American jazz great John Coltrane emerged in the 1950s, playing tenor and soprano sax with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. A leader of "hard bop", in the 1960s he led his own groups and changed the face of jazz with experimentation and improvisation, his later recordings reflecting his belief that music was a form of spiritual expression. Sometimes called simply 'Trane, his recordings include Giant Steps (1959), My Favorite Things (1960), Olé (1961) and A Love Supreme (1964). In his later recordings he collaborated on avante-garde music with his wife, Alice Coltrane (b. Alice McLeod, 1937-2007), who had a career in her own right.
The band sometimes called Coltrane's "classic quartet" of the early 1960s included McCoy Tyner (piano), Elvin Jones (drums) and Jimmy Garrison (bass).
(b Hamlet nc, 23 Sept 1926; d New York, 17 July 1967). American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer. He first became known as a soloist with Miles Davis (1955-7, 1958-60) and led his own bands from 1960. His solos were marked by great technical facility, expressed in rapid delivery (as in Giant Steps, 1959), systematic variation of motifs (My Favorite Things, 1960, and A Love Supreme, 1964) and radical developments in timbre. He mostly played the tenor saxophone, but from the early 1960s he also used the soprano instrument. After Charlie Parker he was the most innovatory and widely imitated jazz saxophonist.
Saxophone player John Coltrane (1926-1967) created an innovative form of music that continues to influence modern jazz musicians, even more than two decades after his death.
Legendary saxophone virtuoso John Coltrane continues to influence modern jazz even from the grave. Coltrane's death more than two decades ago only enhanced his reputation as an artist who brought whole new dimensions to a constantly innovative musical form. The "sheets of sound" and other bizarre stylistic elements that characterize Coltrane's jazz sparked heated debate at the time of their composition. Today his work is still either hailed as the very pinnacle of genius or dismissed as flights of monotonous self-indulgence. In an Atlantic retrospective, Edward Strickland calls Coltrane "the lone voice crying not in the wilderness but from some primordial chaos" whose music "evokes not only the jungle but all that existed before the jungle." The critic adds: "Coltrane was attempting to raise jazz from the saloons to the heavens. No jazzman had attempted so overtly to offer his work as a form of religious expression. … In his use of jazz as prayer and meditation Coltrane was beyond all doubt the principal spiritual force in music."
"Last Great Leader"
Andrew White, himself a musician and transcriber of many of Coltrane's extended solos, told Down Beat magazine that the jazz industry "has been faltering artistically and financially ever since the death of John Coltrane. … Besides being one of our greatest saxophonists, improvisors, innovative and creative contributors, Coltrane was our last great leader. As a matter of fact, he was the only leader we've had in jazz who successfully maintained an evolutionary creative output as well as building a 'jazz star' image. He merged the art and the money."
John William Coltrane, Jr., was born on the autumn equinox, September 23, 1926. He was raised in rural North Carolina, where he was exposed to the charismatic music of the Southern church - both of his grandfathers were ministers. Coltrane's father also played several instruments as a hobby, so the young boy grew up in a musical environment. Quite on his own, he discovered jazz through the recordings of Count Basie and Lester Young. He persuaded his mother to buy him a saxophone, settling for an alto instead of a tenor because the alto was supposedly easier to handle.
Showed Saxophone Talent Immediately
Coltrane showed a proficiency on the saxophone almost immediately. After briefly studying at the Granoff Studios and at the Ornstein School of Music in Philadelphia, he joined a typical cocktail lounge band. Then he played for a year with a Navy band in Hawaii before landing a spot in the Eddie Vinson ensemble in 1947. He was twenty-one at the time. For Vinson's band Coltrane performed on the tenor sax, but his ears were open to jazz greats on both alto and tenor, including Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Tab Smith. After a year with Vinson, Coltrane joined Dizzy Gillespie's group for one of his longest stints - four years. By that time he had "paid his dues" and was experimenting with composition and technical innovation.
The 1950s saw a great flowering of modern jazz with the advent of artists such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Coltrane played horn for both Davis and Monk; the latter showed him tricks of phrasing and harmony that deepened his control of his instrument. Coltrane can be heard playing tenor sax on Davis's famous Columbia album Kind of Blue, a work that hints of the direction Coltrane would ultimately follow. Strickland writes of the period: "Coltrane's attempt 'to explore all the avenues' made him the perfect stylistic complement to Davis, with his cooler style, which featured sustained blue notes and brief cascades of sixteenths almost willfully retreating into silence, and also Monk, with his spare and unpredictable chords and clusters. Davis, characteristically, paid the tersest homage, when, on being told that his music was so complex that it required five saxophonists, he replied that he'd once had Coltrane."
Exhausted Every Possibility for His Horn
What Coltrane called "exploring all the avenues" was essentially the quest to exhaust every possibility for his horn in the course of a song. He devoted himself to rapid runs in which individual notes were virtually indistinguishable, a style quickly labeled "sheets of sound." As Martin Williams puts it in Saturday Review, Coltrane "seemed prepared to gush out every conceivable note, run his way a step at a time through every complex chord, every extension, and every substitution, and go beyond that by reaching for sounds that no tenor saxophone had ever uttered before him." Needless to say, this music was not easily understood - critics were quick to find fault with its length and monotony - but it represented an evolution that was welcomed not only by jazz performers, but by composers and even rock musicians as well.
