance of Coltrane’s magnum opus composition suite ‘A Love Supreme’) until his death in July, 1967.
What Ratliff also fails to address and seriously investigate is the complex and varied receptions of, and responses to, this music by other musicians and the larger listening audience meant in terms of the history of Jazz up until the late 1960s (and by implication ever afterward). While Ratliff readily acknowledges and broadly surveys the intense chaotic volatility of art, society, and culture of that era (and Coltrane’s important, even mythic, participation in it) what he fails to provide is an informed analytical and theoretical critique of precisely why Coltrane, Jazz in general, and the larger society remained in a dire and fundamental conflict over what role the concept of “art” and its various uses and identities should or could be in the music. At one point Ratliff even mentions that as far as he knew Coltrane had never publicly used or uttered the word ‘art’ to describe what his music was about. I was hoping that Ratliff would subsequently examine what he thought this fact meant to his general analysis of Jazz as a musical aesthetic in the post-WWII period, but he simply chalked it up to Coltrane’s tendency toward verbal reticence in publicly talking about his music in openly intellectual terms and his personal indifference to categorical labeling. The result is a book that manages to raise important and previously neglected questions about the specific nature and identity of Coltrane’s work and his profound contributions to American music, while at the same time almost willfully refusing to take any discernible theoretical or ideological position(s) on what Ratliff himself as critic and historian thought Coltrane’s music and reputation represents.
It is Ratliff’s failure to seriously confront and intellectually engage the previously published critical literature on both Coltrane and Jazz of the 1955-1970 era that is most disapointing. Among this rather extensive body of texts is very important work by a number of African American intellectuals, historians, and critics like Dr. C.O. Simpkins (who wrote a major book on Coltrane as early as 1975—which Ratliff himself even curiously acknowledges as “one of the best Coltrane biographies” and then proceeds to say not one more word about), the late James Stewart who wrote a number of powerful and influential essays on Jazz of the 1960s and ‘70s, Bill Cole, prominent ethnomusicologist and former Professor of Music at Dartmouth College who wrote a seminal musical biography on Coltrane in 1976, the extraordinary poet and cultural historian A.B. Spellman, author of one of the most prescient books ever published on black avant-garde music ‘Four Lives in the BeBop Business’ (later titled ‘Black Music: Four Lives) in 1966, and finally one of the leading Jazz critics and historians in the entire modern canon of 20th century Jazz literature, the legendary poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and activist Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones). It is especially revealing that when Ratliff does briefly mention Baraka’s work (he quotes part of a poem by him on Coltrane and also a small segment from an essay on Black nationalism in his art) he doesn’t really focus on Baraka as a music critic; rather he summarizes in a couple sentences what Baraka’s fundamental stance was in the late 1960s on the cultural and social uses and function of what black art is or could be. But tellingly Ratliff does not talk about or examine Baraka’s major Jazz criticism of this period (1964-1967) qua criticism. This omission is not merely incidental but goes to the heart of what Ratliff refuses to deal with generally in his text: the larger meaning of the contentious discourse raging then and now over what Coltrane and the so-called ‘Free-Jazz’ players and composers of the 1960s and ‘70s represented (and currently represents) to an understanding of the Jazz tradition and U.S. culture generally over the past century.
This is especially significant with respect to the philosophical acuity and depth of the major book of Jazz criticism that Baraka published in 1967 entitled ‘Black Music.’ Dedicated to ‘John Coltrane, the heaviest spirit’ this book, made up of formerly published magazine essays and articles comprises one of the most important statements ever conceived and written about the specific dynamics, formal and stylistic challenges, cultural theory, and ideological identity of the so-called black musical “avant garde” of the 1959-1967 era. Pivotal to this text’s visionary stance is the first essay from the book, which is quoted at the beginning of this review. “Jazz and the White Critic” published in 1963 and which initially appeared in Down Beat magazine, was a major advance in the history of Jazz criticism because it openly and courageously addressed one of the most important but largely ignored issues in the canonical history of Jazz writing—the contradiction and separation between the major black players of the music and the almost completely exclusive white writers and critics of the music. By raising questions about what this contradiction said and implied about Jazz music and its history as art, science, history, sociology, ideology, and political economy, Baraka revealed that what white critics said about the music, reflected intellectual, cultural, and personal biases that had to be acknowledged and taken serious account of.
