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John Coltrane

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File:John coltrane with sax.jpg
John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967), often known as Trane, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Although recordings of his work from as early as 1946 exist, Coltrane's recording career did not begin in earnest until 1955. From 1957 onward he recorded at an astonishing rate, producing dozens of albums, many of which did not appear until years after his death.

He is regarded as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. Coltrane has been credited with reshaping modern jazz and with being the predominant influence on successive generations of musicians. Along with tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Sonny Rollins, Coltrane fundamentally altered expectations for the instrument.

Early life and career (1926-1954)

Born in Hamlet, North Carolina, Coltrane grew up in comparatively privileged circumstances in High Point, during an era of racial segregation. He lived in an extended family within the household of his maternal grandfather, Rev. William Wilson Blair, a superintendent of the AME Zion Church, and a dominant figure in High Point's African American community. Midway through Coltrane's seventh-grade school year, his close-knit family suffered three deaths--Coltrane's maternal grandparents, and his father. And soon afterward, his family lost its only remaining male breadwinner, Coltrane's uncle. These blows plunged the family to the brink of poverty, and forced Coltrane's mother and aunt into domestic service. It was during this time that Coltrane began playing music and practicing obsessively.

His early life was influenced by his Southern middle-class upbringing; a heavy emphasis on religion along with exposure to and training in the Western European choral canon, both and equally, affected his later musical career. Coltrane first played Eb horn in a community band, but soon switched to clarinet. In high school, he played in the fledgling (and rudimentary) school band and also sang in the William Penn High School Boys Chorus. However, it was the latter ensemble that exposed him to challenging and sophisticated musical composition. Coltrane concurrently learned of jazz through the radio, movies, and jukeboxes. As his enthusiasm for jazz blossomed, he once again changed instrument, to alto saxophone, but lost interest in the school band; he did not play in the band at all during his senior year.

Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in June 1943, and was drafted into the Navy in 1945, where he played in a Hawaii-based Navy band. The group played then-current bebop standards: Tadd Dameron's "Hot House", Charlie Parker's "Ornithology", and some vocal tunes. Several sides recorded by this band in a single rushed session have since surfaced on compact disc. They are Coltrane's earliest known surviving recordings.

Contemporary correspondence shows that Coltrane was already known as "Trane" by this point, and that the music from the 1946 sessions had been played for Miles Davis - apparently impressing him. Coltrane returned to civilian life in 1946; at this time, he had a few brief encounters with Parker, who was already a dominant influence on his playing.

He worked at a variety of jobs in the late 1940s until he joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1949 as an alto saxophonist. He stayed with Gillespie through the big band's breakup in May 1950 and switched to tenor saxophone during his subsequent spell in Gillespie's small group, staying until April 1951, when he returned to Philadelphia.

In early 1952, Coltrane joined Earl Bostic's band. In 1953, after a stint with Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, he joined Johnny Hodges's small group, which was active during Hodges's four-year sabbatical from Duke Ellington's orchestra. Coltrane stayed with Hodges until mid-1954.

Miles & Monk period (1955-1959)

File:John Coltrane-Miles Davis-So What-The Sound of Miles Davis.png
Soloing on "So What" for CBS in April 1959; Miles Davis in background.

Although there are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1946, he received little recognition until 1955.

Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 while studying with guitarist Dennis Sandole when he received a call from trumpeter Miles Davis. Davis, whose success during the late forties had dissipated during several years of heroin abuse, had cleaned up, become active, and was now ready to form a quintet. Legend has it that tenor man Sonny Rollins, Davis' preferred saxophonist, vanished temporarily to ensure that Coltrane was appointed in his place. With a few absences, Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "First Great Quintet" to distinguish it from Miles's later group with Wayne Shorter) from October 1955 through April 1957, a period which saw influential recordings from Davis and the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability.

This trend-setting group, best represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956, disbanded in mid-April, partially due to Coltrane's persistent heroin use. Coltrane would go on to adopt some of Davis's leadership traits for his future groups, such as allowing his musicians to solo with little interference, eschewing bandstand banter or tune identification, and remaining detached from both his audience and the press. Coltrane's style at this point was loquacious, and critics dubbed his playing angry and harsh. One especially harsh critic, Harry Frost, called Coltrane's solos "extended double-time flurries notable for their lack of direction."

