John Coltrane the Revolutionary Musician

THE MAN WHO WALKED IN BALANCE 

An Article By KALAMU YA SALAAM

Poet Kalamu Ya Salaam wrote a piece in the Sep/Oct 1992 issue of Coda Magazine, which combined his reviews of the current reissue of a bunch of Coltrane works on CD (box-sets), some other histories and his personal Trane journey. It's the first time I've seen the Major Works on CD and Live in Japan on CD critiqued in a major publication. Live in Japan rates highly with Kalamu. 

He also theorises that Coltrane was a Black revolutionary musician. If you compare with Bob Thiele from another article in the same magazine, Thiele believed that people were reading too much into his music, and he wasn't an anti-establishment guy like LeRoi Jones. Certainly, contemporaries like Archie Shepp and Max Roach were more active, and vocal in their actions and beliefs. Trane was a revolutionary musician, and Black. For sure Coltrane felt aggrieved at the injustices of the time, but it's still debatable the scale of its influence on his push for ever greater spiritualism, exorcism, learning and experimentation.

JOHN COLTRANE IS JAZZ’S LAST UNDISPUTED HERO — even though late-period Trane, dating from the breakup of the classic quartet, is controversial, Coltrane’s body of work and profound impact is universally respected. 

But that is no secret, the real question is “why”. What is it about Coltrane that so inspires us even twenty-five years after his death?

I used to walk out of the room when Coltrane came on in the early sixties on Saturday afternoons during my musically-religious four hour ritual of listening to Larry McKinley's This Is Jazz, on WYLD, our station. In fact for most of his time on the air, Larry McKinley was known as Larry and Frank, a made for radio one person “duo” which featured the Simpleest character Frank F. Frank who was not known to have a serious bone in his body nor a sober word in his vocabulary.

On Saturdays Frank was off duty and Chicago born Larry McKinley would regale us with the latest jazz recordings which invariably included Coltrane’s most recent release — who can imagine the quarter hour Chasin’ The Trane being played on a contemporary urban format commercial station today?

In the early sixties I was so ignorant that I passed up my one chance to see Coltrane live when he came to New Orleans, but T heard about it, especially about Elvin Jones literally nailing his bass drum to the bandstand.

Don’t get me wrong, I dug some of Trane’s stuff. I liked his solos on Kind Of Blue better than anything Miles played, and of course Trane’s stuff with Monk was killing, I wrote a poem using Monk’s famous shout as he called on Coltrane to solo: “Coltrane!, Coltrane!” — later readings asserted that Coltrane had been nodding out and Monk was shouting at him to get his attention. Then there was Coltrane's solo on Someday My Prince Will Come. After Trane’s outpouring there was literally nothing else to say, in fact, that was Trane’s swan song in the Miles context and what an exit it was.

Like many other serious jazz fans, I felt unalterably in love when Trane released My Favorite Things. I was in Nashville on a one week exchange program between Carleton College in Northfield, MN and Fisk University. It was there that I met John Oliver Killens and talked with him and vividly recall listening to Trane in the student centre where our exchange group would meet. (I was poor, Black and a long ways from home in Northfield; I was not about to be denied the chance to return south even if the trip was supposed to be an exchange between presumably White students from Carleton and Black students from Fisk). Anyway, that’s when Trane really got to me the way he had to this guy whom I remember standing next to at The One Stop Record Shop on Rampart Street who was telling me that Coltrane Jazz was the most exciting new release ever: “man, he be playing two notes at once”. 

A few years later, I was in Korea, high in the mountains on a missile base and a fellow soldier gave me a record he had bought but just couldn’t dig: Meditations by John Coltrane. I spent countless hours on my bunk listening through headphones transported to another world through the power and majesty of Trane’s music.

I remember I was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas when I read the news that Trane had died, in fact I was somewhere in New Mexico on a temporary duty assignment learning chemical, biological and radiological warfare. By then I was buying and getting into every record that Coltrane released. I even swallowed my pride once to get ‘Trane's last release, Expressions. When I walked into the record shop on Canal Street, then the main retail street in New Orleans and still the widest street in America, I was ignored by a white clerk even though I had the record and money in my hand. After two minutes of being ignored, I slammed the record down and walked out in a huff. I hadn’t gone two blocks before I came to my senses. That was Coltrane's latest release and this store was the first in town to get it.

