John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Free jazz

In the early 60s Coltrane was influenced by Davis' modal approach, the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and the music of Ravi Shankar. Much of this influence can be heard as early as Coltrane's surprise 1960 hit My Favorite Things a nearly 14-minute version of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic. Coltrane would frequently play this song through the rest of his career, though subsequent versions grew increasingly abstract, bearing only the faintest resemblence to the original song.

Related Topics:
Free jazz - Ornette Coleman - Ravi Shankar - My Favorite Things - Rogers and Hammerstein

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Coltrane's success was phenomenal for the jazz world at the time. By following his personal vision absolutely, he would captivate many listeners and aspiring musicians, producing a public persona of total independence and artistic rigor.

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The recording of A Love Supreme in December 1964 proved to be a watershed in Coltrane's career. It was notably more spiritually driven than the studio recordings of the previous 3 years. It featured the "spirituality" that characterizes much of Coltrane's playing from 1965 to 1967. Its conception -- a four-part suite played continuously -- would influence several future Coltrane compositions. It also pointed the way to the flagrant atonalism of his later free jazz recordings, such as Ascension. Despite its challenging musical content, the album was very commercially successful by jazz standards. It encapsulated the internal and external energy of the quartet of Coltrane, Tyner, Jones and Garrison. There is one known live recording of the suite, from July 1965; it provides an interesting contrast to the original, as Coltrane's music had grown more adventurous by that time.

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Coltrane's late period music showed an increasing interest in the free jazz pioneered by Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and others. In formulating his late period style, Coltrane was especially influenced by Ayler's dissonance in Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray. Coltrane championed many younger free jazz musicians (such as Archie Shepp), and under his guidance, Impulse! became a leading free jazz record label.

Related Topics:
Free jazz - Cecil Taylor - Albert Ayler - Gary Peacock - Sunny Murray - Archie Shepp

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After recording A Love Supreme, the influence of Ayler's playing became more prominent in Coltrane's music. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract and dissonant, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, overblowing and playing in the altissimo register. In the studio, he reduced his soprano playing to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Dear Old Stockholm (both May 1965), Living Space, Transition (both June 1965), New Thing at Newport (July 1965), Sun Ship (August 1965), and First Meditations (September 1965).

Related Topics:
Multiphonics - Altissimo - The John Coltrane Quartet Plays - Dear Old Stockholm - Living Space - Transition - New Thing at Newport - Sun Ship - First Meditations

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Having gone as far as he could with the quartet, Coltrane began augmenting the group with outside musicians. As early as June 1965, he went into the studio with about a dozen musicians (including Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Marion Brown, and John Tchicai) to record Ascension. This lengthy 40 minute piece included adventurous solos by the young avant-garde musicians (as well as Coltrane), but was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. Despite returning to recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965.

Related Topics:
Pharoah Sanders - Freddie Hubbard - Marion Brown - John Tchicai - Ascension

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By any measure, Sanders was one of the most abrasive saxophonists then playing. Coltrane, who used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, gravitated to Sanders's solos, frequently overblowing-based orgies of screaming revelation. Longtime Sun Ra saxophonist John Gilmore was a major influence on Coltrane's late-period music, as well. After hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!"http://members.tripod.com/~hardbop/gilmore.html Coltrane took informal lessons from Gilmore, and his own "Chasin' the 'Trane" (1961) was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music.

Related Topics:
Sun Ra - John Gilmore

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By the fall of 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians. Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. Claiming he was unable to hear himself over the two drummers, Tyner left the band shortly after the recording of Meditations. Jones left in early 1966, dissatisfied by sharing drumming duties with Ali. It is possible that both men were unhappy with the music's new direction.

Related Topics:
1965 - Rashied Ali - Meditations

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Also in 1965 Coltrane began using LSD (see also Psychedelic drug), which would inform the sublime, "cosmic" transcendence of his late period, and also its incomprehensibility to many listeners. After Jones and Tyner's departures, Coltrane led a quintet with Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, his new wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Rashied Ali on drums. Coltrane and Sanders were described by Nat Hentoff as "speaking in tongues," an interesting interpretation seen relative to Coltrane's Christian upbringing in the south. The screaming, especially, can be compared to the cadences of black preachers on the pulpit.

Related Topics:
LSD - Psychedelic drug - Tenor saxophone - Alice Coltrane - Rashied Ali - Nat Hentoff - Speaking in tongues

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Despite the radicalism of the horns, the rhythm section with Ali and Alice Coltrane had a very different, more relaxed feel than that with Jones and Tyner. The group can be heard on several live recordings from 1966. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times; though one piece with Sanders has surfaced (the unusual "To Be", which features both Coltrane and Sanders on flutes), most of the recordings were either with the quartet minus Sanders (Expression and Stellar Regions) or as a duo with Ali. The latter duo produced six performances which appear on the album Interstellar Space. These saxophone-drum duets are general considered among the finest music Coltrane recorded near the end of his career.

Related Topics:
Stellar Regions - Interstellar Space

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Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital in Long Island, NY on July 17, 1967, at 40. Coltrane's excessive alcohol and heroin abuse during the 40s and 50s likely laid the seed for this illness, which can strike reformed alcoholics years after they quit. In a 1968 interview Albert Ayler revealed that Coltrane was consulting a Hindu meditative healer for his illness instead of western medicine, though conventional treatment may have been ineffective regardless.

Related Topics:
Liver cancer - Long Island, NY - Albert Ayler - Hindu

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