In the early part of 1957, Coltrane succeeded in kicking his heroin addiction. He simultaneously experienced a spiritual epiphany that would lead him to concentrate wholly on the development of his music. He began to practice obsessively, incorporating violin and harp exercises, allowing Coltrane to play at wider intervals during his solos [1]. From this point until almost the end of his life, Coltrane was prolific.

During the latter part of 1957, Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York City's Five Spot Cafe during a legendary six-month gig. Unfortunately, this association was not extensively documented, and the best-recorded evidence demonstrating the compatibility of Coltrane with Monk, a concert at Carnegie Hall on November 29, 1957, was only discovered and issued in 2005 by Blue Note. His extensive recordings as a sideman and as a leader for Prestige have a mixed reputation. Blue Train, his sole date as leader for Blue Note, is widely considered his best album from this period.

He rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October 1958, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of sound" to describe the unique style Coltrane developed during his stint with Monk and was perfecting in Miles' group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, as if whole solos passed in a few seconds, with rapid runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, alongside 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 such seminal Davis sessions as Milestones and Kind Of Blue, and the live recordings, Miles & Monk at Newport and Jazz at the Plaza. Also during this time he recorded his own influential sessions (notably Giant Steps whose title track is generally considered to have the most complex and difficult chord progression of any Jazz composition).

Around the end of his tenure with Davis, Coltrane began playing soprano saxophone, an unconventional move considering the instrument's near obsolescence in jazz at the time. His interest in the straight saxophone most likely arose from his admiration for Sidney Bechet and the work of his contemporary, Steve Lacy, even though Miles Davis claims to have given Coltrane his first soprano saxophone. The radical change in his tenor style after leaving the Davis group was due partially to a problem with his mouthpiece and acute pain in his gums, another possible reason for taking up the soprano, on which Coltrane could reach higher registers and generally played faster.

The Classic Quartet (1960-1965)

File:John coltrane with soprano.jpg
John Coltrane playing a soprano saxophone

Coltrane formed his first group, a quartet, in 1960. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete LaRoca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner, from Philadelphia, had been a friend of Coltrane's for some years and the two men long had an understanding that the pianist would join Coltrane at the appropriate time.

While still with Miles, Coltrane had signed a contract with Atlantic Records, for whom he recorded the aforementioned Giant Steps. His first record with his new group was the hugely successful My Favorite Things, whose title track, a catchy waltz by Rodgers and Hammerstein (as well as Cole Porter's "Every Time We Say Goodbye"), featured Coltrane on soprano. This new sound was coupled with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwins' "But Not for Me," Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement of his Giant Steps period (movement in thirds rather than conventional circles-of-fifths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression.

Shortly before completing his contract with Atlantic in May 1961 (with the album Olé Coltrane), Coltrane joined the newly formed Impulse! label, with whom the "Classic Quartet" would record. It is generally assumed that the clinching reason Coltrane signed with Impulse! was that it would enable him to work again with recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had taped both his and Davis's Prestige sessions, as well as Blue Train. It was at Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey that Coltrane would record most of his records for the label.

By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman. Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn around the same time. The quintet had a celebrated (and extensively recorded) residency in November 1961 at the Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane's new direction. It featured the most experimental music he'd played up to this point, influenced by Indian ragas, the recent developments in modal jazz, and the burgeoning free jazz movement. Longtime Sun Ra saxophonist John Gilmore was particularly influential; the most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues, "Chasin' the 'Trane," was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music.

During this period, critics were fiercely divided in their estimation of Coltrane. Audiences, too, were perplexed (in France he was famously booed during his final tour with Davis). In 1961, Down Beat magazine indicted Coltrane, along with Eric Dolphy, as players of "Anti-Jazz" in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians. 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" and "Avant-Garde") movement led by Ornette Coleman, which was also denigrated by some jazz musicians (including Trane's old boss, Miles Davis) and critics. But as Coltrane's style further developed, he was determined to make each performance "a whole expression of one's being," as he would call his music in a 1966 interview.

In 1962, Dolphy departed and Jimmy Garrison replaced Workman. From then on, the "Classic Quartet," as it would come 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. However, influences of his earlier, harmonically complex music were still present.

The criticism of the quintet with Dolphy may have had an impact on Coltrane. In contrast to the radicalism of Trane's 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, his studio albums in 1962 and 1963 (with the exception of Coltrane, which featured a blistering version of Harold Arlen's "Out of This World") were much more conservative and accessible. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in collaborations with Duke Ellington and Johnny Hartman. The album Ballads is emblematic of Coltrane's versatility, as he shed new light on old-fashioned standards such as "It's Easy to Remember." Despite a more polished approach in the studio, in concert the quartet continued along its exploratory and challenging path.