Since then I've bought everything by post-Miles, Coltrane I could find. I'm also one of the handful of Trane fanatics who love his later recordings more than the early work. I moved from someone who would voluntarily walk out on Trane to someone who, regardless of having to suffer a racial slight, couldn’t walk away from Trane. I know I'm not unique.

What is it about Coltrane, is he really so important? Reviewing three recent multi-CD releases (John Coltrane The Prestige Recordings/a Prestige 16 CD set; The Major Works of John Coltrane/an Impulse 2-CD set; and John Coltrane Live In Japan/and Impulse 4-CD set) have helped me focus on why Trane means so much to me, to others and to jazz and the world of music as a whole.

First, every individual's relationship to Trane’s music is personal—it’s sort of like a Protestant religious connection in which one communicates with God unmediated by intercession of a priest. But the relationship is also formal. We refer to him by his surname, Coltrane, rarely by his given name John or his spiritual name Ohnedaruth. Part of this is the mystery of Coltrane.   

Second, Coltrane epitomized self transformation from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary without the necessity of personal popularity colouring the journey. Unlike Miles or Bird, no one wanted to dress like Trane, or talk like Trane, or do anything else like Trane except possibly play the saxophone, and though many have tried, that, clearly, was and remains impossible, In one sense Trane was unattainable. And yet, the very example of his life, suggested that all things were possible. From the first recordings with Dizzy Gillespie and Johnny Hodges to the last recordings was an incredibly long journey. ‘There was nothing in the first years to give us a clue of what was to come in the later years.

My theory is that Trane was a Black revolutionary musician who understood the necessity of both spiritual development (in a world dominated by commercialism) and pragmatic institutionalization (within the relatively ephemeral field of music). On the one hand Trane grew out of and valued tradition, and on the other hand he

fostered an opening of the music to global influences and nonwestern modes of expression. He was the archetypical African American: master of both emotional expressiveness and rational technology. Trane’s playing could make you cry tears of joy or gasp in awe at the prodigious display of his musical ability. With Trane, unlike with some others, neither emotion nor technique took a back seat one to the other—Trane was a man who walked in balance.

A fuller understanding of Trane’s technical accomplishments is better handled by other writers—Andrew White for example who has transcribed hours and hours of Trane’s music. Besides I do not have more than a rudimentary technical grasp of music, so, even if I wanted to I could not explain the scales, the harmonic progressions, the choice of melodies and rhythms. But I do understand some of the social implications and contexts of Coltrane’s music.

John William Coltrane was a product of the virulent strain of American apartheid popularly called the Jim Crow South. Born September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina, he moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1944 where he briefly formally studied music before a two year stint in the Navy. Upon returning to civilian life he began his professional apprenticeship working in both R&B and jazz bands, first recording a solo while in Dizzy Gillespie's 1949 big band. After two years with his idol Johnny Hodges in 1953-54, Coltrane went on to land celebrated tenor chairs in the bands of both Miles Davis and briefly (six months) Thelonious Monk throughout the fifties. In 1959 Coltrane started his own band. In 1960 Giant Steps was released and the rest is a mixture of history and legend. While we justifiably marvel at Coltrane’s accomplishments, we should not ignore the context which molded him and which he subsequently gracefully transcended.

Coltrane came of age during a period when a Black man had to be inordinately dedicated (some would say stupid and/or crazy) to become a hard core jazz musician. At that time the only major Black jazz musicians (as opposed to crossover artists such as Nat King Cole or later Ray Charles) who were making any significant money were Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, both of whom literally played on the road until they died. Moreover, it was generally conceded that Armstrong had ended his career more as a showman than as a jazzman, and that Duke’s main source of income was publishing royalties. Although globally loved and admired, neither of these men had earned respect commensurate with their achievements in the land of their birth. In a particularly cruel twist, Ellington was denied a Pulitzer prize because his work was not serious enough.

