In a blog post from May this year, I presented Jack Cooke's Late Trane retrospective from 1970. Link below. This time it's a feature written by John Norris, from the May 1968 edition of Canada's Coda magazine, which became a Coltrane memorial issue. If you are interested in a contemporary take on Coltrane's records from The John Coltrane Quartet Plays to Expression, read on. Late Trane Retrospective From 1970
John Norris was a regular contributor to many jazz publications, including Coda, was jazz critic for the Globe and Mail, and was a jazz music host on Canadian radio and television.
THE FINAL LEGACY by John Norris
Until very recently, jazz musicians were static as artists. Every musician evolved a style and remained true to that, with minor variations, for the remainder of his career. In this sense the jazz musician paralleled the course of practitioners in other art forms prior to the Twentieth Century.
Today it is much different. Musicians are trans forming their styles as significantly as such painters as Picasso and such sculptors as Gabo. This is readily apparent in the recordings of John Coltrane. He was already an interesting and exciting performer in the 1950's when he worked with the Miles Davis band but the musical framework limited the aesthetic horizons of the music. Change was a reality with his first Atlantic recording - Giant Steps - and from there on he built up an astonishing catalog of important music that stands virtually unchallenged at the apex of the jazz music of our time. Underlying all the twists and turns of his imagination was a directness of purpose, a oneness that linked together his music into a unifying whole. Because Coltrane's music was so strong it often produced violent, negative reaction. The controversies surrounding the sessions at the Village Vanguard (Live at the Village Vanguard and Impressions) reverberated for a long time but are now generally accepted as an important and significant occasion in his career. The unconfining nature of these performances paved the way for the remarkable, concise, statements of Crescent, Live at Birdland and, finally, A Love Supreme. In the latter work, Coltrane summarised all of the things he had been working on during the preceding years. It was an apex - and many men would have been content to rest there, repeating the same thing, with minor variations, for the rest of their lives. It wasn't so with John Coltrane.
The spiritual forces that helped produce A Love Supreme were to play a large role in the shaping of Coltrane's music during the last two years of his life - that and the contributions of the younger musicians who gradually surrounded The Master. Hints of this can be heard in Coltrane's first recording session following A Love Supreme. On THE JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET PLAYS (Impulse A/S-85), Song Of Praise and Brazilia contain echoes of earlier works. There is the gradual build up of emotion through tension with the same kind of sonority. There are differences, though, that indicate the direction the music was taking. The rhythm was looser, with less emphasis on time as an integral part of the whole. This looser rhythmic flow is especially marked in Nature Boy where the addition of Art Davis, as second bassist, changed the whole sound of the rhythm section. It was an augury of the future and is an intense and valuable piece of music. Chim Chim Cheree is a further demonstration of Coltrane's ability to transform material into the form that suits him. As in My Favorite Things, Coltrane builds up a spiralling, gradually unfolding development of the piece - changing and altering his statements throughout, while retaining the simplistic nature of the original. It's a particularly clever piece of interpretation. Coltrane was one of the principal inspirations to the growing body of young musicians who gathered in New York in the early 1960's. These musicians were seriously involved in developing new ways to play - they found the ways of the established jazz world redundant, Fresh expression was necessary.
Ornette Coleman had achieved this, so too had Eric Dolphy but it was Coltrane who really inspired them, He became actively involved in what they were doing and gave them encouragement and help wherever possible. One of the ways he did this was in Ascension, Coltrane's first Impulse album had been with a big band but ASCENSION (Impulse A/S-94) was markedly different and was a major change in direction. He gathered together Freddie Hubbard and Dewey Johnson (trumpets), Marion Brown and John Tchicai (alto), Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders (tenor), and added Art Davis to his regular rhythm section of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. At that time, June 1965, most of the musicians were unknown and this was one way in which Coltrane helped them to gain a wider audience.
The piece of music is a simple line devised by Coltrane that is repeated during the ensemble passages between the solos. This is collectively improvised, spontaneous music that relies entirely on its own inner strength to succeed, It is coherent and incoherent, all at the same time, depending on one's approach as a listener. If you play it with open ears there is a fascination in hearing the ways in which the musicians alter and amend the music. It certainly isn't for the weary or disturbed. Two versions of Ascension have been released and, apart from the obvious change of solo sequence, there are considerable differences between the two. The opening of Edition 1 is so powerful that it sets a level too high for the musicians to maintain. Coltrane's solo is something to marvel at and the role of the other musicians at this point is particularly successful. Much of the solo work by the other musicians, however, is below their best level and the ensembles are often incoherent, Edition 11 is much better with Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Joe Brazil pouring out their souls. Form, in the normal sense, is no longer there and the music goes wherever the instrumentalist wants to take it. It is not the kind of music that is approachable all the time, for only in certain moods will the music come to you. If one is in need of a cathartic experience, Om is ideal. For thirty minutes the music pours unrelentlessly over the listener in unending streams of consciousness. It's small wonder that Coltrane delayed its release for this is very difficult music to listen to - even now, three years later.