The Classic Quartet produced their most famous record, A Love Supreme, in 1964. A culmination of much of Coltrane's work up to this period, this four-part suite is an ode to his faith in and love for God (not necessarily God in the Christian sense – Coltrane often mentioned that he worshipped all gods of all religions). Its spiritual concerns would characterize much of Coltrane's composing and playing from this point until his death in 1967. The fourth movement of the suite, "Psalm," is, in fact, a poem dedicated to God that Coltrane recites through his saxophone. The recording also pointed the way to the atonality of his later free jazz recordings. Despite its challenging musical content, the album was a commercial success by jazz standards, encapsulating both the internal and external energy of the quartet of Coltrane, Tyner, Jones and Garrison. They only played the suite live once – in July 1965. By then, Coltrane's music had grown more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting contrast to the original.

Avant-garde jazz and the second quartet (1965-1967)

In his late (post-"Love Supreme") period, Coltrane showed an increasing interest in avant-garde jazz, purveyed, along with its aforementioned pioneer, Ornette Coleman, by Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and others. In formulating his late style, Coltrane was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray. Coltrane championed many younger free jazz musicians, (notably Archie Shepp), and under his guidance Impulse! became a leading free jazz record label.

After recording A Love Supreme, the influence of Ayler's playing 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 increasingly abstract and dissonant, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, overblowing, and playing in the altissimo register. In the studio, he all but abandoned his soprano to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Dear Old Stockholm (both May 1965), Living Space, Transition (both June 1965), New Thing at Newport (July 1965), Sun Ship (August 1965), and First Meditations (September 1965).

In June 1965, he went into Van Gelder's studio with ten other musicians (including Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Marion Brown, and John Tchicai) to record Ascension. This lengthy 40-minute piece included adventurous solos by the young avant-garde musicians (as well as Coltrane), but was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965.

By any measure, Sanders was one of the most abrasive saxophonists then playing. Coltrane, who used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, gravitated to Sanders's solos. The aforementioned John Gilmore was a major influence on Coltrane's late-period music, as well. After hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!" [2] He also took informal lessons from Gilmore.

By the fall of 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians. Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. 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. It is possible that both men were unhappy with the music's new direction.

Some claim that in 1965 Coltrane began using LSD which would inform the sublime, "cosmic" transcendence of his late period, and also its incomprehensibility to many listeners. After Jones and Tyner's departures, Coltrane led a quintet with Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, his new wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Rashied Ali on drums. Coltrane and Sanders were described by Nat Hentoff as "speaking in tongues," an interesting interpretation seen relative to Coltrane's Christian upbringing in the south. The screaming, especially, can be compared to the cadences of black preachers on the pulpit.

Despite the radicalism of the horns, the rhythm section with Ali and Alice Coltrane had a very different, more relaxed, feel than that with Jones and Tyner. The group can be heard on several live recordings from 1966. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times; though one piece with Sanders has surfaced (the unusual "To Be", which features both Coltrane and Sanders on flutes), 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 which appear on the album Interstellar Space. These saxophone-drum duets are generally considered among the finest music Coltrane recorded near the end of his career.

Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital in Long Island, NY on July 17, 1967, at 40. Coltrane's excessive alcohol and heroin abuse during the 40s and 50s likely laid the seed for this illness, which can strike reformed alcoholics years after they quit. In a 1968 interview Albert Ayler revealed that Coltrane was consulting a Hindu meditative healer for his illness instead of western medicine, though Alice Coltrane has denied this. In any event, conventional treatment may have been ineffective.

Coltrane and his religious beliefs

Coltrane was born and raised a Christian, and was in touch with religion and spirituality from childhood. As a youth, he practiced music in a southern African-American church. In A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz, Norman Weinstein notes the parallel between Coltrane's music and his experience in the southern church.

In 1957, after the age of 30, Coltrane began to shift spiritual directions. He married Juanita Naima Grubb, a Muslim convert, (for whom he later wrote the piece Naima), and came into contact with Islam, an experience that may have led him to overcome his addictions to alcohol and heroin; it was a period of "spiritual awakening" that helped him return to the Jazz scene and eventually produce his greatest work. The journey took him through Islam (particularly Sufism). Bassist Donald Garrett told Coltrane, "You've got to go to the source to learn anything, and Sufism is one of the best sources there is."