In 1960 Coltrane formed his own quartet in the saxophone-plus-rhythm mode. He was joined by McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass, all of whom were as eager as Coltrane to explore an increasingly free idiom. Finally Coltrane was free to expand his music at will, and his solos took on unprecedented lengths as he experimented with modal foundations, pentatonic scales, and triple meter. His best-known work was recorded during this period, including "My Favorite Things," a surprising theme-and-variations piece based on the saccharine Richard Rogers tune from "The Sound of Music." In "My Favorite Things," writes Williams, Coltrane "encountered a popular song which had the same sort of structure he was interested in, a folk-like simplicity and incantiveness, and very little harmonic motion. … It became a best seller."
Extent of Jazz Legacy Realized
By 1965 Coltrane was one of the most famous jazz artists alive, acclaimed alike in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Critics who had once dismissed his work "all but waved banners to show their devotion to him," to quote Strickland. Not surprisingly, the musician continued to experiment, even at the risk of alienating his growing audience. His work grew ever more complex, ametric, and improvisatorial. Coltrane explained his personal vision in Newsweek. "I have to feel that I'm after something," he said. "If I make money, fine. But I'd rather be striving. It's the striving, man, it's that I want."
Coltrane continued to perform and record even as advancing liver cancer left him racked with pain. He died at forty, only months after he cut his album Expression. The subsequent years have revealed the extent of his legacy to jazz, a legacy based on the spiritual quest for meaning and involvement between man, his soul, and the universe. Strickland concludes: "Those who criticize Coltrane's virtuosic profusion are of the same party as those who found Van Gogh's canvases 'too full of paint.' … In Coltrane, sound - often discordant, chaotic, almost unbearable - became the spiritual form of the man, an identification perhaps possible only with a wind instrument, with which the player is of necessity fused more intimately than with strings or percussion. … The whole spectrum of Coltrane's music - the world-weary melancholy and transcendental yearning that ultimately recall Bach more than Parker, the jungle calls and glossolalic shrieks, the whirlwind runs and spare elegies for murdered children and a murderous planet - is at root merely a suffering man's breath. The quality of that music reminds us that the root of the word inspiration is 'breathing upon.' This country has not produced a greater musician."
Born John William Coltrane, September 23, 1926, in Hamlet, North Carolina; died of liver cancer July 17, 1967; son of John Robert Coltrane (a tailor) and Gertrude Blair; married Naima Grubbs October 3, 1955, and divorced in 1966; married Alice McCleod (pianist/harpist) in 1966; children John W. Jr., Ravi John Coltrane. Education: Ornstein School of Music circa 1943; Granoff Studio. Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Navy 1945-46.
Career
Played alto saxophone in a Navy Band, 1945-46; free-lanced with various musicians in Philadelphia, 1946-49; with Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, 1948-49; with Dizzy Gillespie, 1949-51; performed with saxophonist Earl Bostic, 1952; toured with saxophonist Johnny Hodges, 1954; performed with organist Jimmy Smith before joining Miles Davis' quintet, 1955; performed and recorded with Thelonious Monk, 1957; returned to Miles Davis' group and recorded with Kenny Burrell, 1958; quit Miles Davis' group and recorded album Giant Steps, 1959; led own group, 1960-65; added Eric Dolphy to group, 1961; played jobs with Wes Montgomery and recorded with Duke Ellington, 1962; recorded with singer Johnny Hartman, 1963; performed with two drummers and recruited saxophonist Farrell "Pharaoh" Sanders, 1965; led with new ensemble, 1966.
Life's Work
Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane led, between 1960 and 1966, one of most influential groups in the history of jazz. Since his first jobs with nationally known band leaders in the late 1940s, Coltrane's career--which included stints with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk--went through several phases and stylistic changes before culminating in the playing of "free jazz" based upon the omission of a harmonic center. Like saxophonist Charlie Parker, he opened up new improvisatory variations by expanding the musical vocabulary of jazz. Apart from bringing into vogue the playing of chords on the saxophone, Coltrane often led groups which employed either two basses or two drummers. His solemn manner, spiritual outlook, and chronic drug use made him an avant garde cultural hero among countless jazz artists and 1960s rock musicians. Inspired by the music of Africa, India, and the Far East, Coltrane brought together disparate musical and cultural elements (including modern symphonic music by such composers as Igor Stravinsky), which made him one of the founders of a world music consciousness, and a creative force whose profound impact has yet to be fully recognized.
John Coltrane, Jr., was born on September 23, 1926, in Hamlet, North Carolina, to John Robert Coltrane--a tailor--and Alice Gertrude Blair, members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who displayed talent as amateur musical instrumentalists. A few months after the birth of their son, the Coltranes moved one hundred miles north to High Point, North Carolina. Not long after, Coltrane's father separated from the family, leaving Alice and her sister to raise John Jr. A bright student in grammar school, Coltrane's subsequent musical interests shifted his attention away from his school studies which earned him average grades. Around the time of his father's death from stomach cancer in 1939, Coltrane took up alto saxophone and then clarinet. Shortly afterward he played in a local community band, and in the fall of 1940, became a member of William Penn High School's newly formed music ensemble. During this time, he spent countless hours in private musical practice which became an obsessive endeavor.