Later the same month, in Los Angeles, John Coltrane recorded KULU SE MAMA (Impulse A/S-9106), This work, written and sung by Juno Lewis, is one of the most beautiful items in the Coltrane catalog, The sinuous, rhythmic melody line reflects the background of Lewis' home in New Orleans, while the textures achieved by using two conventional percussionists (Elvin Jones and Frank Butler) as well as Lewis' own African-styled drums is hypnotic. Lewis' singing is in an Afro-Creole dialect he calls Entobes and this heightens and emphasises the effect. Both Coltrane and Sanders "sing" throughout and Sanders, in particular, reveals the multi-textured nature of his music in a long solo that claws and grasps its way through a series of climaxes before giving way to the rhythm team.
The reverse side of Kulu Se Mama contains two pieces recorded at the same date as Ascension. Vigil and Welcome are characteristic performances. Vigil is an energetic exposition by Coltrane that opens with Elvin Jones' drums before Coltrane takes off on a long, involved solo that is built up entirely over Jones' drum work, It's an astonishing piece of playing replete with all the characteristics of his music. The intensity grows throughout the solo as he gradually reworks the theme into exploding fragments of sound. Welcome, in contrast, is a calm, sensual song and here Tyner and Garrison join Coltrane as he evokes feelings of tenderness and peace.
MEDITATIONS (Impulse A/S-9110) is an extraordinary recording. All of the explosive force of Coltrane's music is heard on the first side where he and Pharoah Sanders become involved in a lengthy, intertwined, pulsating dialogue that builds and builds in momentum until there is little room to even breathe, It's staggering the force and energy they apply to music and, here, the coherence and purpose of their playing is readily apparent. Very important to the success of their playing is the support from drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali, The latter successfully avoids the normal accenting of bar lines, giving a new fluidity to the rhythm. This marks the turning point in the rhythmic evolvement of Coltrane's music, in the same way that Elvin Jones had marked the earlier changes, Rashied Ali's lightning fast rhythmic flow lays a blanket of sound underneath the soloist, enabling him to operate entirely within his own direction.
Meditations, in thought and approach, is in some ways an extension of A Love Supreme but it is much more than that, too, The added instruments give a further dimension to everything with Sanders’ new sounds radically changing the overall timbre. Here he explodes the rapturous statement of Coltrane in Love with a passionate life force that goes under the title Consequences. It's as if the two main forces of life are being juxtaposed alongside one another by Coltrane and his musicians. Serenity, the final segment of Meditations, is linked to Consequences by some very abstract piano from McCoy Tyner that sets the mood for the final statement.
Soon after Meditations was made the final personnel of the new Coltrane band was finalised when his wife Alice replaced McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones left, leaving the percussion position to Rashied Ali. Other drummers were tried, for Coltrane obviously liked the idea of two drummers, but none stayed permanently.
In May, 1966, the group was recorded LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD AGAIN (Impulse A/S-9124), performing familiar pieces from their repertoire. On this record are Naima and My Favorite Things. This recording demonstrates better than any words the remarkable changes in Coltrane's music over the years since he had first recorded the same tunes. The whole rhythmic concept of the music is altered, while Coltrane's tone and phrasing is considerably different. There is a looseness, a sense of space, that wasn't there before. Coltrane gives the impression of a man with all the time in the world to play exactly what and how he feels, The music is very relaxed, too, and part of this is due to the highly sensitive and very apt piano of Alice Coltrane. The sparseness and clarity of her supporting role gives the group's music a different sound, providing the final transformation from the old quartet.
The sessions that took place in February and March 1967 resulted in EXPRESSION (Impulse A/S-9120), the final statement of John Coltrane. To Be, Offering and the title piece feature him on tenor saxophone and are vigorous statements that reveal the manner in which he had developed his technique in playing multi-note passages and the "freak" high register passages that are part and parcel of the language of the younger musicians. The music here is relatively straightforward, as if Coltrane felt the need to record some shorter, more orthodox pieces of music to place alongside the lengthy orgiastic pieces that had dominated his musical life during the preceding two years. This album also introduced listeners to yet another facet of Coltrane's musical creation, To Be features Coltrane on flute and Sanders on piccolo. It's very sensitive, beautifully constructed and is a stunning realisation of musical ideals. The warmth in evidence here is remarkable and the dialogue betweenthe two musicians has an uncanny, eerie sense of communion, It's the final evidence of just how great and diversified a musician was John Coltrane.
******
John Coltrane sustained, right to the end, the driving energy and creativity that made every piece of music he played something fresh and different. He was never content to remain within the same areas and boundaries of music. For the listener, each album was a new adventure, And it was an adventure that affected different people in different ways. The individual's response to the music was an important part of the music's realisation for, without being involved, his music meant little.
We still have his records and people will continue becoming involved with John Coltrane's music as long as they remain in existence.
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