Coltrane also explored Hinduism, the Kabbala, Jiddu Krishnamurti, yoga, maths, science, astrology, African history, and even Plato and Aristotle [3]. He notes..."During the year 1957, I 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." In his 1965 album Meditations, Coltrane wrote about uplifting people, "...To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives. Because there certainly is meaning to life." [4]

In October, 1965, Coltrane recorded Om, referring to the name of God in the Hindu religion. Coltrane described "Om" as the "first syllable, the primal word, the word of power". The 29-minute recording contains chants from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu poem. It is alleged that Coltrane began taking LSD around the time of the Om session. A 1966 recording, issued posthumously, has Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders chanting from a Buddhist text, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and reciting a passage describing the primal verbalization "om" as a cosmic/spiritual common denominator in all things.

Coltrane's spiritual journey was interwoven with his investigation into world music. He believed not only in a universal musical structure which transcended ethnic distinctions, but in being able to harness the mystical, magickal language of music itself. Coltrane's study of Indian music led him to believe that certain sounds and scales could "produce specific emotional meanings" (impressions). According to Coltrane, the goal of a musician was to understand these forces, control them, and elicit a response from the audience. Like Pythagoras and his followers who believed music could cure illness, Coltrane 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."

Legacy

Although many casual jazz listeners still consider the late Coltrane albums to contain little more than cacophony, many of these late recordings – among them Ascension, Meditations and the posthumous Interstellar Space – are widely considered masterpieces.

The music of Coltrane's modal and Village Vanguard period was the admitted principal influence on what was arguably the first jazz-rock fusion recording, the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" (December 1966). Some of Coltrane's other innovations would be incorporated into the fusion movement, but with diminishing returns of spiritual fervency and earnestness. More mainstream rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Jerry Garcia, the Stooges, Mike Watt, and OutKast would also seize upon Coltrane's work as inspiration.

Coltrane's massive influence on jazz, both mainstream and avant-garde, began during his lifetime and continued to grow after his death. He is one of the most dominant influences on post-1960 jazz saxophonists and has inspired an entire generation of jazz musicians.

Coltrane was an important pioneer in duet playing for saxophone and drums, first with Elvin Jones and then with Rashied Ali.

Coltrane's son, Ravi Coltrane, has followed in his father's footsteps and is a saxophonist of note. His widow, Alice Coltrane recently returned to music after several decades of retirement.

An African Orthodox Church in San Francisco has recognized Coltrane as a saint since 1971.[5] Their services incorporate Coltrane's music, using his lyrics as prayers [6]. An Alan Yentob-directed documentary concerning the church, and Coltrane, was produced for the BBC in 2004 [7].

References

  • Porter, Lewis (1998). John Coltrane: his life and music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10161-7.

Further reading

  • Kahn, Ashley (2002). A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (1st ed.). New York: Viking. ISBN 0-12-345678-9.
  • Woideck, Carl (editor) (1998). "The John Coltrane Companion" (1st ed.). New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864790-4.

Selected discography

Earliest period - as sideman

Early solo period, at Prestige and Blue Note

Middle period - Atlantic Records

The classic quartet on Impulse! Records

Later period

Final sessions

Trivia

  • Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane (born Anthony Robert McMillan) assumed his stage name in tribute to John Coltrane.
  • Referenced in the Gil Scott-Heron song "Lady Day and John Coltrane", from "Pieces of a Man".
  • Referenced in the John Mayer song "Comfortable" in the lines "Life of the party, and she swears that she's artsy, but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane."
  • Referenced in the Donald Fagan song "Springtime" in the lines "It's even better this time around / With Coltrane on the K.L.H."
  • Referenced in the Sheryl Crow song "If It Make You Happy" in the lines "You listen to Coltrane, derail your own train."
  • Referenced in the India Arie song "Interlude" in the lines "John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie; this is a song for you."

Samples

Giant Steps
From Giant Steps (1960)
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Wikiquote has quotations related to John Coltrane.

Video

  • So What: April 2, 1959 on The Robert Herridge Theater Show, CBS Studio 61, Manhattan NY with Miles Davis (t), Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b), Jimmy Cobb (d) (trombones at final chorus: Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland, Bill Elton)

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