And what of the other jazz musicians, the legions of yeoman who tilled the field of music year in and year out, at best eking out a tenuous hand to mouth economic subsistence, the jazz men generally derided as socially unreliable dope heads, who had strange habits and weird appetites? Except among an exceedingly small, elite cognoscenti, jazz musicians were not much valued as significant artists in the cultural life of America. In other words, by electing to professionally pursue a life as a jazz musician Coltrane had de facto taken what amounted to a vow of obscurity and poverty. As with all realities, there were exceptions, but given America’s cultural apartheid and Coltrane’s lack of theatrics there was little if any hope that he would become a “star.”

So first of all, Coltrane felt strong enough about his music that he would choose to be a jazz musician. Moreover, because he was Black there was little if any hope that Coltrane would ever be crowned the king in his chosen profession. From the aptly named Paul Whiteman, to Benny Goodman, down through Dave Brubeck and Michael Brecker (who won numerous polls as jazz's best tenor saxophonist even though, at the time, he only had two albums out asa leader), the “kings” of jazz have been non-Blacks. If you are a Black musician, or a Black observer of the scene, this mainstream anointed march of monarchs within a field of music founded and creatively developed by African Americans is a shameful reality which can not be ignored.

As does any jazz musician who stays the course of a lifetime commitment to the music, Coltrane embodied the basic optimism of the blues: “the sun gon shine / in my back door / someday”. When that day will be and if the individual will ever see it is unknown, but as a blues musician, one must continue despite the midnight meanness of most days in America. 

Here is where the most basic strength of the jazz musician resides: an almost fanatical commitment to a field whose promise is limited, if one is lucky, to an occasional hit record. Moreover, except for the actual musicians themselves, one quickly finds that the overwhelming majority of the controllers of the music (from show and record producers and publishers, to managers, journalists/critics, and financial investors) are non-African Americans. Ironically, even foreign whites have had a greater impact on the business side of the music than have African Americans. 

Coltrane was not oblivious to this reality. Up from the ashes of racial degradation, super economic exploitation, personal struggles with chemical dependency, and all of the attendant psychological debilitations resultant from these conditions ascended the magnificent musical phoenix John William Coltrane.

The Prestige set is an exciting document both for its musical value and as a document for hindsight investigation. It is an almost exhaustive account of Coltrane’s maturation process — “almost” because it does not include the important work with Miles which is teleased in its own Prestige set, nor does it include the important work with Monk which is also released in its own Riverside box set. What is most astounding is that this 16-CD set (although covering only a year and a half in the life of this major musician) documents without contradiction the artistic coming of age of a musician whose recorded output has no peer in terms of stylistic development and influence.

Here Coltrane interprets standards and jazz classics in the company of sympathetic musicians who range from competent to brilliant but none of whom match Coltrane's consistency. Two aspects of Coltrane's style are resplendently displayed, one is his handsome lyricism and the other is his uncanny knack for investing a blues vibration (even when he wasn’t playing a blues per se) into both his tone and phrasing. Whether playing in a sax, bass, drum tro or as part of large scale jam sessions, Coltrane was nearly inexhaustible in his ability to find gold in every song he mined. Considering that many of the sessions were thrown together affairs featuring a stylistic variety of musicians, some of whom rarely played together, Coltrane's triumph is even more amazing. Based on the sheer variety of musicians and music, and the durability and brilliance of Coltrane’s solos, this 16-CD, approximately 18 hour-long, box set is more than simply a superb buy, for serious jazz followers this is an essential investment. 

The Prestige period covers the years when Coltrane not only coalesced his first major developments as a musician, it also covers the period when Coltrane divested himself of a chemical and emotional dependency on heroin and alcohol. If his early decision to be a jazz musician was a vow of obscurity and poverty, this period of cleaning up was a full commitment to the spiritual forces of life as opposed to any dependency on physical pleasure of anaesthesia.