Ironically, Ratliff as critic and historian ultimately avoids these and other related issues by insisting that the individual icon in Jazz (like Coltrane) is not only an indispensable touchstone in the music’s evolution but that even more importantly the bands that they and others lead are even more significant. As Ratliff puts it at the end of his study “The truth of Jazz is in its bands.” While this statement seems accurate enough on its surface with its philosophical emphasis on the time honored Western notion of the “artist” as being central to an understanding and appreciation of any cultural or aesthetic expression, it appears that Ratliff winds up failing to notice that Jazz is first and foremost a public, collective, collaborative, and thus social expression whose major focus is not merely on the players and composers involved but on the communities that it engages in any given cultural environment. Thus the role of the individual “genius” in the music’s identity and evolution is not the dominant one. Of course, the marketing and processed packaging of the individual musician (or ensemble) as readily available commodity in the economic context of the capitalist marketplace where commodities are routinely promoted, bought, and sold may give the distinct impression that the individual “great man or woman” is the most important driving force behind the music but that would be an ultimately false and greatly mistaken notion. Even with such astonishingly advanced and gifted players and composers as the late, great John Coltrane it would be far more accurate to suggest that actually “the truth of Jazz lies in its music.” As critic and historian Ratliff misses, neglects, or ignores this crucial point and his book (and his analysis of Coltrane) greatly suffers for it.
[Composition and tenor saxophone solo improvisation by John Coltrane taken from the original 1959 album on the Atlantic recording label]
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
(2020 Remastered) [Full Album]:
Miles̲ D̲a̲v̲i̲s & Joh̲n̲ C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲ – ̲L̲i̲v̲e ̲I̲n̲ S̲t̲o̲c̲k̲h̲o̲l̲m̲ 1̲9̲6̲0̲:
TRACKLIST:
0:00:02 S̲o̲ ̲W̲h̲a̲t̲
0:10:52 ̲O̲n̲ ̲G̲r̲e̲e̲n̲ ̲D̲o̲l̲p̲h̲i̲n̲s̲ ̲S̲t̲r̲e̲e̲t̲
0:24:27 ̲A̲l̲l̲ ̲B̲l̲u̲e̲s̲ ̲T̲h̲e̲m̲e̲
0:40:38 ̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲ ̲I̲n̲t̲e̲r̲v̲i̲e̲w̲ ̲P̲a̲r̲t̲ ̲O̲n̲e̲
0:42:50 ̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲ ̲I̲n̲t̲e̲r̲v̲i̲e̲w̲ ̲P̲a̲r̲t̲ ̲T̲w̲o̲
0:44:53 ̲S̲o̲ ̲W̲h̲a̲t̲
1:03:11 ̲F̲r̲a̲n̲-̲D̲a̲n̲c̲e̲
1:10:28 ̲W̲a̲l̲k̲i̲n̲
John C̲o̲l̲tra̲n̲e̲ – T̲h̲e̲ A̲t̲lant̲i̲c̲ S̲t̲udio̲ A̲l̲b̲u̲m̲ C̲o̲lle̲c̲t̲i̲o̲n̲ HD
(1957-1962)
5 hours and 6 minutes:
John C̲o̲l̲tra̲n̲e̲ – T̲h̲e̲ A̲t̲lant̲i̲c̲ S̲t̲udio̲ A̲l̲b̲u̲m̲ C̲o̲lle̲c̲t̲i̲o̲n̲
Label: Rhino Atlantic
Compilation Remastered, 24-bit, 192 kHz
US Release: 2015
Tracklist:
1 Giant Steps 0:00:01 2 Cousin Mary 0:04:47 3 Countdown 0:10:37 4 Spiral 0:13:03 5 Syeeda's Song Flute 0:19:05 6 Naima 0:26:12 7 Mr. P.C. 0:30:36 8 Little Old Lady 0:37:36 9 Village Blues 0:42:05 10 My Shining Hour 0:47:30 11 Fifth House 0:52:25 12 Harmonique 0:57:09 13 Like Sonny 1:01:24 14 I'll Wait And Pray 1:07:20 15 Some Other Blues 1:10:57 16 My Favorite Things 1:16:34 17 Everytime We Say Goodbye 1:30:19 18 Summertime 1:36:04 19 But Not For Me 1:47:41 20 Bags & Trane 1:57:20 21 Three Little Words 2:04:48 22 The Night We Called It A Day 2:12:19 23 Be-Bop 2:16:44 24 The Late Late Blues 2:24:44 25 Ole 2:34:20 26 Dahomey Dance 2:52:39 27 Aisha 3:03:32 28 Blues To Elvin 3:11:10 29 Blues To Bechet 3:19:03 30 Blues To You 3:24:50 31 Mr. Day 3:31:20 32 Mr. Syms 3:39:17 33 Mr. Knight 3:44:40 34 The Night Has A Thousand Eyes 3:52:14 35 Central Park West 3:59:06 36 Liberia 4:03:23 37 Body And Soul 4:10:15 38 Equinox 4:15:56 39 Satellite 4:24:35 40 Cherryco 4:30:25 41 Focus On Sanity 4:39:30 42 The Blessing 4:49:32 43 The Invisible 4:57:26 44 Bemsha Swing 5:01:42 Notes This set contains eight previously released albums: G̲i̲a̲n̲t̲ ̲S̲t̲e̲p̲s̲,̲"̲ ̲"̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲ ̲J̲a̲z̲z̲,̲"̲ ̲"̲M̲y̲ ̲F̲a̲v̲o̲r̲i̲t̲e̲ ̲T̲h̲i̲n̲g̲s̲,̲"̲ ̲"̲B̲a̲g̲s̲ ̲&̲ ̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲"̲,̲ ̲"̲O̲l̲é̲ ̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲,̲"̲ ̲"̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲ ̲P̲l̲a̲y̲s̲ ̲T̲h̲e̲ ̲B̲l̲u̲e̲s̲,̲"̲ ̲"̲C̲o̲l̲t̲r̲a̲n̲e̲'̲s̲ ̲S̲o̲u̲n̲d̲"̲ ̲a̲n̲d̲ ̲"̲T̲h̲e̲ ̲A̲v̲a̲n̲t̲-̲G̲a̲r̲d̲e̲
Impulse, 1962:
Coltrane is a studio album by jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer John Coltrane. It was recorded in April and June 1962, and released in July of that same year by Impulse! Records.
At the time, it was overlooked by the music press, but has since come
to be regarded as a significant recording in Coltrane's discography.
When reissued on CD, it featured a Coltrane composition dedicated to his
musical influence "Big Nick" Nicholas that the saxophonist recorded for his Duke Ellington collaboration Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1963). The composition "Tunji" was written by Coltrane in dedication to the Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji.
Track listing:
Side One
- "Out of This World" (Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer) – 14:06
- "Soul Eyes" (Mal Waldron) – 5:26
Side Two
- "The Inch Worm" (Frank Loesser) – 6:19
- "Tunji" (Coltrane) – 6:33
- "Miles' Mode" (Coltrane) – 7:31
- Both sides were combined as tracks 1–5 on the CD reissue.
John Coltrane Quartet: Crescent
Impulse, 1964 (full album):
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965):
Part II - Resolution 7:42
Part III - Pursuance 15:02
Part IV - Psalm 25:44
JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET:
Jimmy Garrison -- double bass
Elvin Jones -- drums
McCoy Tyner -- piano
John Coltrane - Ascension
Impulse, 1966:
Impulse, 1967:
Rashid Ali drums)
Recorded February 22, 1967
