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t’s difficult to know what the rest of America thought of John
Coltrane —ifthey thought of him at all when he burst into public
consciousness in the early sixties playing all that horn.
White America was limping along singing “I Want To Hold
Your Hand” by some lame British dudes and Black America
was hanging on for dear life riding the bone-crushing R&B
vamps thrown down by the Godfather of Soul.
Up on 125th Street in Harlem, New York, the hip shop
keepers into the nationalist thing plastered their windows with
posters of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Kwame Nkrumah and
Marcus Garvey.
On the black cultural scene against the backdrop of the Na
tional Black Theatre, the Alvin Ailey Dance Ensemble and the
Weusi artist collective, the young warriors were listening to the
plaintive wails of John Coltrane.
Jazz — Black Jazz — was the music of the emerging black
revolution. Its patron saint was John Coltrane, who spawned a
bevy of disciples that included Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp,
Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Eric Dolphy. They called the
new thing Free Jazz.
Although the younger cats who wrote poetry and wore dashikis
and dreamed about liberation to the tune of M-16s were not hip
to the fact that Trane —the iconoclast who tore down the barri
ers erected by corny chord changes and 32-bar solos — had at
one time toiled on the jazz plantation — had played in the big
bands — in the juke joints — and with the legends — Bird, Diz,
Monk and Miles.
_But they knew they could relate to those fat sheets of sound
Trane would be layin’ down.
That SOUND penetrated into the ethereal realms where they
meditated and chanted, often in a drug-induced stupor. Trane
was for real and he kept on comin’ — right at ya!.
A Love Supreme
ohn Coltrane (1926-
1967) had an influence
on contemporary jazz
which could only be
compared to Charlie
“Yardbird” Parker’s in
the late forties and
early fifties. Coltrane was a tall,
quiet man, rather shy and more
interested in solving musical
problems than in ‘hanging out’
or clowning. He was naturally
cautious, exploring every option
of his current musical thinking
before taking a step onto the next
plateau.
When he felt ready, he made
the change, unhesitating and un
compromisingly. A member of
Miles Davis’s ground-breaking
sextet and quintet of the late fif
ties, and the tenor soloist for
Thelonious Monk for four months
in 1957, Coltrane was a musician
who, by the time he went out on
his own, was thoroughly schooled
inthe contemporary mainstream.
He was two years older than
EricDolphy, the multi-instrumen
talistmusicalgenius, and had been
playing professionally since leav
ing military service in 1946. Yet
although he had done a stint with
Dizzy Gillespie (1949-1951), and
then with Johnny Hodges during
the latter’s four-year break from
Ellington’sband, he had done little
recording and received little or no
attention.
It was the stints with Davis and
Monk which gave him aninterna
tional reputation, and finally pro
vided the impetus for forming his
own group. Coltrane initially was
making records no one could ob
ject to, sticking within the con
fines of the music he had grown
up with, and although some people
found it hard to cope with his
sound (a new one in jazz), which
was pure, hard and incredibly in
tense, nobody questioned his mu
sical motives. He even had a hit
albumin 1961 when his version of
My Favorite Thingswasreleased,
with him playing the sopranosaxo
phone he had recently bought.
But Coltrane was , like Dolphy,
a restless explorer, and an in
tense and voracious listener. He
was one of the few jazz musicians
— Duke Ellington, Charles
Mingus and Coleman Hawkins
are three others — who palpably
evolved and changed during his
public career, rather than finding
an identifiable style and sticking
to it for the remainder of his mu
sical life. .
Both Coltrane and Dolphy were
obsessed by music, and practised
their instruments at every avail
able opportunity: Dolphy often
spent the entire time between sets
at gigs practising while, on more
than oneoccasion, Coltrane’s wife
would find him asleep on a couch
in his practice room at home, the
saxophone- still in his mouth.
Coltrane’s departure from Miles
was within a few months of
Ornette Coleman’s debut in New
York. Although Coltrane certainly
was not stylisticallyinfluenced by
Coleman, he was fascinated by
his music and theories. “I've got to
keep experimenting,” he once com
mented. “I feel that I'm just begin
ning. I have part of what I'm look
ing forin my graspbut notall.” By
the time of Dolphy’s arrival,
Coltrane had found another vital
component: drummer Elvin Jones.
Like Coltrane, Jones had been
‘on the scene’ a long while before
he made his breakthrough. Partly
because of the extreme difficulty
of pulling together all the strands
of the complex rhythmic style he
was fashioning, and partly be
cause for extra-musical reasons,
Jones had not achieved great
prominence, even though during
the fifties he had played or re
corded with many of the decade’s
leading lights.
Jones was the younger brother
of pianist Hank and trumpeter
Thad Jones, both universally ad
mired musicians, butit was Elvin,
during his more than five years
with Coltrane, who took the risks
and created something new.