The Prestige period represents Coltrane’s last exclusive grappling with American standards. Of the over one hundred and twenty compositions included in this set, only nine were written by Coltrane and the bulk of those were blowing improvisations over blues changes. In fact, pianist Mal Waldron has seventeen compositions in the collection, and Tadd Dameron with eight and Tommy Flanagan with six have almost the same number of compositions as does Trane.

A number of forces were at work here. One, Prestige owner Bob Weinstock had a get rich quick mentality toward the recording of the music: record as much as possible as quickly as possible with as little expenditure of resources as possible. This meant little if any paid rehearsal time, marathon sessions which produced two, sometimes three or four albums worth of music, and, most important of all, nearly all of the original publishing going to Prestige Music-BMI.

A related note is that Coltrane’s most famous composition, Naima, was reportedly the subject of a publishing dispute with Atlantic Records and Coltrane was unable to legally record it until relatively late in his Impulse career. The composing and publishing ownership question is particularly important in Coltrane’s case because of his significant accomplishments as a composer — indeed were it not for his unrivalled prowess as an improviser and musical innovator (the reintroduction of the soprano saxophone in the modern jazz context alone is enough to ensure Coltrane’s enshrinement in any modern jazz hall of fame), Coltrane would probably be remembered mainly as a composer of modern jazz. In my estimation only Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk outrank Trane as influential modern jazz composers, and neither of them were as influential as soloists as was Coltrane.

During the period covered by this Prestige set, Coltrane cut Blue Train on the Blue Note label, thereby serving notice that he could put together a classic album emphasizing original compositions and including musicians whom Weinstock preferred not to record. Within four months of leaving Prestige, Coltrane recorded Giant Steps—a recording which revolutionized jazz. So it was not a question of ability but rather a case of business relationships limiting musical output. Indeed, why would Coltrane leave Prestige after the success of Blue Train unless there were compelling business reasons.

It is instructive to note:

1. Robert Weinstock took credit as composer for one composition, Sweet Sapphire Blues, —which, given the time period, was not an uncommon prerogative of the producer/overseer.

2. Coltrane took publishing as well as composing credits for Black Pearls Jowol Music-BMI) recorded May 23, 1958 but is listed as the composer and not the publisher of Goldsboro Express (Prestige Music-BM)) recorded nearly half a year later on December 26, 1958.

3. This multi-CD set did not unearth any previously unissued selections, nor any previously unissued alternate takes. Every available minute of material featuring Coltrane had already been released on Prestige.

4. Two of the twelve covers for albums Coltrane recorded as a leader clearly show him playing soprano saxophone which he never did on any of the Prestige recordings.

The late fifties marked the cataclysmic inception of the civil rights movement in America and it’s corollary in the music was an increasing disenchantment with the normal way of doing business and the reliance on American pop standards for both material and form. In this light, Coltrane's Prestige period can be more fully appreciated and the influence of the civil rights movement on Coltrane's music can be more holistically assessed.

Prestige was a musical plantation, and though there is no doubt that Coltrane matured under these exploitative conditions, it is also clear that if Coltrane's music was to develop, he had to leave Prestige.

These recordings, the negativity surrounding them not withstanding, offer exciting examples of the fifties Afro American ethos of making the best possible expressions within the rather narrow band of options open to Black jazz musicians. While this is not my favourite Coltrane, this is exquisite and essential Coltrane.

This marks the end of Coltrane's romantic period, of reinterpreting American song forms as the preferred vehicle for self-expression. If one is not familiar with Trane’s sometimes unbelievably tender readings of Broadway tunes, or if one prefers romantic lyricism, then one ought to seriously listen to this Prestige set.

One of the most revelatory aspects of this set is hearing Coltrane work with various pianists (especially since the bulk of Trane’s Post-Prestige recording was done with either McCoy Tyner or Alice Coltrane). While Mal Waldron is an exemplary composer/arranger and Tommy Flanagan (one of three pianists tapped to play the Giant Steps sessions) is a technician of superb finesse, it is his Miles stable-mate Red Garland who precurses the chordal approach which McCoy Tyner later epitomized. Alternating block chords of rich harmonic sophistication with darting, fleet fingered filigrees, Garland not only established a precedent, I believe he also set the standard by which Coltrane chose Tyner and measured every other pianist with whom he worked. In other words, it is not so much that Garland is a primitive Tyner as it is that Tyner, within the Coltrane context, became a modern extension of Red Garland.

