Jazz News: Coltrane's House in Trouble

John Coltrane's Long Island house, where he composed A Love Supreme, needs some major renovations. Check out the New York Times editorial...

A Love Still Supreme, But a House in Ruins

There is a ranch house out in the middle of Long Island, just south of the expressway in Dix Hills, where the saxophonist John Coltrane lived, started a family and composed “A Love Supreme” in the spare bedroom. More...

Coltrane’s Poor Cousin

John Coltrane’s 1960 Album Coltrane Plays the Blues is often overshadowed by its more famous companion LP, Coltrane’s Sound. This is unfortunate, because Plays the Blues is a consistently strong album from Coltrane and even contains a few surprises for listeners.

All the songs on the original releases were recorded over two days, October 24 and 26, 1960. The tunes used on Coltrane’s Sound have a darker hue to them, particularly “Liberia” and “Equinox,” with its dirge-like rhythmic underpinning beneath Coltrane’s soaring solo. This was probably intentional as this album followed hard on the heels of My Favorite Things, which was all standards. (Even the artwork for the album was dark, a painting of Coltrane’s face in which the smears of paint make it appear that he is melting. Apparently, even Coltrane was upset by the image.)

Coltrane Plays the Blues is of a different order. The playing is more approachable, and Coltrane plays both the soprano and tenor sax, accompanied by McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. It opens with the terrific “Blues to Elvin,” in which we hear Coltrane dig into the tune with a kind of simplicity of approach that is often lacking elsewhere. Yet, he is exploring harmonically with as much creativity and interest as ever. In two of the tunes, “Mr. Day” and the slowly swinging “Mr. Syms,” one hears premonitions of “Equinox” (recorded two days later) from both Coltrane and Tyner, as if both were taking the opportunity to explore motifs and variations for the later tune.

The surprises I mentioned earlier are two tunes without Tyner, the first time that Coltrane had recorded with a trio since his Prestige Records days. On “Blues to Bechet,” he plays soprano sax in tribute to its master, Sidney Bechet, and on “Blues to You,” he plays tenor. This is a refreshing, uncluttered format for Coltrane, and one wishes he had returned to it more often in his career.

While no Coltrane recording can be said to be lost in obscurity at this point, I recommend that you take a listen (or re-listen) to Coltrane Plays the Blues - it deserves to come out of the shadows.

Jazz News: New Coltrane Tracks

Down Beat magazine reports that three new John Coltrane tracks are to be released.

New John Coltrane Tracks Discovered

Three previously unheard and unreleased John Coltrane tracks have been discovered and will be made available in April on First Impulse: The Creed Taylor Collection (Impulse/Universal), a four-CD set that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Impulse Records. More...

John Coltrane - "Afro Blue" (1963)

With McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. From the television show "Jazz Casual."

Jazz Poetry - "Trane"

Trane 
by Kamau Brathwaite



Propped against the crowded bar

he pours into the curved and silver horn

his old unhappy longing for a home


the dancers twist and turn

he leans and wishes he could burn

his memories to ashes like some old notorious emperor

of rome. but no stars blazed across the sky when he was born

no wise men found his hovel; this crowded bar

where dancers twist and turn,

holds all the fame and recognition he will ever earn

on earth or heaven. he leans against the bar

and pours his old unhappy longing in the saxophone

Note: Edward Kamau Brathwaite (born on Barbados in 1930) is a major voice in poetry and literature from the Caribbean. After his education at Cambridge in the early 1950s, he spent time in Ghana before returning to St. Lucia and then Barbados in the Caribbean. Brathwaite has published a number of books of poetry and prose, including Black + Blues (New Directions, 1976, 1995), from which this poem is taken. He is currently a professor of comparative literature at New York University.

