John Coltrane
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John Coltrane |
John William Coltrane (
September 23,
1926 â€"
July 17,
1967) was an
American jazz saxophonist and
composer.
Though he was active before 1955, his prime years were between
1955 and
1967, during which time he reshaped modern jazz and influenced successive generations of other musicians. Coltrane's recording rate was astonishingly prolific, such that many albums did not appear until years after they were recorded.
He is regarded as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians, and one of the greatest musicians of the
twentieth century. Along with
tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins,
Lester Young, and
Sonny Rollins, Coltrane fundamentally altered expectations for the instrument.
Born in
Hamlet, North Carolina, Coltrane grew up in
High Point in an era of
racial segregation. During his seventh-grade school year, Coltrane experienced three deaths in his close-knit family; he lost his aunt, his grandfather, and his father. Coltrane began playing music and practicing obsessively at about this time.
His early life was influenced by a traditional Southern upbringing; the heavy emphasis on religion especially affected his later musical career. Coltrane began playing clarinet early on, but became interested in jazz and soon switched to alto saxophone. Coltrane moved to
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania in June
1943, and was inducted into the Navy in 1945, where he played in a Hawaii-based Navy band, returning to civilian life in
1946. At this time, he had brief contacts with
Charlie Parker, who became a dominant influence on his playing.
Coltrane 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.
Although there are recordings of Coltrane from as early as
1946, he received little recognition until 1955.
Coltrane, now nicknamed "Trane," was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 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 (although not hostile, which couldn't always be said of his prickly boss), both with 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 also began to practice obsessively, incorporating exercises from exercise books for the violin and harp, allowing Coltrane to play at wider intervals during his solos, which he soon began to incorporate into his solos [
1]. 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's 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 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. 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.
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 Trane 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 particullarly 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 â€" 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 â€" in July 1965. By then, Coltrane's music had grown more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting contrast to the original.
Tyner and Jones would back up many other musicians of the day, including Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson, on many albums during the sixties, redefining the way rhythm sections would approach backing soloists.
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, including
Archie Shepp; 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 general 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 conventional treatment may have been ineffective regardless.
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 Naima, a
Muslim convert, 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]
But it was the fusion between music and religion that produced
A Love Supreme. Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at
Brooklyn College,
City University of New York, argues that Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" features Coltrane chanting, "
Allah Supreme". [
5]
In October, 1965, Coltrane recorded
Om, referring to the name of
God in the
Hindu religion. Coltrane described "" 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."
Although many casual jazz listeners still consider the late Coltrane albums to contain little more than extraneous noise, many of these late recordings — among them
Ascension,
Meditations and the posthumous
Interstellar Space — are widely considered masterpieces. Many of Coltrane's innovations would be incorporated into the
jazz fusion movement, but with diminishing returns of spiritual fervency and earnestness. More mainstream rock musicians such as
Jimi Hendrix,
Carlos Santana,
the Stooges, and
Mike Watt would also seize upon Coltrane's work as inspiration in addition to American
Blues music.
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 unaccompanied 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.
Scottish actor
Robbie Coltrane (born Anthony Robert McMillan) assumed his stage name in tribute to John Coltrane.
An
African Orthodox Church in San Francisco has recognized Coltrane as a
saint since 1971.[
6] Their services incorporate Coltrane's music, using his lyrics as prayers.[
7]
Referenced in
Christina Aguilera's hit "
Back In The Day."
Blue Train (
1957)
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall (2005; recorded
1957)
Traneing In (
1957)
Dakar (
1958)
Soultrane (
1958)
Lush Life (Recorded
1957 &
1958)
The Believer (
1959)
Settin' the Pace (
1959)
Black Pearls (1959)
Giant Steps (
1960)
Coltrane Jazz (
1960)
Bags & Trane (
1960, with
Milt Jackson)
Coltrane Plays the Blues (
1960)
Coltrane's Sound (
1960)
My Favorite Things (
1960)
Olé Coltrane (
1961)
Live! at the Village Vanguard (
1961)
Africa/Brass (
1961)
Ballads (
1962)
Impressions (
1963)
Live at Birdland (
1963)
Newport '63 (
1963), (
posthumous)
Crescent (
1964)
A Love Supreme (
1964)
New Wave in Jazz (
1965)
One Down, One Up - Live at the Half Note (2006; recorded
1965)
John Coltrane Quartet Plays (
1965)
Dear Lord (
1965)
Transition (
1965)
Living Space (
1965)
Ascension (
1965)
Sun Ship (
1965)
First Meditations (
1965)
Live in Seattle (
1965)
Om (
1965)
Kulu Se Mama (
1965)
Meditations (
1965)
Cosmic Music (
1966)
Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (
1966)
Live in Japan (
1966)
Stellar Regions (1995; recorded
1967)
Interstellar Space (1974; recorded
1967)
Ogunde (
1967)
Expression (
1967)
The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording (2001; recorded
1967)
*
Download sample of "Giant Steps" from
Giant Steps (1960)
*
Download sample of "Traneing In" from
Traneing In* Porter, Lewis (1998).
John Coltrane: his life and music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472101617.
* 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.
*
Official Website*
John Coltrane at
Music City*
Some Transcriptions in PDF format*
John Coltrane at All About Jazz*
Saving the Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, NY*
Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church*
Find-A-Grave profile for John Coltrane*
Tranespot*
Essay at mentalcontagion.com*
John Coltrane, Avant Garde Jazz, and the Evolution of "My Favorite Things"*
Annotated abbreviated discography 1960-67, concert reports, newsvideo
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)