Trane's harmonic ear was ultra sophisticated and he needed a pianist who could not only follow but also contribute. Garland was excellent for the romantic period, i.e. the interpreting of American popular music. The spiritual period, i.e. the expression of a striving for “freedom from” rather than “freedom within” the mainstream, required not an encyclopedic knowledge of American standards (which was Garland’s forte), but an encyclopedic knowledge of harmony and scales mated with an exploratory outlook (which quickly proved to be Tyner’s contribution). In fact if one listens to the light touch of pre-Trane Tyner playing standards, Tyner’s debt to Garland is even more apparent. As if dropping a hint of things to come, Coltrane along with Garland as the pianist, recorded The Believer, a McCoy Tyner composition on January 10, 1958.

The Believer also became the title of the album on which it was originally released. Symbolic of spiritual conviction, this composition affirmed the move away from Christianity as the sole religious force in Coltrane's life—a move which paralleled what was happening throughout Black America. Unknown to many, bebop had ushered in the first wave of non-Christian religiosity among some of the major musicians of that period. Well before peace and love spiritualism of the hippies and the new ageism which followed, African American musicians were actively converting to Islam and/or looking for alternative sources of spiritual sustenance. This search not only reflected itself in the music, this search also coloured the choices of musical associates that Coltrane and other musicians were to make. 

Thus, we counterpoise Garland’s Christian orthodoxy to Tyner’s Muslim iconoclasms. All of this happened at a time when, partly as a result of the civil rights movement's use of Negro spirituals as a basis for freedom songs, there was a renewed interest in and use of Black Christian liturgical music (from Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons and Cannonball Adderley’s obvious use of baptist-based expressive song forms, to the more experimental, but nonetheless gospel music based experiments of Max Roach and Donald Byrd).

Trane's non-sectarian religiosity is a major aspect of his revolutionary thrust. Trane was neither Christian nor Muslim. Describing himself, Trane said “I believe in all religions”. His outlook was larger than any single orthodoxy and this enabled him to creatively use religious material to maximum effect because he could discern and draw on the spiritual truths of all of them. This spiritual and musical ecumenism was a completely different track from that taken by most people who became deeply spiritual.

The Prestige set literally marks an end of an era for Coltrane. Trane was self-consciously headed in other directions. Quoted in the liner notes, speaking about 1957, Coltrane clearly states his case: “I went through a personal crisis, you know, and I came out of it. I felt so fortunate to have come through it successfully, that all I wanted to do, if I could, would be to play music that would make people happy. That's basically all I want to do. But so many other things come in along the way and I often forget that. I let technical things surround me so often that I kind of lose sight. I can’t keep them both together, you know. Maybe, if I think of it more, I may be able to find a way, a path to follow...”

Jump cut to 1965, the world is literally on fire and Coltrane is flying high dropping more that his share of mega-ton musical bombs which are exploding chaos all over the jazz landscape. While there are many musicians taking part in the free jazz movement, none of them has the technical credentials nor the mainstream respected resume of John Coltrane. Coltrane could not be dismissed as a charlatan or theatrical faker. But at the same time his music was bewildering and delivered a chaotic jolt which threatened all the American musical traditions that had preceded this new music.

It was almost as if the height of the Viet Nam war (and we must not forget that this was a period of liberation struggles and violent clashes between contending forces throughout the Third World), the Catholic pope had converted to Buddhism on one day and immolated himself the following week. There can be no understanding of The Major Works of John Coltrane without an understanding of world events and the psychological state of Black America during that era. That much is obvious, but it is also true that without a tradition to work from (both in the sense of foundation on which he could stand and a prison from which he had to escape) Coltrane would never have become the revolutionary he became.