After graduating from high school in May of 1943, Coltrane joined his mother in Philadelphia, and enrolled in the Ornstein School of Music, where he received private saxophone lessons from Mike Guerra. "[Coltrane] was easily the best student in my class," accounted Guerra in Chasin' the Trane. "I wrote out complex chord progressions and special exercises in chromatic scales, and he was one of the few who brought his homework back practically the next day and played it on sight," he continued. At this time, Coltrane befriended such Philadelphia jazzmen as Jimmy Heath, Benny Golson, and Ray Bryant-- musicians with whom he often performed with in small groups around the city.
Inducted into the Navy in 1945, Coltrane was first stationed in California and then spent a tour of duty on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Between regular military duties Coltrane, called "Trane" by other naval personnel, performed on clarinet and alto saxophone in a dance band, The Melody Masters. Shortly before his discharge in August of 1946, and while still in Oahu, Coltrane took part in his first recording session with a small group of Navy musicians, playing bebop-style numbers on alto saxophone. Back in Philadelphia, Coltrane, funded by Veteran's Administration benefits, continued his musical education at the Granoff Studios. Like many young jazzmen of the post war period, Coltrane balanced his study of music between formal and informal training. "Philadelphia's jazz scene had high technical standards in comparison with many local scenes outside New York," noted Lewis Porter in John Coltrane: His Life and Music. "This clearly had an impact on Coltrane, who was fascinated with technical and theoretical matters. He both contributed to and benefitted from this aspect of the Philadelphia jazz life," he continued.
In 1947 Coltrane spent three months in the band of trumpeter King Kolax, and then continued to study music and free-lance around Philadelphia, until joining Jimmy Heath's big band. After disbanding his group in Philadelphia, in November of 1948, alto saxophonist Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson hired Coltrane as a tenor saxophonist as part of his new unit. Coltrane toured with Vinson until leaving the band in the summer of 1949, and by September was hired as lead alto saxophonist for Dizzy Gillespie's big band. Though honored to be a member of Gillespie's ensemble, Coltrane's position on alto offered him little room for improvisation. In between playing Gillespie's new bebop novelty material, Coltrane did manage to perform complex modern compositions such as Gillespie's "Night in Tunisia" and Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight."
When financial troubles caused Gillespie to break up his big band in 1950, the trumpeter formed a small unit which included Coltrane on tenor saxophone. As a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet, Coltrane was joined by vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Specs Wright. In March of 1951 Coltrane recorded on Gillespie's Detroit-based Dee Gee label with Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell, both of whom he would later collaborate on solo recording projects. In New York that same year, Coltrane, as a result of his increasing drug addiction, was fired by Gillespie.
Back in Philadelphia, Coltrane continued his study of music through relentless practice and free-lance jobs. In April of 1952 he toured with alto saxophonist Earl Bostic. Coltrane free-lanced around Philadelphia, until joining Johnny Hodges in March of 1954. In a Down Beat interview with Don Demichael, Coltrane described the musical value of his stint with Hodges: "I was getting first hand information about things that happened way before my time." Despite an enthusiasm for Hodge's music, Coltrane's drug habit forced the bandleader to fire him.
In September of 1955 Coltrane worked in Philadelphia with organist Jimmy Smith. In John Coltrane: His Life and Music, Lewis Porter noted that during this period, "Coltrane utilized a very slow vibrato, lending to poignant delicacy to his sound. At faster tempos, Coltrane's tone became more raspy and intense." When tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins left Miles Davis' band, the trumpeter invited Coltrane to fill the job. At first, Coltrane found playing with Davis uneasy and frustrating. After a very brief return with Jimmy Smith, he rejoined Davis' band later that month. Two months later, Coltrane appeared on the Prestige album The New Miles Davis Quintet, soon to be followed by sessions that yielded Davis' classic works, Cookin', Relaxin', Workin' With Miles Davis, and Steamin'. He then appeared on Davis' first solo Columbia release, 'Round About Midnight. By 1957 Coltrane's increasing drug use began to take its toll. In his memoir Miles, Davis recalled his waning tolerance for Coltrane's addiction: "Trane was a beautiful person, a real sweet kind of guy, spiritual, all of that. So you really couldn't help loving him and caring about him, too. I figured he was making more money than he ever made in his life, and so when I talked to him I thought he would stop, but he didn't." Without heeding his bandleader's advice, Coltrane was fired by Davis in April of 1957.
