Jazz is a territory that a lot of young people are hesitant
to venture. You mention jazz and people have two ideas. One being the mind
numbing drone that comes out of elevator speakers and telephones when you are
on hold or, two, some spastic, jangly, pretentious, nonsensical noise, meant to
go right of the heads of average people, but the truth is jazz is none of this.
Jazz is music at its most base and advanced form. It uses the highest levels of
musical and tonal theory in order to convey the most basic of human emotions.
Instead of lyrics to spoon feed you the meaning, jazz uses tonal information
that resides naturally in your mind to elicit emotion inside of you. What I
want to tell you about in this blog post is one of my favorite records and the
incredible spiritual significance of this album. John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, is one of the most
legendary records in music history, not only because of the incredible level of
musical mastery in the album but also the sheer spiritual and philosophical
weight that the work carries. In the first installment I will give a brief
biography of Coltrane and his work leading up to the recording of A Love Supreme, and in the second
installment I will analyze the album and explain its spiritual and
philosophical significance and how it relates to John Coltrane’s life as a
whole.
You can ask anyone with any basic jazz knowledge, and they
will at least have heard of John Coltrane. Few have ever reached the echelon of
jazz mastery that Coltrane belongs to. There is a certain amount of raw passion
in his playing that is so enthralling and interesting about his playing.
John Coltrane was born on September 23rd of 1926
in Hamlet, Carolina. His father was fairly musical and played multiple
instruments. This is where Coltrane’s musical journey began. Coltrane began by
playing clarinet and E-Flat Horn but switched to alto saxophone when he started
listening to players like Lester
Young. In 1939, Coltrane’s father passed away and the family fell into some
serious financial trouble. In order to secure a more stable way of life,
Coltrane’s mother, Alice, moved the family to New Jersey but John decided to
stay in North Carolina and finish high school there. After high school he
decided to move to Philadelphia to try his hand at becoming a professional
musician. While he was there he briefly studied at the Ornstein school of music
but was quickly drafted into the war in 1943. While he was enlisted he played
in the Navy band in Hawaii and he made his first recording with a few of his
fellow sailors.
In 1946, Coltrane returned to Philadelphia where he began to
play with a few different big bands, the first of which was a band led by a man
named Eddie Vinson, who went by the nickname “Cleanhead”; Vinson was the person
who got Coltrane to switch to tenor saxophone which is the sax he would play
primarily until the later years. After his time with Eddie Vinson, Coltrane
played with a band belonging to Jimmy Heath, who really
allowed for him to really explore the more experimental side of his playing
that he became so known for. Once he left Heath’s band, Coltrane moved on to
his biggest gig so far, playing in Dizzy Gillespie’s big
band. Coltrane stayed with the Gillespie
big band for about a year and a half. After he left he followed a trend that so
many jazz musicians of the time had. Heroin. Heroin and drug use in general
would haunt Coltrane for years to come and arguably lead to his death. In 1954
Coltrane landed another big gig playing in Duke Ellington’s band as a
replacement for Johnny Hodges but was kicked out soon for his dependency on
heroin.
During the mid to late 50’s, Coltrane made some of the most
influential music that he would ever make. Coltrane was picked up to play in
the legendary Miles Davis Quintet, where he recorded many classic albums
including Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis
Quintet, Kind of Blue, and Milestones. To me, these is some of the
most intimate and tasteful recordings of both John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
During this time Miles did his best to keep Coltrane’s drug use in check even
though he himself was a fairly regular user. In 1957, Miles Davis fired
Coltrane because Coltrane was shooting up while they were on the bandstand
about to perform. In my eyes this marks a huge moment in Coltrane’s growth,
without this incident I do not believe that we would have the huge variety of
work from him that we have now.
Disgraced and without a job Coltrane moved to New York where
he began to work with Thelonious
Monk, a real jazz innovator of the time. In addition to working with Monk,
Coltrane also began to really find himself as a band leader and solo performer.
Not to discredit his work with Miles at all, but it is drastically different
from his solo work and it makes you wonder, how true to himself he was being
during the Miles Davis Quintet recordings. In the late 50’s Coltrane released
two records, Blue Train and Soultrane but neither of these lived up
to the record he released in 1960 entitled Giant
Steps, whose title track is unbelievably challenging. This record was
completely written by Coltrane and contains many compositions that are standard
repertoire for any jazz musician. I believe that these three records came out
of the drive that Coltrane had to prove himself after Miles kicked him out of
the First Great Quintet, as well as the less straight ahead influence of
Thelonious Monk. The next really significant recording from Coltrane would have
to be My Favorite Things which was
released in 1961 and contained mostly what we call “standards” which are
basically pop songs that are frequently played in jazz. The title track is a
thirteen minute long rendition of the song “My Favorite Things” from the sound
of music and an edited version of this became a hit single. One of this most
interesting things about this record is the fact that Coltrane plays Soprano
sax on the whole first side of the record. This is because in 1960, Miles Davis
bought Coltrane a soprano as a gift and Coltrane began playing at live shows
that summer. The soprano saxophone was used very rarely before Coltrane used it
on this record and it really paved the way for soprano sax in jazz music. After
the release of My Favorite Things the
next monumental release would be A Love
Supreme in 1964.
David David David. The man. I get so stoked from your stoke on jazz and music in general. I clicked the link to the live show in Germany and listened to it as I read your post and still am as I'm writing this comment. You could have totally put me in the first category of people who see jazz as elevator music. But, that's because I don't understand it like you and other musicians. I do thoroughly enjoy it though. Currently jamming out to this video in the library. I'm interested to see this second post. Include a link like you did on the first one to the album "A Love Supreme" so I can do this again. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteThanks Tristan. Just trying to spread the gospel.
DeleteYou've inspired me to pull out my old jazz CD collection, and my "Ken Burns' Jazz: The Story of AMerica's Music" collection. It's one of AMerica's signal creative gifts to the world, and it is indeed heartening to see a younger person so enthused about it. Much as I love the new WMOT, and "Americana," I miss jazz-89.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words! Ken Burns Jazz is incredible.
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