John Coltrane - Alabama

The John Coltrane Quartet: John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones (1963)

The Cats

The Cats is a somewhat obscure Prestige Records all-star session from 1957 that purrs like a well-fed kitten. And well-fed it is with a savory line-up that includes John Coltrane on tenor and Kenny Burrell on guitar. Although recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in his Hackensack studio, the record has a Detroit vibe – Burrell and the rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums are all natives. Burrell always has a bluesy Motor City tinge to his playing. Coltrane is in transition at the time of this recording. Having recently been booted from the Miles Davis Quintet, he is trying to clean up his act and will soon begin a collaboration with Thelonious Monk. Here, he sounds energized in his solos, perhaps feeling free to be more expressive than he was with Davis. His so-called sheets of sound style is in full flower, with some wonderful melodic lines morphing into impressive double-time arpeggios. This album is probably overlooked (the felines on the cover definitely want some attention) because both Burrell and Coltrane were about to enter a very creative and prolific period in their respective careers.
     But the real cat-in-chief on this date is Flanagan. His compositional skills are on display in four of the five tunes, and his playing is the focus of the other one. The album opens with “Minor Mishap,” a medium-paced hard bop song with solos from Coltrane, Burrell, and Idrees Sulieman (on trumpet). (There’s a wonderful version of Flanagan playing this song from later in his career on YouTube.) “How Long Has This Been Going On?” features Flanagan in a trio in a lovely version – listen to Hayes’ brush work on drums - of this Gershwin classic. The Caribbean-flavored “Eclypso” and “Solacium” are on the cool side of bop. But the highlight of The Cats has got to be the aptly named “Tommy’s Tune,” an extended (twelve minutes) song that gives everyone room to work out their ideas and really shine.
     Flanagan (1930-2001) was mostly known for being the accompanist of Ella Fitzgerald for many years, from the early 1960s to the late 1970s. He worked as a sideman on a number of seminal jazz recordings, including Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, and Art Pepper’s Straight Life. He also recorded regularly as a leader later in his career. He deserves to be more widely recognized for his masterful piano playing and The Cats is an excellent place to start.

Avoiding the Elevator Shaft

Thelonious Monk once said, “All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.” The problem for Monk was that he was working in trigonometry and most other musicians of his time were at best in advanced algebra. His conjugated music was notoriously difficult rhythmically and harmonically, and, of course, Monk himself was absolutely uncompromising in his playing, making soloing with him a challenge for all but the bravest (see Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane). Many listeners also found his music jagged and perhaps even unpleasant to listen to. Having just finished reading a biography of Monk, I’ve been listening to his music more and more recently and enjoying a new appreciation for it.
     One song I’m returning to again and again is “Five Spot Blues” from Monk’s Dream (1963), Monk’s first Columbia album and his best-selling LP. He first recorded this song several years earlier for Thelonious in Action (Riverside, 1958), a live date at New York’s Five Spot Café. His contract with Columbia was a sign that Monk had made it – gone from underground to mainstream – and many feel that his music lost a certain edginess. I think Monk was always an innovator and explorer right up to the end and Monk’s Dream has a sense of him coming into his own.
     Coltrane once said about playing Monk’s music, “Miss one chord and you feel like you’re falling down an elevator shaft.” Plowing straight ahead seems to be the best strategy and that’s what Charlie Rouse does here on sax on “Five Spot Blues.” Rouse is often slighted as a Monk soloist – he had the misfortune of following both Rollins and Coltrane in Monk’s band and suffered for it. He easily avoids the elevator shaft on this tune and seems to almost out-Monk Monk, playing with an angular and bluesy fervor. Monk on his solo explores the repetitive riff of the song in his usual obsessive-compulsive, and always interesting, way. John Ore on bass and particularly Frankie Dunlop on drums keep the proceedings percolating throughout the brief, three-minute song.