In the summer of 1957 Coltrane, bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Shadow Wilson, backed pianist Thelonious Monk at New York's Five Spot on the city's lower east side. Though it lasted only several months, Coltrane's stint with Monk proved an invaluable musical experience. Monk's habit of leaving space behind the soloist (termed "laying out") allowed Coltrane freedom to explore various harmonic possibilities. Ted Goia wrote, in The History of Jazz, "Rather than emulating Monk's use of space or compositional style of improvisation, as so many others did when playing with the pianist, Coltrane stayed true to his own emphatic style." As Goia added, "In an amazing turnaround, Monk came to adapt to Coltrane, even going so far as not playing behind some of the horn solos, allowing the tenorist to stretch out with just bass and drum backing (as the saxophonist would do a few years later with his own band)." Shortly before joining Monk, Coltrane cut the number, "Monk's Mood," which later appeared on the Prestige album Thelonious Himself. As a regular of Monk's group, he attended an April 1957 session which yielded material featured on the album Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane, a work containing such Monk classics as "Ruby My Dear," "Trinkle Tinkle" and "Nutty." Several years later, in Down Beat, Coltrane recalled, "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically."
In May of 1957 Coltrane recorded his debut album, entitled Coltrane, for Prestige Records (over the next months he would record material which make up the albums Dakar, and Traneing In). That same year, Prestige arranged a deal with Blue Note Records allowing Coltrane to record one album, which brought forth, Blue Train, a modern jazz classic, yielding such Coltrane numbers as the twelve bar-structured "Blue Train" and "Moment's Notice"--a sixteen-bar original which Lewis Porter noted, in John Coltrane: His Life and Music, that displayed Coltrane's "preoccupation with placing changing harmonies under a repeated note in the melody."
At this time, Coltrane's musical explorations coincided with an increasing interest in world religions and spiritual consciousness. In the liner notes to A Love Supreme, Coltrane wrote, "During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which led me to a richer, fuller more productive life ... All Praise to God." As Valerie Wilmer noted, in As Serious as Your Life, "[Coltrane] was not the first musician to speak of spiritual matters, but his example was one of the most compelling and persuasive"--one that exemplified the "hip" element by becoming "a musician of value or worth to the community," and African American culture.
In 1958, after periodically kicking his drug habit, Coltrane rejoined Davis' expanded-unit which included alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderly. In February and March of 1958 the sextet recorded Milestones. During this two-month period, he also recorded two solo efforts Soultrane and Trane's Reign, and co-led a date with guitarist Kenny Burrell. In the spring of 1958, Coltrane recorded on Davis' album the classic numbers "On Green Dolphin Street" and Richard Roger's "My Funny Valentine"--material which comprised the album '58 Sessions. In March and April of 1959 Coltrane took part in sessions which produced Davis' classic album Kind of Blue. Despite his invaluable experience with Davis' sextet, Coltrane had, by 1959, desired to expand his own musical horizons, and spent many hours at the piano working out harmonic variations [Coltrane composed most of his work on the keyboard]. As he told Ralph Gleason, in the liner notes to Ole' Coltrane, "All the time I was with Miles I didn't have anything to think about but myself so I stayed at the piano and chords, chords, chords! I ended up playing them on my horn."
A work with an immense impact on the jazz world, Coltrane's Atlantic album, Giant Steps, was cut in three sessions held between April and December of 1959. His original numbers, "Giant Steps" and "Countdown," became test pieces not only for saxophonists but for other instrumentalists as well. In the album's liner notes, Coltrane explained that he titled "Giant Steps" for the intervals of the composition's bass line which moved from "minor thirds to fourths ... in contrast fourths or in half-steps."
After a European tour with Davis, Coltrane left the trumpeter's group in April of 1960, and five months later, (after several personnel changes) assembled a quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. In Jones' inventive musicianship Coltrane found the ideal drummer whose revolutionary circular-style of playing and furious sense of swing seemed to anticipate his musical ideas. In October the quartet recorded the Atlantic album, My Favorite Things, featuring Rodgers' and Hammerstein's title selection, on which Coltrane's eastern-sounding soprano saxophone inspired numerous jazz interpretations of the original stage number. In May and June of 1961, he gained the Impulse labels' permission to record an eighteen-piece orchestral work, Africa/Brass. In November of the same year, the quartet cut [with Reggie Workman on bass and a guest appearance by Eric Dolphy] Live at the Village Vanguard which included the feral blues "Chasin' the Trane." Coltrane's extended soloing, noted Nat Hentoff in the album's liner notes, "... is particularly fascinating for the astonishing variety of textures Coltrane draws from the full range of his horn and the unflagging intensity of his inventions."
During the early 1960s, Coltrane's agonized saxophone cries and atonal intervals led critics to label him "the angry tenor" (a title he despised). Despite criticism, Coltrane's fierce attack and astonishing display of unique musical ideas were balanced by his tasteful playing of ballads and blues. In describing the man behind the media image, Elvin Jones commented, in Thinking in Jazz: "[Coltrane] was so calm and had such a peaceful attitude, it was soothing to be around him....To me, he was like an angel on earth. He struck me deeply. This is not just an ordinary person, and I'm not a believer to think very seriously about that. I've been touched some way by something greater than life." Coltrane's deepening religious consciousness inspired him, in December of 1964, to record the album Love Supreme. A four section suite, Love Supreme became Down Beat magazine's album of the year, and emerged as Coltrane's best-selling recording.