Steve Davis, whowas Coltrane’s
' ‘SRS “Trane was the loudest, fastest e %
I saxophonist I've ever heard. He i .
4 > 0 could play real fast and real ]
@ loud at the same time and that’s r
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: S ;5 phenomenal. It was like he was § o s
A F possessed when he put that horn rF
; & in his mouth. He was so passion- -~ .
. . ate — fierce — and yet so quiet EEEFES : (
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bassist when Jones joined in the
summer of 1960, recalled: “That
first night Elvin was in the band,
he was playing so strong and so
loud you could year him outside
the club and down the block. But
Trane wanted it that way. He
wanted a drummer who could
kick, and Elvin was one of the
strongest, wildest drummers in
the world.”
Many times in the years that
followed, live gigs featuring the
quartet would often culminate in
extended solos from Coltrane —
quite frequently half an hour or
more — accompanied by Jones
alone, although ‘accompanied’
could never hope to express the
dynamism of Jones’ drumming in
support of his leader’s forays into
new musical territories. They
would be like two panthers, pac
ing each other, inspiring each
other, and whipping the crowd
into a state of frenzied disbelief
about the incredible music they
were hearing. By 1963-64, the
Coltrane Quartet’s appearances
atclubsaround the U.S., but espe
cially in New York clubs like the
Village Vanguard and Birdland,
had taken on a certain ritualistic
quality: Coltrane averaged 20 to
30 minutes per song, and the in
credible intensity that he could
sustain for that period of time
could mesmerize a crowd.
Indeed, this other, overtly spiri
tual side of his achievement be
came increasingly pronounced in
the three years before his death
from liver cancer in July 1967.
Although difficult to define or ex
plain, too many people who heard
him live or on records were spept
up in a sense of quasi-religious
experience for it all to have been
an illusion. .
Only Coltrane could have re
corded his great 1964 album, A
Love Supreme, revealing his¢
deeply-held belief in a divine be
ing, and have moved even scep
tics by the artistic beauty and
musical unity attained through
spiritual imperatives.
‘Back by Popular Demand: Jazz at BL’s
A Tribute to
John Coltrane
On Sunday, August 25, an all-star combo of
local jazz musicians will present a musical
tribute to jazz tenor saxophonist John
Coltrane.
John “Trane” Coltrane, was the most relent
lessly exploratory musicianinjazz history. He
was always searching, seeking to take his
music further in what he quite consciously
viewed as a spiritual quest.
In the early sixties, “T'rane” wasthe master
of modern jazz. He was a leader for an angry
breed of black musicians who wanted to reap
propriate their music from the dominant white
culture. Against a background of the civil
rights movement, jazz musicians rejected the
aesthetic criteria of mainstream American
society and invented something called free
jazz.
Before becoming the standard bearer of the
new breed of jazz musician, Coltrane paid his
dues by playing with the greatest jazz musi
cians of the era, including Charlie “Yardbird”
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and
Thelonious Monk. In 1961 he formed the John
Coltrane Quartet and changed the course of
jazz history.
The tribute will be led by local saxophonist
Tim Sanders. Along with Sanders will be Bud
Hudson on piano, Wayne King on trumpet,
Eric Kinlaw on bass, and Timmy “T'C” Cox on
drums.
The session will be held from 7 p.m. to 10
p.m.at BL's Restaurantat 1117 Laney-Walker
Boulevard. Admission price is $5.
Thisisthe third oftheTribute presentations
by i&i Productions. Previous tributes high
lighted the contributions of pianist Bud Powell
and composer Thelonious Monk. On Septem
ber 29, the musicof Charlie “Yardbird” Parker
will be featured.
According to i&i music director Frederick
Benjamin Sr., “The tribute audiences are grow
ing. People not only appreciate the excellent
small club setting, but the quality of the music
they are hearing. The musical community is
also responding. Future tributes are a cer
tainty.”
As always, the featured fare will be fried
chicken and waffles — New York style!
For information call Frederick Benjamin
at 724-7867.
AUGUSTA FOCUS
John Coltrane:
one of jazz’s
most important
innovators.
He stretched the
boundaries of music in
the early sixties.
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The core musicians of the tribute include Tim
Sanders (L), Bud Hudson (C) and Timothy Cox.
Photo by Derick Wells
John Coltrane Tribute
B What: Tribute to John Coltrane
B When: Sunday, August 25,7 p.m. - 10
p.m.
B Where: BL’s Restaurant, 1117 Laney-
Walker Blvd. (1 bik east of 12th Street).
B Admission: $5
B Jazz Menu: Chicken and Waffles; full
buffet (cost is additional).
August 22, 1996
7