We would be impossibly naive if we believed that Coltrane was unaware of the social and musical controversies swirling around him. Musically, he was first accused of fostering a style dubbed as “anti-jazz” and then he was accused of creating chaotic noise which was totally unmusical.

 "Anti-jazz” was simply a negative way of recognizing that Coltrane had rejected standard American forms for the organization of his music. A number of critics accused Coltrane of abandoning swing. ‘These critics were obviously oblivious to the fact that swing is not a western concept in the first place.

There are two major schools of physics: Newton with the emphasis on matter and Einstein with the emphasis on energy. In metaphorical terms, what happened was the eminent Newtonian John William Coltrane converted to Einstein’s quantumism. Or to put it another way, after perfecting manned-flight at supersonic speeds, Coltrane jettisoned the use of a technically complex air/space-craft for the rush of astral travelling, out of body projections without any visible vehicle of travel.

The mistitled Major Works is a cosmo-gram of Trane's astral travelling. It contains both editions of Ascension plus Om, Kulu Se Mama, and Selflessness. It would have been much more accurate to simply call this “Coltrane 1965” or “A Year In The Life”. While there is no doubt that Ascension is a major work, the other pieces hardly qualify for that title especially when compared to A Love Supreme and Meditations. Moreover, one of the cuts, Kulu Se Mama, is not even a Coltrane composition.

Once again, we catch Coltrane at the end of an era. The classic quartet was being augmented to the breaking point. In fact, all of these selections feature at least seven musicians, and Ascension includes eleven musicians. Shortly the old quartet would be broken up, replaced by a quintet that included Pharaoh Sanders as a second hom player, pianist Alice Coltrane replacing McCoy Tyner, and drummer Rashied Ali replacing Elvin Jones.

Coltrane's public appearances often included an unannounced bevy of horn players and percussionists. From the inception of the Impulse years until his death, Coltrane chose to record exclusively with African American musicians in sharp contrast to the prevailing tendency toward a racial integration of ensembles then espoused by the majority of jazz musicians. While no one has ever accused Coltrane of Crow Jimism, i.e. the so-called reverse racism charge that was levelled at a number of other artists, the fact is that Coltrane consistently loaned both his name and his talents to the blossoming, racially oriented Black Arts Movement of that era.

Furthermore, Coltrane was using his clout at Impulse to champion the recording of artists such as Archie Shepp, Marion Brown and others. Seemingly single-handedly John Coltrane was assaulting the barricades of the music world, leading a battalion of true believers into an apocalyptic and impassioned fray against the forces of traditional musical taste and order.

To say the least, none of this music was meant for casual or recreational listening, nor as cocktail background muzak. These are more like sacred texts which offer the listener no familiar handle of accessibility but reward repeated listening if one is willing to accept the music on its own terms—and admittedly these terms are revolutionary terms. Of the selections, Kulu Se Mama is the most accessible and Om the most out.

Kulu Se Mama would today be described as world beat and even has sections of lilting afro-percussive swing. Kulu Se Mama is actually closer to Sander's later work such as The Creator Has A Master Plan than it is close to anything else in the Coltrane canon. On the other hand, as Coltrane's use of multiple drummers/percussionist as well as Coltrane’s hook-up with Olatunji indicated, Coltrane was interested in moving toward the incorporation of African rhythms into his music.

Om is a beautiful nightmare. A frightening immersion into the spirit world where all things are possible and fantasy is the norm. There are not many people who can listen to Om all the way through without being repulsed - but the value of this music is precisely it’s ability to upset the norm, to cause us to examine all “received” truths that we believe based on tradition and social indoctrination. In essence Om is a musical recreation of the chaos of birth, the rupturing of the maternal womb in preparation to enter into a larger world which offers more opportunities for growth and development.

In this context, the last track, Selflessness, is the least original in its form and execution. Whereas the other selections are fully realized performances, Selflessness has the air of the intentionally experimental about it.