In 1965 the Impulse label released Ascension, Coltrane's first tonally free effort. "This forty-minute performance," observed Ted Gioia in The History of Jazz, "found Coltrane and his rhythm section supplemented by a half-dozen horn players in a wild free-for-all--a superheated encounter that, for many listeners, served as the fitting logical and anarchistic end point to this quest of freedom." In September of 1965 tenor saxophonist Ferrell "Pharaoh" Sanders joined Coltrane's ensemble. Frustrated that his piano had taken a background role, Tyner left the band at the end of 1965, and was replaced by pianist and harpist Alice McCleod, a former Detroiter who became Coltrane's second wife in 1966. After Coltrane's addition of drummer, Rashied Ali, the group's two-drum line-up found disfavor with Elvin Jones, who soon left the group (Jimmy Garrison stayed with Coltrane's group until the summer of 1966).
By 1967 Coltrane's music no longer employed the use of a steady beat (most notably in the absence of a walking bass), and abandoned the use of a tonal center in his compositions. As saxophonist Dave Leibman noted in Down Beat, "In '66 and '67, Trane employed no harmonic basis at all, but worked on the base level of harmonic minimalism, which he could paint any picture over, moving in and out of the stated key, playing in many keys at once." In February and March of 1967 Coltrane recorded the album Expressions. He too recorded, in February, a number of duets with drummer Rashied Ali, posthumously released as the Impulse! album Interstellar Space. At this time, Coltrane's chronic use of LSD attributed to his worsening health. After complaints of pains in his stomach in May of the same year, he was hospitalized. Two months later, Coltrane was admitted to Huntington Hospital, in New York City, where he died of liver cancer on July 17, 1967.
Despite his untimely death, Coltrane left behind a musical legacy of profound human message. In an interview quoted in the book John Coltrane: His Life and Music, Coltrane expressed his ultimate creative purpose: "I think music can make the world better and, if I'm qualified, I want to do it. I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls."
Awards
Down Beat Jazz Musician of the Year, International Critic's Poll, Reader's Poll, Best Saxophone, and Best Miscellaneous (soprano saxophone), New Star Combo, 1961; Down Beat Jazzman of the Year, 1965; album Love Supreme voted Album of the Year by Down Beat and Jazz, 1965.
Works
Selective Discography
(With Dizzy Gillespie) The Champ, Savoy, 1992.
(With Miles Davis) The New Miles Davis Quintet, Prestige 1955.
Cookin', Prestige, 1956.
Relaxin', Prestige 1956.
Workin' With Miles Davis, Prestige, 1956.
Steamin', Prestige, 1956.
Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, Prestige, 1956.
Round About Midnight, Columbia, 1956.
Milestones, Columbia, 1958.
Miles Davis '58 Sessions, Columbia, reissued material, 1991.
Kind of Blue, Columbia, 1959.
(With Thelonious Monk) Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane, Jazzland, reissued on Original Jazz Classics, 1987.
The Thelonious Monk Quartet Featuring John Coltrane, Live at the Five Spot/Discovery! Blue Note.
(Solo) Dakar, Prestige, 1957.
Blue Train, Blue Note, 1957.
Traneing In, Prestige, 1958.
Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane, New Jazz, 1958, reissued on Original Jazz Classics, 1987.
Giant Steps, Atlantic, 1960.
My Favorite Things, Atlantic, 1961.
Ole' Coltrane, Atlantic, 1961.
The Complete Africa Brass Sessions, Impulse!, 1961.
Live at the Village Vanguard, Impulse!, 1962.
Coltrane, Impulse!, 1962.
Ballads, Impulse!, 1962.
John Coltrane in Stockholm 1963, Charly Records, 1986.
A Love Supreme, Impulse!, 1964.
Cresent, Impulse!, 1964.
Ascension, Impulse!, 1965.
Sun Ship, Impulse!, 1965.
Meditations, Impulse!, 1965.
Coltrane Plays the Blues, Atlantic, 1966.
Expression, Impulse!, 1967.
Interstellar Space, Impulse!, 1967.
Boxed Sets John Coltrane: The Prestige Recordings.
The Last Giant, Rhino Records.
Further Reading
Books
Berliner, Paul F., Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Davis, Miles with Quincy Troupe, Miles the Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1989, p. 209-210.
Gioia, Ted, The History of Jazz, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 245-246. Thomas, J.C., Chasin' The Trane: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane. Da Capo, 1976.
Porter, Lewis, John Coltrane: His Life and Music, University of Michigan, 1998.
Wilmer, Valerie, As Serious as Your Life: The Story of Jazz, Pluto Press, 1977, p. 25-44.
Periodicals
Down Beat, October 16, 1958; September, 29, 1960; June 1988, pp. 20-27.
Other
Additional information for this profile was obtained from the liner notes to: Giant Steps, Atlantic, 1960; Live at the Village Vanguard, by Nat Hentoff, 1962; John Coltrane, A Love Supreme, 1964; Ole' Coltrane, by Ralph Gleason, Atlantic, 1961.