Gone With Golson

Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson (born 1929) got off to a fast start. Even while attending high school in Philadelphia, he was already playing with the likes of John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Philly Joe Jones. Philly (the city) was hopping with jazz at this time. Of Coltrane, Golson said in a 2009 interview: “John and I were like blood brothers. I was 16 when I met him, he was 18. And we spent our time in my living room, listening to lots of 78 records, trying to figure out what was going on.” It's amusing to picture this scene because it represents a typical sort of episode in a teenager's life, even today, as well as a “primordial soup” moment in the evolution of jazz.
     From the mid to late 1950s, Golson toured with Tadd Dameron, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, and Art Blakey. He then was co-leader of the famous Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer. Golson also wrote the classic tunes “I Remember Clifford” (written after the untimely death of Clifford Brown) and “Stablemates” (first recorded by Miles Davis). I particularly recommend the three albums he did as a leader for Prestige Records in 1959: Gone With Golson, Getting’ With It, and Groovin’ With Golson, all with Curtis Fuller on trombone. These are overshadowed hard bop classics, with Golson’s solos propelled forward with pulsing momentum but also displaying a big warm tone. “Staccato Swing” from Gone With Golson is a great example.
     During the sixties, when the commercial support for jazz largely disappeared, Golson, like many jazz musicians, went to work for the movie and television studios, writing music for the TV series M*A*S*H, Mission: Impossible, Mod Squad, and, yes, even The Partridge Family. In the 1980s, he returned to playing jazz gigs and he is still recording and touring regularly.

Story of a Sound

"I start from one point and go as far as possible," wrote John Coltrane in 1961. "But, unfortunately, I never lose my way. I say unfortunately, because what would interest me greatly is to discover paths that I'm perhaps not aware of." This is the essence of the musician who emerges in Ben Ratliff's excellent book, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. As the subtitle suggests, the book is only partially a biography. Mainly, it traces the sources and progression of Coltrane's music, from the early rough and fast chord changes, through the "sheets of sound" phase, and finally to the modal and experimental "spiritual" phase of his last few years. The book also considers his influence on jazz after his death, at age 40, from liver cancer in 1967. He experimented and innovated with music until the very end, and he haunts all jazz since then with the unanswered question - What would Coltrane have played next?
     Coltrane's story was not one of meteoric rise and fall. Many jazz musicians seemed to appear on the scene fully formed with a breakout performance in a nightclub or on vinyl - the years of struggle to get there lost in obscurity. But audiences got to see and hear Coltrane's struggles and growth, and this is perhaps an underappreciated reason why many listeners are so attached to him. That and the fact that he absorbed and transformed just about everything there was to know about the saxophone.

Teo

“Teo” is a song from Someday My Prince Will Come, a little-known Miles Davis album from 1961. The entire album was recorded in just three days. “Teo” is one of two songs on which John Coltrane makes an appearance. It begins with a kind of clapping rhythm (Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass), with a Middle-Eastern flavor, then Miles comes in and has some playful interaction with Wynton Kelly plunking on the piano. He then soars off into high modal territory, both playful and plaintive at the same time.
     Just before the four-minute mark, Coltrane comes in and from the first note he asserts his authority. This is the mature Coltrane who at this point in his career has found his full sound. He makes Miles sound almost delicate in comparison to his strong, emotive, and longing tone. Coltrane also explores the upper registers, combining brief spurts of fast notes with long, high tones, a sound that evokes in me something of a bird call, perhaps a great gull soaring along a fog-bound coast. But then I live in San Francisco.
     Many people have remarked over the years about how Coltrane’s sound, particularly in the latter stages of his career, seemed to come from deep within him and resonated for them in a personal way, a way that was often only possible to express in quasi-religious terms. One feels that here in the searching quality of his solo.
     Coltrane goes deeper into the song, where Miles seems to float within it. Miles returns to restate the theme, but it almost feels as if Coltrane’s solo is still echoing until the end.

Coltrane's Creed

"I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be. This is what I want to do, this is my belief: that I'm supposed to grow to the best good that I can get to. As I'm going there, becoming this, and if I ever become this, it will just come out of the horn."
~ John Coltrane (1966)