Clearly the two versions of Ascension are the pieces de resistance. Released within months of each other with only notations scratched into the vinyl to distinguish them one from the other, these are similar albeit differently executed takes of the same selection. In Edition I the collective is stronger, in Edition II the solos are stronger, or so it seems to my ears. I prefer the first edition because of its power and passion.

By the end of 1965 Coltrane had not only stylistically broken with the past, he had created an alternative to even his revolutionary tradition - consider it a revolution within a revolution. Much like the Chinese political drama of that period: the first revolution had been to gain the power of self-determination while retaining (albeit radically altered) traditional forms. That was the revolution against and this is what The Major Works most clearly represents.

In the liner notes for Meditations Coltrane told Nat Hentoff: “Once you become aware of this force for unity in life you can’t ever forget it. It becomes part of everything you do ... My goal in meditating on this through music ... is to uplift people, as much as I can. To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives, Because there certainly is meaning to life.”

Coltrane went on to delineate the centrality of what politically has been defined as permanent revolution (or the revolution within the revolution): “There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror.”

Breaking the bonds of slavery is easy when compared to the difficulty of constructing a new society. In June of 1966 Coltrane toured and recorded in Japan. The 4-CD set contains essential Phase 3 Coltrane. By now Coltrane had not only formed a new band, he was also well into developing his own record label and hooking up a cooperative venture with African drummer and musicologist Babatunde Olatunji and fellow saxophonist Yusef Lateef.

Writing in an article titled John Coltrane My Impressions and Recollections Olatunji recalls:

After a few minutes of silence (Coltrane) opened up the conversation by asking me if | would be willing to join him and brother Yusef Lateef to form an organization or a trio without any Specific grandiloquent filles or high sounding catchy names, but a union that would bind three of us together to accomplish certain goals. I asked him what he had in mind, John Coltrane said, “Tunji, I am tired of being taken and exploited by managers, club owners and concert promoters. I worked too hard to get where I am today and still don’t get adequately compensated for my talent. I hate to see promoters manipulating one artist after another. When you get a bad review, that means your concert price is going down They don't really care about you, your music, what you are trying to accomplish artistically, nor do they give a damn if you are up today and down tomorrow because they know they will soon discover another victim!” I asked him, “what do you think we should do, because I am tired of the whole thing myself.” 

Trane answered and said, “Look Tunji, we need to sponsor our own concerts, promote them and perform in them. This way we will not only Team how to take a risk but will not have to accept the dictate of anybody about how long you should play, what to play and what you get.”

Coltrane died before the proposed collective or his record label could come to fruition. But nonetheless, it is clear that Coltrane was actively in search not just of an alternative sound but indeed of an alternative economic reality - a search still underway in jazz circles.

While journalists often speculate on who will be the next Coltrane (the leading contender has been David Murray) no one has yet emerged to fulfil the prophecy. In part because the whole system of jazz has changed. Whereas formerly there were bands within which a young player could serve an apprenticeship much as Trane did with Johnny Hodges, Earl Bostic, and Dizzy Gillespie, today most bands are made up of one-generational peers performing contemporary music.

Another factor is the dearth of club dates, where three sets a night over a week long period allowed a band the opportunity to work on new materials. These have been replaced by one sets concert performances. This discourages experimentation. While more lucrative than the standard club gig, concert appearances are by nature much more conservative. This is part of what Trane was alluding to in his conversation with Olatunji, When a jazz musician plays one song for over an hour, few if any drinks are sold and a two or three song set becomes the whole night, thus limiting admissions.

Trane's new music was uncommercial not only in sound but also in form. It just didn’t fit within the strictures of the mainstream jazz world. In fact, there were even technological limitations in the reproduction of this music. Originally, one-CD’s worth of Live In Japan was issued as a two record set in the United States, and that included only two selections which were cut up in jig-saw pieces and not even presented in proper playing order. Were it not for the introduction of the CD, the whole of this music might never have been made commercially available. That's how revolutionary Coltrane's music was.