(click to enlarge) John Coltrane, 1966. (credit: Reprinted with permission of Down Beat magazine)
(born Sept. 23, 1926, Hamlet, N.C., U.S. — died July 17, 1967, Huntington, N.Y.) U.S. saxophonist and composer. After growing up in Philadelphia, he gained early experience in the bands of Dizzy Gillespie and Johnny Hodges. Associations with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk in the 1950s established Coltrane's place in the vanguard of modern jazz, and his quartet of the early 1960s is one of the outstanding groups in jazz history. His style encompassed the modal jazz first explored with Davis, the complex chord structures of his own compositions, and ultimately the extremes of timbre, dynamics, and register associated with free jazz. Coltrane's total mastery of the tenor and soprano saxophones, the rich harmonic density of his compositions, and his clear projection of emotion enabled him to reconcile technical virtuosity with an often spiritual profundity.
Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane was born 80 years ago today. Coltrane worked with other jazz greats Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Thelonius Monk in the 1950s, forming his own group — a quartet — in 1960. Noted for his modal-jazz style of music and his avant-garde compositions, Coltrane was also considered a brilliant tenor and soprano saxophonist. His recordings of My Favorite Things (1961), A Love Supreme (1964), and Ascension (1965) still influence the styles of jazz musicians today.
Coltrane, John (kōltrān', kōl'trān), 1926-67, American jazz musician, b. Hamlet, N.C. He began playing tenor saxophone as an adolescent. Coltrane worked with numerous big bands before emerging in the mid-1950s as a major stylist while playing as a sideman with Miles Davis. Originally influenced by Lester Young, Coltrane displayed in his playing a dazzling technical brilliance combined with ardent emotion and eventually a kind of mysticism. His style, which was at once sonorous and spare, was influenced by the rhythms and tonal structure of African and Asian music. Coltrane made a number of influential recordings, among them the modal-jazz classics My Favorite Things (1961) and A Love Supreme (1964), and the later exemplars of free jazz, Ascension and Interstellar Space, his final album. From the late 1950s until his death he was considered the outstanding tenor and soprano saxophonist of the jazz avant-garde, and his music continues to be a strong source of inspiration to jazz and pop musicians.
Bibliography
See biographies by E. Nisenson (1994) and L. Porter (1998); B. Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (2007); discography by Y. Fujioka et al. (1995).
Representative Albums: "Giant Steps," "My Favorite Things," "A Love Supreme"
Representative Songs: "Naima," "Impressions," "My Favorite Things"
Biography
Despite a relatively brief career (he first came to notice as a sideman at age 29 in 1955, formally launched a solo career at 33 in 1960, and was dead at 40 in 1967), saxophonist John Coltrane was among the most important, and most controversial, figures in jazz. It seems amazing that his period of greatest activity was so short, not only because he recorded prolifically, but also because, taking advantage of his fame, the record companies that recorded him as a sideman in the 1950s frequently reissued those recordings under his name and there has been a wealth of posthumously released material as well. Since Coltrane was a protean player who changed his style radically over the course of his career, this has made for much confusion in his discography and in appreciations of his playing. There remains a critical divide between the adherents of his earlier, more conventional (if still highly imaginative) work and his later, more experimental work. No one, however, questions Coltrane's almost religious commitment to jazz or doubts his significance in the history of the music.
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, NC, 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, his 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 band 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 Prestige, but Coltrane began appearing on many of the label's sessions. After he became better known in the 1960s, 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 finally to 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 titled simply 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 later 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, doing 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. In between the sessions for the album, Coltrane began recording what would be his Atlantic Records 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.
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.
John Coltrane is sometimes described as one of jazz's most influential musicians, but one is hard put to find followers who actually play in his style. Rather, he 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. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz. He was astonishingly prolific: he made about fifty recordings as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. As his career progressed, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension. His second wife was pianist Alice Coltrane, and their son Ravi Coltrane is also a saxophonist.
He influenced innumerable musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He received many awards, among them a posthumous Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2007 for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz." [2]
John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, and grew up in High Point NC, attending William Penn High School (now Penn-Griffin School for the Arts) in High Point, NC. Beginning in December 1938 Coltrane's aunt, grandparents, and father all died within a few months of each other, leaving John to be raised by his mother and a close cousin.[3][4] In June 1943 he moved to Philadelphia PA . He enlisted in the Navy in 1945, and played in the Navy jazz band once he was stationed in Hawaii. Coltrane returned to civilian life in 1946 and began jazz theory studies with Philadelphia guitarist and composer Dennis Sandole. Coltrane continued under Sandole's tutelage until the early 1950s. Originally an altoist,[5] during this time Coltrane also began playing tenor saxophone with the Eddie Vinson Band. Coltrane later referred to this point in his life as a time when "a wider area of listening opened up for me. There were many things that people like Hawk, and Ben, and Tab Smith were doing in the '40s that I didn't understand, but that I felt emotionally."[6]
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 article in 1960 he recalled: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."[5] Parker became an early idol, and they played together on occasion in the late 1940s.
Contemporary correspondence shows that Coltrane was already known as "Trane" by this point, and that the music from some 1946 recording sessions had been played for Miles Davis—possibly impressing the latter.[1]
Although there are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1945, his peers at the time did not recognize 'genius' in the young musician, though he was a member of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges in the early- to mid-1950s.
