The French writer Frank Tenot was in New York during October 1960, and was invited to the "My Favorite Things" session on October 21st. In the January 1962 edition of the French "Jazz Magazine" Tenot contributed a piece to the Coltrane special, which was featured across multiple pages, and had articles by two other writers. I've been reading about the 2022 remastering of "My Favorite Things" and this inspired me to complete the English translation that I had started in 2018. Some of the originally translated article formed the blog entry John Coltrane the Obsessive
I must practice, I must practice... I still have to train and improve. It is with these words that John Coltrane replied more than a year ago, to the warm congratulations I gave him at the end of the Atlantic Studios recording session for "My Favorite Things".
His forehead was lined with worry as he stared at his soprano sax like it was a poisonous snake. Yet everyone thought the take was good and tried hard to convince him that he could hardly do better. He nodded as if to repel futile flattery and only Naima, his charming wife, managed to cheer him up by wrapping her arms around his shoulders and whispering tenderly that it was very good for her. This opinion dictated by reason and love was decisive. John chased away his dark thoughts and decided to pack his saxophones away. Needless to say, the atmosphere thawed and we saw Elvin Jones dancing around his drums. While picking up his instruments with the meticulous care of a goldsmith, Trane explained to me his difficulties in finding suitable reeds and that at best, they were perfect only after a month, and this useful period lasted only two days. The conversation then slipped into some peculiarities of the mouthpiece, he curiously tinkered with it and I noticed a piece of inner tube rather awkwardly glued. But like Freddie Hubbard who apparently played with a handkerchief on his fingers so that no one could follow the movement of the valves of his cornet, John took refuge in laughter and refused any explanation. Rarely has a musician given me such an impression of professional conscience, of love for his art and also of creative anxiety. Together with other occasions, my knowledge of the private man has contributed to making me better understand the greatness of the artist. You have to know this extraordinarily shy man, who is afraid to enter a restaurant alone, and who in turn prefers to buy two apples in a grocery store and eat them alone in his hotel room, rather than face the ordeal of the restaurant; to appreciate more his attitude on the stage. At this moment, nothing else exists. The fearful being forgets all his thoughts and throws himself like a demon into his music without even realising that his music is a series of slaps in the face to those who live in the past.
I told him one day that a large part of the public who attend jazz concerts is unfortunately hardly more evolved than the good people who go to the music hall on Saturday evenings. We sit in our armchair to hear what we already know by heart and we take pleasure in “seeing the artists play and sing the same thing as on records or on the radio". The stars of song know it well since they always skilfully combine the original themes and the hits of yesteryear. Many jazz musicians proceed in the same way. It's part of the job of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie - the joy of rediscovering "How high the Moon" or "Rockin' in Rhythm". And it's why I suggested to John that he should also present tunes from the albums “Giant Steps” and “Coltrane Jazz” as he would then certainly have won over all the amateurs who flocked to hear him on November 18th at L'Olympia, and no one today would dispute his current supremacy over the other tenors. But Trane cannot reason like this, and if he perceives some hostile rumours, he will interpret them in a non-confrontational way. He imagines that he's still too timid, too orthodox, and will rush even more frantically into the unknown universe of sound whose doors he seeks to force at all costs. The misunderstanding already occurred when he first came to France, with Miles in March 1960. The public hoped to revel in the suave and romantic solo of "Round Midnight", but they found themselves face to face with a soloist who strangled his sonority, who broke his notes into grating arpeggios, who persisted in a maddening series of tortured variations and the clumsy stammering of a man unable to master his instrument.
John Coltrane disturbs, annoys and bothers those who do not manage to separate the chaff from the wheat, who admire the soloists of the Ray Charles Orchestra (for example Hank Crawford), not knowing they are disciples of Charlie Parker. But also a great number of contemporary jazz lovers who reproach him for not playing like Stan Getz or Sonny Rollins. Wasn't Bubber Miley's moans compared to a sick child, Louis Armstrong's voice to a drunkard's, Lester Young's notes to a bus horn? As for Parker, today imitated by all altoists, was he not an example of an ugly sound compared to that of Johnny Hodges? Trane is also criticised for his amazing technique. We've heard this before; it's been used to denigrate Armstrong in 1930, Roy Eldridge later, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum...virtually anyone who used techniques their predecessors couldn't.
One can obviously be annoyed by the way in which John Coltrane performs endless solos, and by the "experimental" side of the majority of his works, but what a fascinating and moving spectacle it is of a man who throws himself fully into the exploitation of a series of chords, brutalises its sonority, twists its notes like someone locked in a glass cage who desperately bangs his head against the walls to escape. Everything happens in there; crazy high register incursions, brutal bursts bringing out two or three notes at the same time, an unshakeable ability to twist the theme like a wet towel, to reconstitute it upside down and in all directions, before the improvisations fade away in codas that seem to die of weariness. We understand that Trane is particularly at ease in the company of McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. The former breaks the harmonies down into chord clusters that propel the music forward. The latter pushes furiously on the cymbals. He doesn't follow the soloist, but rather holds back, frames it, and acts as a counterbalance to its perpetual flights.
But the naysayers moaned the day after the Paris concert. "Where is jazz going?" It is strange to encounter this apprehension amongst music lovers who claim to be lovers of a music where precisely any constructive effort in the direction of a greater liberation in the possibilities of sound, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic expression can only be in disagreement with the fundamentals of this art. Doesn't the impetuous torrent that Coltrane erupts in his music obey the same instinctive and secret forces that animated the Armstrong of "Tight Like This" and the Parker of "Parker's Mood"?
The spontaneous outburts of sympathy that hundreds of fanatics lavished on Coltrane the evening of the concert, made me feel that there are many more of this opinion. Even if the future destroys our illusions, we will at least have the immense joy of those moments. I was also able to realise that these feelings of friendship were understood by Coltrane himself who, true to his character - reacted by smiling weakly while murmuring: I must practice, I must practice.
Frank TENOT.
Ref : Jazz Magazine Janvier 1962. English translation by Jamo Spingal
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