The alleged failure of the avant garde to find an audience was not an aesthetical failure as has often been asserted but was actually an inability to establish revolutionary forms for the presentation and distribution of the music. The venues were limited, the recording and broadcasting opportunities even more limited. Unfortunately, no business apparatus was built to support the aesthetical revolution which had occurred. The conventional business interests prevailed and disallowed the institutionalization of an alternative. Even though Prestige had been a plantation, at least the music had been recorded. Except for Coltrane, the bulk of the avant garde recordings were done in Europe or for tiny independent companies resulting in comparatively little exposure in the United States for this music.

So without the learning and listening opportunities (for the development of both the musicians as artists and the development of an audience to support the music) offered by venues, recording companies, radio stations, publications and the like, the new music was destined to be isolated and overwhelmed by a planned commercial onslaught called fusion - planned both by profit driven record companies and by reputable jazz musicians (exemplified by Miles Davis) who were more interested in mass appeal than in cleaning the mirror.

To Coltrane’s credit, while others succumbed to commercial pressures he remained steadfast and Live In Japan documents Coltrane’s unflagging revolutionary commitment. A record of uncompromising execution, Live In Japan is not for everyone. Close to four hours of lyrical wailing with nary a thought to conventionality. Forget everything you ever knew about western song forms, don’t even think about looking for a steady beat. Everybody I know who digs ‘Trane of this era does so on an other-worldly plane — we meditate to and with this stuff. Lay quietly with our eyes closed and think about nothing. Let the music wash over us and transport us to another level of consciousness.

What Trane figured out is how to get around thinking about the making of music and how to go straight into feeling and being.

Twenty-five years after it was recorded, this music is still insanely avant garde, still steady forward: and will always be so, precisely because it is not concemed with thinking, with worldly concerns, it’s all about hooking into cosmic life force. Or as Trane said in his interview with Wilmer: “All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws. Then he can feel that he is interpreting them to the best of his ability, and can try to convey that to others. As to the music itself and its future, it won't lessen any in its ability to move people. I feel certain of that. It will be just as great or greater.”

Live In Japan ranks as one of Coltrane's crowning recording triumphs. Partially this is because it was not intended as a recording session, so no thought was given to offering manageable chunks of the music cut down to accommodate the recording techniques of the time. Secondly, this is a document of Coltrane playing for an appreciative audience on what was by all accounts one of his most positive touring experiences ever. Finally, included are rare instances of Trane playing alto, the horn he started his career playing. The only other recorded alto generally available is on a Gene Ammons recording which is included in The Complete Prestige set.

Live In Japan finds Trane stretching out and gives us the closest approximation to what the group sounded like in concert. The only other available document, Live At The Village Vanguard Again is equally intense but far too short to give the full picture. On Live In Japan the shortest selection is 25-minutes long, two of the selections clock in at just a few minutes shy of an hour. Two whole concerts contained on 4-CDs.

This is a quantum physics textbook of jazz. From lyrical yearnings of Peace On Earth to the explosive power of Leo this music sings of human possibilities, of going beyond the boundaries of the present to the place where the essence of matter becomes vibration rather than mass, where the third eye opens to the universal by gazing simultaneously inward into the self and outward at the world, going both deep and most high.

This is not about sense but rather sensations, acknowledgement of life. Everybody knows that when you're standing by the track you can feel and hear the train coming and going long before you see it’s arrival, long after you see its departure. What we see limits us, what we can sense frees us. And Trane of this period was a cosmic can opener who best summed up the thorny issue of the difficulty of understanding this revolutionary music, when he said, “You'd like an answer to this? Well, I don’t feel there is an answer to this. It is either saying a person, who does not understand, will understand in time from repeated listening or some things he will never understand, You know, that’s the way it is. There are many things in life that we don’t understand. And we just go on with life anyway.”

‘The going on with life has been made a bit easier because a man named John William Coltrane chose to illuminate the path with the brilliance of his music. I thank the wind, the earth, the spirit of creation from which Coltrane came and to which he has returned for the gift of his music and for the opportunity to experience that beautiful sound of life. I give thanks for Ohnedaruth, aka John William Coltrane - may we always recognize the importance of his revolutionary contributions.