Miles and Monk period (1955–1957)
Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 while studying with guitarist Dennis Sandole when he received a call from trumpeterMiles Davis. Davis, whose success during the late forties had been followed by several years of decline in activity and reputation, due in part to his struggles with heroin addiction, was again active, and was about to form a quintet. Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "First Great Quintet" to distinguish it from Davis's later group with Wayne Shorter) from October 1955 through April 1957 (with a few absences), a period during which Davis released several influential recordings which revealed the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability. This classic First Quintet, best represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956 that resulted in the albums issued as Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin', some of the most treasured titles in Davis's early discography, disbanded in mid April due partly to Coltrane's problematic heroin addiction.[1]
During the later part of 1957 Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York’s Five Spot, a legendary jazz club, 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. A private recording made by Juanita Naima Coltrane Live at the Five Spot-Discovery! of a 1958 reunion of the group was issued by Blue Note Records in 1993. More significantly, a high-quality tape of a concert given by this quartet in November 1957 surfaced, and in 2005 Blue Note was able to make it commercially available. Recorded by Voice of America, the performances are extraordinary, confirming this group's lofty reputation, and the resulting album, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall has been widely acclaimed.
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 several of them, notably the title track, "Moment's Notice" and "Lazy Bird", have become standards. Both tunes employed the first examples of Coltrane's chord substitution cycles known as Coltrane changes.[1]
Davis and Coltrane again
Coltrane rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October 1958, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of sound" to describe the style Coltrane developed during his stint with Monk and was perfecting in Miles' group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, with rapid runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with, in due course, 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 aforementioned Davis sessions Milestones and Kind of Blue, and the live recordings, Miles & Monk at Newport and Jazz at the Plaza.[1]
Toward the end of this period Coltrane recorded his first album comprising his own compositions exclusively, Giant Steps (for Atlantic Records). The album's title track is generally considered to have the most complex and difficult chord progression of any widely-played jazz composition. Giant Steps utilizes Coltrane changes, a concept developed initially on Blue Train and featured most notably on the song "Moment's Notice". His development of these altered chord progression cycles led to further experimentation with improvised melody and harmony that he would continue throughout his career.[1]
First albums as leader
Coltrane formed his first group, a quartet, in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, 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 when Tyner felt ready for the exposure of regularly working with him. Also recorded in the same sessions were the later released albums Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Plays the Blues.
Still with Atlantic Records, for whom he had recorded Giant Steps, his first record with his new group was also his debut playing the soprano saxophone, the hugely successful My Favorite Things. Around the end of his tenure with Davis, Coltrane had begun 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 claimed to have given Coltrane his first soprano saxophone. The new soprano sound was coupled with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwin tune "But Not for Me", Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement (Coltrane changes) used on Giant Steps (movement in major thirds rather than conventional perfect fourths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression. Several other tracks recorded in the session utilized this harmonic device, including "26-2," "Satellite," "Body and Soul," and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes."
First years with Impulse Records (1960-1962)
Coltrane and wife Alice, 1962
Shortly before completing his contract with Atlantic in May 1961 with the album Olé Coltrane (although Atlantic would continue to release recordings from their vaults for many years), Coltrane joined the newly formed Impulse! Records 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 while 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. John Gilmore, a longtime saxophonist with musician Sun Ra, 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, who had radically altered his style. 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.[cite this quote]
Coltrane's classic quartet covers the somber Mal Waldron composition.
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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 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 on the album Duke Ellington and John Coltrane and with deep-voiced ballad singer Johnny Hartman on an eponymous co-credited album. The Impulse compilation Coltrane for Lovers is largely drawn from these three albums. The album Ballads is emblematic of Coltrane's versatility, as the quartet 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 to balance "standard" and its own more exploratory and challenging music, as can be seen on the Impressions album (two extended jams including the title track along with "Dear Old Stockholm", "After the Rain" and a blues), Coltrane at Newport (where he plays "My Favorite Things") and Live at Birdland both from 1963. Coltrane later said he enjoyed having a "balanced catalogue."
The Classic Quartet produced their most famous record, 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 would characterize 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. 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. Indeed the previous album Crescent recorded only a few months before already shows the adventurousness and rapport between these musicians. The album was composed at Coltrane's home in Dix Hills on Long Island.
The quartet only played A Love Supreme live once—in July 1965 at a concert in Antibes, France. By then, Coltrane's music had grown even more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting contrast to the original.
Avant-garde jazz and the second quartet (1965–1967)
In his late period, Coltrane showed an increasing interest in avant-garde jazz, purveyed by Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra and others. In developing his late style, Coltrane was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, a rhythm section honed with Cecil Taylor as leader. Coltrane championed many younger free jazz musicians, (notably Archie Shepp), and under his influence Impulse! became a leading free jazz record label.
After A Love Supreme was recorded, Ayler's apocalyptic 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 increasingly abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, utilization of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return to Coltrane's sheets of sound. 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, 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, a 40-minute long piece that included adventurous solos by the young avant-garde musicians (as well as Coltrane), and 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, virtuosic saxophonists then playing. While Coltrane used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders would opt to overblow his entire solo, resulting in a constant screaming and screeching in the altissimo range of the instrument. The more Coltrane played with Sanders, the more he gravitated to Sanders' unique sound. John Gilmore was also a major influence on Coltrane's late-period music. After hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!"[7] He also took informal lessons from Gilmore.
Adding to the 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. Both Tyner and Jones subsequently expressed displeasure in interviews, after Coltrane's death, with the music's new direction, while incorporating some of the free-jazz form's intensity into their own solo projects.
In 1965 Coltrane may have begun using LSD[8][9] - informing the sublime, "cosmic" transcendence of his late period, and also its incomprehensibility to many listeners. After Jones's and Tyner's departures, Coltrane led a quintet with Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, his second 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". When touring, the group was known for playing very lengthy versions of their repertoire, many stretching beyond 30 minutes and sometimes even being an hour long. Concert solos for band members regularly extended beyond fifteen minutes in duration.
Despite the radicalism of the horns, the rhythm section with Ali and Alice Coltrane had a more relaxed, random but meditative feel than with Jones and Tyner. The group can be heard on several live recordings from 1966, including Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and Live in Japan. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times; though pieces with Sanders have surfaced (the unusual "To Be", which features both men 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.
Death (1967)
Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital on Long Island, NY on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40. He is buried at Pinelawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, N.Y. Biographer Lewis Porter has suggested, somewhat controversially, that the cause of Coltrane's illness was hepatitis, although he also attributed the disease to Coltrane's heroin use.[10] In a 1968 interview Albert Ayler claimed that Coltrane was consulting a Hindu meditative healer for his illness instead of Western medicine, though Alice Coltrane later denied this.
His death surprised many in the musical community who were not aware of his condition, Miles Davis commented: "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".[11]
The Coltrane family reportedly remains in possession of much more as-yet-unreleased music, mostly mono reference tapes made for the saxophonist and, as with the 1995 release Stellar Regions, master tapes that were checked out of the studio and never returned.[citation needed] The parent company of Impulse!, from 1965 to 1979 known as ABC Records, purged much of its unreleased material in the 1970s.[12] Lewis Porter has stated that Alice Coltrane, who died in 2007, intended to release this music, but over a long period of time; her son Ravi Coltrane, responsible for reviewing the material, is also pursuing his own career.[citation needed]
Instruments
Coltrane played the clarinet and the alto horn in a community band before taking up the alto saxophone during high school. In 1947, when he joined King Kolax's band, Coltrane switched to tenor saxophone, the instrument he became known for playing primarily.[1]
In the early 1960s, during his engagement with Atlantic Records, he increasingly played soprano saxophone as well. While with Miles Davis' band, he was inspired by Steve Lacy and purchased his own soprano in February 1960. The cover of his album My Favorite Things features Coltrane playing soprano.[1]
Religious beliefs
Coltrane was born and raised in a Christian home, and was in touch with religion and spirituality from childhood. His maternal grandfather, Rev. William Blair, was a preacher. 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.[citation needed]
In 1955 Coltrane married Juanita Naima Grubb, a Muslim convert, (for whom he later wrote the piece "Naima"), and came into contact with Islam.[13]
In 1957 Coltrane began to shift spiritual directions. He had a religious experience which may have been what led him to overcome his addictions to alcohol and heroin[citation needed].
Coltrane also explored Hinduism, the Kabbalah, Jiddu Krishnamurti, African history, and the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle.[14] In the liner notes of A Love Supreme Coltrane states "[d]uring 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."[15]
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". The 29-minute recording contains chants from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu holy book. A 1966 recording, issued posthumously, has Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders chanting from a Buddhist text, Bardo Thodol, 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 language of music itself. Coltrane's 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. 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."[17]
Legacy
Although some jazz listeners still consider the late Coltrane albums to contain little more than a cacophony, many of these late recordings—among them Ascension, Meditations, and the posthumous Interstellar Space—are widely considered masterpieces.
The influence Coltrane has had on music spans many different genres and musicians. 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. In 1965, he was inducted into the Down BeatJazz 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, as well as My Favorite Things, was certified gold in the United States in 2001. In 1982 Coltrane was awarded a posthumous Grammy for "Best Jazz Solo Performance" on the album Bye Bye Blackbird, and in 1997, was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[6]
His widow, Alice Coltrane, after several decades of seclusion, briefly regained a public profile before her death in 2007. Coltrane's son, Ravi Coltrane, named after the great Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, who was greatly admired by Coltrane, has followed in his father's footsteps and is a prominent contemporary saxophonist.
John Coltrane House, 1511 North Thirty-third Street, Philadelphia
The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco has claimed Coltrane as a saint since 1971.[18] Its services incorporate Coltrane's music, using his lyrics as prayers.[19] A documentary on Coltrane, featuring the church, was produced for the BBC in 2004 and is presented by Alan Yentob.[20]
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. The soprano raised $70,800 but the tenor remained unsold.[1]
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 which he approved before his death. See main discography link above for full list.
